07-12-17 Information and Technology & Health and Public Safety

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Committee Chair Scott asked, Were you looking for a personnel increase, or an overall budget increase for the 2018 budget? Mr. Croymans replied, We submitted the exact same personnel in the budget. Personally, I do think having an additional fourteen(14) staff would cover us not only on the call processing, but also for the operational needs of the center. One (1) of the things we really struggle with at the center is covering benefit time. When someone calls off sick or takes vacation, we aren't able to cover that with our normal staffing numbers. It always resorts to overtime. There is approximately $600,000 spent annually on overtime. The fourteen(14) extra people would help us also on the operational side. They would help provide those resources to the departments to handle the closed channels for burglaries, robberies and commercial structure fires. We don't have the staff right now to dedicate anyone to handle those isolated, critical incidents. The biggest thing is covering bathroom and lunch breaks without the staff. The dispatchers are typically working two (2) or three (3) days a week on overtime. Typically they work eight(8) hour shifts but there are at least two (2)to three (3) days where almost every dispatcher in the center is working a twelve (12) hour day. Training programs are typically six (6)to nine (9) months depending on what agency they are training for. Some agencies have better training material and some places have no training material. We are in the process of standardizing that. The biggest thing about turning the CAD system on is it gives us the ability to have one (1) structured program. The training manual is being developed and should be done within the next sixty(60) to ninety(90) days. Ms. Etter stated, Our current budget for overtime in 2017 was $160,000. As of June 1, 2017 we are currently at $287,000 in overtime. When our 2017 budget was discussed with our Board, it was clear that we were going to be way over what we budgeted for. The coverage comes out of our reserves and that's what has been done for the past couple of years. We are almost at the end of that rope. Projected monies spent on overtime in total, if we keep this pace,will be around $740,000, which is not much different from 2015 or 2016. A lot of the overtime costs for 2017 are natural. Our six (6) and three (3) rotation we have has a dispatcher work six (6) days and have off three (3) days. That sixth(6t') day of the week, because of labor laws, costs us $193,000 annually for our sixty-four(64) employees. We cannot get rid of that overtime expense. Another issue is the benefit time. Every time someone calls in sick,takes vacation or personal time, we simply don't have the employees to cover it. Based on the employees we have now and their current seniority, we are looking at $500,000 remaining to be spent in 2017. Ten(10) additional employees would bring it to neutral, and four (4)more would bring it down. With the minimum twelve (12) employees on the floor, if somebody takes a day off it causes overtime. Committeemember White stated, I was shocked when we came to the budget last year and we had all the additional monies we had to put in to this as the City. Mr. Croymans replied, During the consolidation, a lot of our cost savings came from capital expenses, especially now being in one (1) building and improving technology expenses. If we didn't consolidate, we would still have four(4) separate CAD systems and CAD systems can cost up to $2 million each. So there were cost savings on the capital expense side, but we are not seeing the savings on the personnel side. 4