UNIFY PIERMONT (unifypiermont@live.com)
A Review of Police Salaries in Piermont
A recent article in The Rockland Express discussed police salaries in Clarkstown, Ramapo and Orangetown. It indicated that the entry-level base salaries are respectively $61,905, $40,418 and $43,475. While Piermont has only experienced police officers, it did get Unify Piermont thinking about our Police budget.
We have previously published a blog identifying the eight full time police personnel as the top eight wage earners in Piermont. We thought that further analysis might be interesting since the Village Board seems incapable of doing anything about this, our largest expense (see blog on functional budget).
Excluding the Chief and the Part-time Policeman, the other seven officers received $697,000 in base salary in 2009, an average of just under $100,000. Excluding the Sergeant, the Patrolmen earned an average of $97,600.
Vacation, holiday and longevity pay added another $82,000 or almost $12,000 a man. While these items are treated separately for municipal budgeting purposes, in reality they should be considered as part of base pay. So the average Piermont Policeman, excluding the Chief and the Part-time Policeman, earned an average of just over $111,000 before overtime.
Overtime added another $85,000 to the Police budget or another $12,000 per man. By Unify Piermont’s calculations, this was just under 1100 hours of overtime. The thought occurred to us, if we are paying so much in overtime, perhaps we need more part-time policemen.
Obviously, some overtime is required. Our police officers are very professional and they are not going to stop in the middle of writing a ticket, pursuing a suspect or interrogating a witness because it is the end of the shift.
On the other hand, we have a part-time patrolman who worked just over 900 hours last year for $22,000. One would assume that overtime is frequently required for special events. Unify Piermont understands that the Rockland Sheriff's Department has a voluntary Sheriff’s Deputy Reserve Force, comprised of 100 trained volunteers, that in some cases can be called upon for support for special events. Has the Village investigated this?
It would seem that there is a potential for some savings in overtime, if the Village Board wants to achieve it. Unify Piermont expects that this suggestion, as with so many others over the years, will be dismissed without careful consideration, but as the lottery saying goes “Hey, you never know”.
One last observation, although the Village consistently budgets for $69,000 in police overtime, it always runs over that.
This message was prepared by Unify Piermont which is dedicated to returning responsible, representative government to Piermont.
Unify Piermont is a group made up of village residents from all areas of the village, and from all political parties. We need to create a local village government that will address the problems created by the current and previous administrations.
We need your help, your input and your involvement. If you share our concerns about Village taxes, Village debt and the lack of any meaningful communication from our Village Board; than e-mail us at unifypiermont@live.com with your name and address or leave a message at 845-613-7675. We will notify you when a new posting goes up on our website at www.unifypiermont.blogspot.com.
