SAUGUS — The Finance Committee reviewed the proposed fiscal year 2024 budgets for the town’s public safety departments on Wednesday evening. The budgets totaled over $16.5 million in requests from the police and fire departments, emergency management, animal control, and dispatchers.
The committee was without Chairman Kenneth DePatto Wednesday, with Marc Magliozzi serving as acting chair in his stead. Both Police Chief Michael Ricciardelli and Fire Chief Michael Newbury were on hand to present their department’s budgets, and Town Manager Scott Crabtree and Treasurer/Collector Wendy Hatch sat in on the meeting. Neither Crabtree nor Hatch were present when the school department presented its budget the previous week.
At one point, Crabtree underscored the importance of ensuring the town’s public safety departments get the funds they need.
“You can’t short change [police and fire] at all,” he said. “The police and fire are putting their lives on the line every single day they go out on a call. It’s a tremendous profession. The people dedicate their lives, literally, to the community and the residents of Saugus.”
Ricciardelli presented his department’s budget first, detailing the few areas in which it was asking for increased funding from the previous fiscal year. The primary driver behind the proposed $127,078 budget increase is salaries and wages for full-time employees, representing an increase of roughly $130,000. Other areas of the budget — like stipend longevity and sick leave buyback — were cut. The department’s total ask for FY24 is $9.2 million, with an additional $908,841 allocated for dispatchers.
The department is also proposing to spend $80,705 on animal control.
Each line item proposed by the department was mirrored in the budget recommendation put forward by Crabtree, a former police officer, with no disparities between the two.
Ricciardelli said the department aimed to present a level-service budget with minimal additional asks beyond contractual obligations.
“We tried to level-fund most things, obviously there’s contractual obligations … we did ask for a little bit more money, however, there’s a reason for that,” he said.
The town has been proactive in trying to send recruits to the academy before officers retire so gaps in staffing can be avoided. Ricciardelli said the town aims to have 51 patrol officers at a given time.
Ricciardelli walked committee members through the budget line-by-line, and earned praise from committee members for the document being straightforward and easy to read. He explained that the only large looming expenses for the department are capital improvement projects, which would be handled in collaboration with the town.
“Each year we try to take something out, we usually take it out of the capital,” Crabtree said, noting that Town Meeting authorized $3 million worth of capital improvements over the course of the next three to five years.
Ricciardelli ceded the floor to Newbury after minimal questioning from committee members, who seemed to indicate their support for the budget.
During his presentation Newbury, rather than go line-by-line, walked the committee through the handful of line items set to increase in the coming fiscal year. A total of seven line items in the fire department’s budget carried higher price tags headed into FY24 than in FY23. The total request put forward by the department is roughly $6.3 million, with an additional $30,000 allocated for emergency management. The total budget increase for FY24 is roughly $200,000.
The requested increases from the fire department come primarily in pay for employees — salaries and wages, general overtime, and shift differentials (additional pay for those who work a less desirable shift) are set to rise by a combined $345,765. The additional increases are allocated to repair and maintenance for vehicles, uniforms, turnout gear, and an equipment grant match.
Crabtree’s recommendation is $30,000 lower than the department’s request, with cuts to the requests for overtime and shift differentials.
“Coming out of the COVID crisis and the increase in price to everything, the support we got here to the Finance Committee and Town Meeting last year really put us in a position where we could just put together a pretty straightforward budget,” Newbury said.
Newbury said the fire department, with Crabtree’s approval, has increasingly pursued state and federal grants to improve equipment over time. He added that the town recently purchased a new pumper and a new ladder truck to boost the department’s fleet.
Newbury praised the work the department has done on maintenance, keeping trucks on the road even as they age and collect wear and tear.
The department’s budget, much like their colleagues on the other side of the town’s public safety building on Hamilton Street, earned praise from the committee for its simplicity.
“We get the message. Everyone wants a piece of the pie and we tried to do a good job of being realistic and working with the town administration to make sure that the real things get purchased,” Newbury said.
