City Commissioners Target Police and Fire Overtime

City Hall
By NIGEL JAQUISS

As the city budget process grinds toward a conclusion, commissioners are turning in their homework.

When Mayor Charlie Hales took control of all city bureaus for the duration of the budget cycle he asked his colleagues to spend some of their new-found spare time examining bureau spending.

Two of them, Dan Saltzman and Amanda Fritz, got the task of looking at public safety labor costs. The Police and Fire bureaus together account for 63 percent of the city's general fund spending. So to find savings for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and to generate the $21.5 million in savings Hales needs for next year, those two bureaus are the logical place to start looking.

In their findings, the two commissioners suggested cuts of $1.8 million for the current year, mostly in overtime spending (see below) and a variety of policy changes designed to trim spending in future years. 

Hales will present his budget later this spring. 

Here are a couple of the commissioners' suggestions:

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