Saugus PD, FD face level-funded budgets again

SAUGUS – The state Fire Academy on Friday will be graduating 69 recruits from 39 different Fire Departments including Saugus but there will be no party on Hamilton Street because the recruit is destined for a layoff come July 1.Fire Chief James Blanchard will take his seat before the Finance Committee Wednesday when he expects to hear that his budget will be level funded. Level funding his budget will result in the layoff of the new recruit.”So we just trained him for someone else,” Blanchard said.That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Both the Fire and Police departments were funded to hire new personnel. The Police Department hired two new patrolmen and took a third as a transfer, which means he did not have to go to the academy. The Fire Department hired one new man.Then Gov. Deval Patrick attempted to close a gap in the state’s budget by cutting this fiscal year’s local aid and announcing deeper cuts for 2010. The trickle down effects of those cuts will result in the loss of personnel for both fire and safety.For the Police Department, Chief Domenic DiMella said the level funding couldn’t come at a worse time. DiMella sat in the Finance Committee hot seat last Wednesday and in his report wrote that statistics show crime activity in Saugus has increased on nearly every level.Calls for service were up 7.1 percent, major incidents were up 8.6 percent and arrests were up 4.7 percent over last year.”Add to this an increase in major accidents of nearly 9 percent and it is easy to see the problems we face as a community,” DiMella wrote. “It is vitally important for me to show you these statistics because they form a large part of the basis from which I recommend a budget.”Of the three men DiMella hired, two dropped out of the academy and the patrolman who transfered is safe only because the department had an officer resign last month. DiMella said there will be no other new hires any time soon.If he had his way, DiMella said he was only looking for a 2 percent increase over last year’s $5,359,960 budget.”It would probably go for additional training for officers and a lot of it would go toward overtime,” he said.DiMella said the department, which is down to 54 people including himself, 37 of whom are patrolmen, has never recovered from the massive hit it took in 2003 when budget cuts forced then-Chief James MacKay to lay off nine patrolmen the day after they graduated from the academy.DiMella said a full compliment of officers would include replacing those nine, plus one more.Blanchard said he, too, could use additional men to cut down on overtime.”It’s frustrating because the town just started to come back,” he said.Blanchard said a level-funded budget for a year or even two is fine, but when it stretches on for a few years, it becomes more and more problematic.”Fuel, utilities, clothing, everything goes up so our ability to buy the same amount year to year is reduced,” he said. “It’s good to be level funded, we’re not losing, but we are. Level funded is not moving forward, it’s just marking time.”