TUPELO — In the past three years, Tupelo city government has significantly cut the amount of money it’s spending on overtime.
The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal analyzed budget documents for 2003 through the first 11 months of 2013.
The city spent $6.1 million on overtime during those nearly 11 years. The newspaper finds that during the past three years, the city had a 41.4 percent decrease in the average amount of overtime paid to municipal employees.
The peak of Tupelo’s overtime payments came in 2009, during the Great Recession.
The amount paid in 2012 was $500,000 less than in 2009.
In 2000, the city adopted a policy requiring all department heads to approve any overtime in advance.
Until recent years, the Tupelo Fire Department planned for nearly each employee to accrue 14 hours of overtime every two-week pay period. The newspaper reports during most years before 2011, firefighters routinely earned thousands of dollars for working extra hours. Some years, a few were paid close to $20,000 in overtime.
“I had some firefighters making more than captains because of overtime,” said Thomas Walker, Tupelo Fire Department chief since 2009.
Since the city began trying to reduce the overtime budget three years ago, the fire department has cut overtime an average of 96.2 percent. This translates to about $277,557 per year in savings.
The Tupelo Police Department spent $658,581 in overtime costs from 2003 through November 2013. Police Chief Bart Aguirre, appointed to his position in October, said the department schedules more officers to work in high-traffic areas during holidays and during special events.
He said some overtime occurs for reasons the public may not think about. For example, when an inmate in the Lee County Jail arrested by Tupelo police requires medical care for sicknesses or injuries, officers must provide security while the prisoner receives hospital treatment.
“Sometimes we have to bring in extra folks to watch them,” he said. “We can’t leave shifts short-handed.”
The effort to reduce overtime payments began in 2010, under then-Mayor Jack Reed Jr., who hired Lynn Norris as the city’s chief financial officer. With personnel costs comprising 62.9 percent of the city’s $31.2 million general fund budget for fiscal year 2010, Norris identified overtime as a potential way to cut costs. He and Reed met with department heads and asked them to look for ways to decrease overtime.
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