WESTBROOK – The 2011 budget season was dominated by emotional testimony from parents, teachers and students over the school district’s attempt to compensate for a $3.7 million gap. The municipal side, by contrast, was relatively uneventful – that is, until recent discussions of how much money was being spent on overtime by the police and fire departments led to some angry words from city councilors to Michael Pardue, the city’s director of public safety.

Tempers ran high at the city’s Finance Committee meeting on April 25, as the committee, made up of city councilors, voted to slash overtime for fire and police officers by 10 percent. The move came after some councilors grilled Pardue, over a total overtime budget of about $350,000.

“I’ve been here for 12 years, and I’ve been hammering on this issue,” said Councilor John O’Hara, jabbing his forefinger at Pardue for emphasis. “The hemorrhaging is just incredible.”

The meeting represented the longest, and one of the last, discussions on some specific items in the proposed 2011-2012 budget, including the line items for police and fire department overtime. According to Chief Financial Officer Dawn Ouellette, the fire department’s overtime budget stood at $250,000, while the police overtime added up to $110,095.

Councilor Brendan Rielly said he has been seeing the problem of high police and fire overtime come up every budget season for the past 10 years, with nothing but unfulfilled promises to address the problem, and this year he’d had enough.

“I’ve finally run out of a little bit of patience,” he said. “Every year we ask about it, and every year we’re told the same thing.”

Pardue said temporary losses in personnel are part of the problem, especially on the fire department side. Pardue said the department is down three full-time positions, one deputy fire chief position, and nine to 10 per diem positions, all due to reorganization of the department, retirements, and one firefighter being dismissed.

The department is in the process of filling those positions, but in the meantime, Pardue said, other firefighters have to fill in the gaps.

Two firefighters are on leave with long-term injuries, Pardue said. As an example, Pardue cited a firefighter who injured his leg during the winter while shoveling out fire hydrants in the city. The injury was so bad, Pardue said, that the firefighter had to have surgery and spend several months recovering. In the meantime, the rest of the department has to cover for him, which means overtime.

“That’s three to six months of overtime,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do to control that.”

Pardue said collective bargaining agreements with the fire and police unions, which have set minimum staffing levels, are tying his hands in limiting overtime.

Another portion of the overtime budget, Pardue said, was emergencies. Pardue cited a recent house fire on Central Street, and a recent stabbing on the same street, and said firefighters and police officers simply can’t stop fighting a fire or investigating a crime because their shift is ending for the day.

Pardue, who has been running both the police and fire departments since February, also acknowledged, however, that overtime is high, and something should be done about it.

“Our overtime staffing is horrifically expensive, and we know that,” he said.

To that end, Pardue also cited a new plan he has put forward to address financial issues in the public safety department in the future, including overtime.

Councilor Michael Foley said he backed Pardue’s plan, and said he believed the bulk of the overtime is paying for emergency coverage, and that the city should not eat into that funding.

“It’s not just lining these guys’ pockets with extra money,” he said. “It’s paying for emergencies.”

Councilor Paul Emery agreed that the persistent problem of high overtime costs was “annoying,” but said an arbitrary cut to overtime runs the risk of cutting off the city’s ability to respond to emergencies, which will happen whether the city is ready for them or not.

“If it snows, it snows. If the building burns, the building burns, and if a guy gets angry and stabs his wife, he stabs his wife,” Emery said.

Rielly, responding to those comments, said he believed much of the overtime could be reduced by improvements in efficient staffing.

O’Hara cited the school district, which has cut multiple positions and programs in an attempt to close its $3.7 million budget gap. That effort, which O’Hara said amounted to the district asking the schools to “live within their means,” has led to teachers losing their jobs. When he sees high overtime costs, O’Hara said, he thinks the police and fire departments need to learn to live within their means, too.

“It is not something these two groups can’t do,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, they’ve never had to.”

Rielly, acknowledging that Pardue only began working for the department a little more than a year ago, said he did not blame Pardue personally for a 10-year-old problem.

“Unfortunately, you’re catching this here,” he said, but added an arbitrary cut to overtime might provide a tool for Pardue to renegotiate agreements with the unions. Rielly made two motions, one for police and one for fire, to cut the overtime budget by 10 percent. O’Hara seconded the motion.

The fire department motion passed by a vote of 6-1, with Emery being the only dissenting vote. That cuts fire overtime by $26,000. The police motion was tighter, passing by a vote of 4-3, with Foley, Victor Chau, and Dotty Aube voting against. That will cut the police overtime budget by approximately $11,000

In other business, the committee revisited the fire inspector position, which is scheduled to be eliminated. Fire Capt. Charles Jarrett, who holds the job, would be demoted to firefighter as a result of the elimination. Meanwhile, Pardue said, the city would hire a new employee, under the code enforcement officer, to do double duty, working for code enforcement and serving as fire inspector.

On April 25, Jarrett was on hand to explain his duties. In a 40-hour week, he said, he roughly estimated he spent 30 of those hours investigating fires, like the April house fire on Central Avenue, and performing home and business inspections.

Pardue defended Jarrett’s position, calling the role of the fire inspector “critical to this city.” In addition, Emery said if the city has to hire someone to function as fire inspector, that the city finds a competent person to fill the role.

“I don’t like tragedies, and I don’t like going to funerals,” he said.

The committee took no action on the item, which means the fire department position will still be eliminated, now that the municipal budget has been approved.