LYNNFIELD – Police Chief Nick Secatore said the department’s top priorities for the fiscal year 2024 operating budget are funding for a new full-time officer and $50,000 more for overtime during his annual budget presentation to the Select Board.
“The needs of the police department are centric on staffing in my belief, and I had spoken about that with the board last year,” Secatore said at the board’s meeting on Feb. 13.
Secatore said the department has the ability to staff 22 full-time positions, but only 20 are currently filled. One recruit in the academy is expected to graduate in under six months, bringing that number to 21.
Each shift needs a minimum of three patrol officers and one supervisor, but in order to achieve that Secatore said there needs to be a full staff of 22 people. Whenever there is a shift with someone off, overtime is used to fill it. As a result, Secatore said, there are currently 10 shifts each week that require overtime just to be filled.
“We’re reliant on overtime and that strains our budget,” Secatore said. “We can’t get to 22 (officers) and stay at 22… people are leaving and retiring.”
While Secatore said an appropriate staffing level for the town’s size would be about 26 officers, he’s only asking for one additional officer right now.
Secatore emphasized to the board that his department has no redundancy anywhere else, and as a result there will be no extra officers to draw from when people leave and its staffing returns to 20 positions.
“We cannot take them from another unit,” Secatore said. “We cannot reassign them. We simply do not have them at all.”
Adding an officer would provide the department with more flexibility, which Secatore said is especially relevant during the summer when officers want to go on vacation with their families.
“We want to make sure the officers work as much as they can work and want to work, but are not forced to work and exhaust themselves all summer long,” Secatore said.
Secatore is also requesting an addition of $50,000 to the overtime budget.
When the department does not have enough officers and needs to spend a lot on overtime, Secatore said they look for areas within their own budget to see where they can transfer money from. A lot of that time, he said they end up transferring money from the training budget to backfill the overtime before requesting money from town meeting to backfill the training budget.
“Particularly in today’s day and age, we don’t want to sacrifice training to fill our shifts,” Secatore said. “I think that with all that’s been going on in the past several years with police certification coming in, we understand the need for training to keep our officers trained at the forefront and not reactive, so that they can respond to all of the calls.”
Other smaller requests for the department’s budget include a few thousand dollars for vehicle maintenance, and an increased amount to expand mobile access and the number of telephones this year.
For capital requests, Secatore is asking for two police vehicles to turn over their 2014 and 2016 vehicles, which carry a price of around $45,000 each. This would also require around $10,000 to $14,000 to upfit the cars with equipment.
Secatore is also asking for $95,000 to turn over the dispatch console with a new one that would have a lifespan of 15 or more years. He said it would be the new back end of dispatch for the new station, and that its replacement is a prerequisite for relocating the dispatch center.
“We need to replace the consul first, then move it if we’re going to take it back,” Secatore said. “We need it to be in place to move.”
That request is for both the town’s police and fire departments, as both operate on it.
The last capital request is $40,000 for computers and networking technology to enable remote access into the new police station from the substation at Market Street. Secatore said this would require replacing the network switches and firewalls, and acquiring some standalone PCs.
