Point Pleasant Beach Police Department Cuts Budget, Averts Layoffs

Three Point Pleasant Beach police officers will keep their jobs, now that the police department has cut its budget request by $60,000.

The Point Pleasant Beach Council on Tuesday night accepted a combination of police department budget cuts and police union concessions that produced enough of a savings to avoid the need to possibly lay off three officers.

Mayor Vincent Barrella said Police Chief Kevin O'Hara is asking for $465,000 instead of his original budget request of $525,000.

He said he did not know if O'Hara would have been willing to make the budget cut of about $60,000 if he wasn't facing possible layoffs.

The request is part of a proposed municipal budget of about $11.6 million that council introduced on Tuesday night.

The budget also calls for other employees, outside the police department, to take 17 unpaid furlough days.

At the Feb. 15 meeting, four council members, Michael Corbally, Frank Rizzo, Sean Hennessy and Jeffrey Dyer, voted to authorize the borough to alert the state that it may lay off three police officers.

Officers Kyle Boturla, Paschal Drew and Scott Nase would lose their jobs if the borough laid off three officers because they have the least seniority.

O'Hara, who spoke out against layoffs right after the February meeting, said last night that the council had moved towards possible layoffs without talking to him first.

"I was in total shock at the last meeting," O'Hara said. "No one had come to me to ask for a lower budget."

He said he ran into a similar scenario with Rizzo on an unrelated matter he brought up at the meeting last night.

"For some reason, they don't want to talk," O'Hara said, adding that it's frustrating for him to sit at council meetings and hear council members raise issues related to the police department for the first time without talking to him first.

"I just don't understand that," O'Hara said.

He said that he had originally requested $365,000 to hire special police officers, $40,000 for parking enforcement and $120,000 for projected overtime costs. Those costs amount to $525,000.

"The $60,000 came from that lump sum," he said. "It's not coming from overtime because if our officers work overtime, they have to be paid."

On Wednesday, O'Hara said "We will have more special officers' shifts in 2011 than we had in 2010 but, not as many as we had originally budgeted for. This cut in the budget still leaves the department with more shift coverage than last year which should amount to an increase in violations being issued."

On Tuesday night, O'Hara had said his reduced budget means the department will buy less supplies and equipment, compared to what they could have purchased under his original budget request.

O'Hara had also said on Tuesday night that when the staffing levels of special police officers drops, so does revenue. That's because fewer special police officers means fewer parking tickets and summonses, which means less revenue to the Municipal Court and, ultimately, to the borough.

For example, he said, pulling out some figures from his files, there was a decrease of about 3,285 tickets from 2009 to 2010.

"That's a direct result of us having a lower staffing level," he said.

The PBA concessions also include: no salary increases for this year; a one-year delay in scheduled step and longevity increases; elimination of officer-in-charge pay, which is paid to officers when they have to serve as shift supervisors, and elimination of tuition reimbursement except for "previous contractual obligations."

Local PBA President Marc Distelcamp said on Wednesday that the PBA concessions are worth about $140,000 which, when combined with the chief's department budget cuts of about $60,000, equals about $200,000.

Distelcamp said his estimate of $140,000 is only regarding the latest package of concessions.

"Around the middle of last year, we changed health plans, which saved the town about $600,000," he said. "We don't have dental or optical included. Most people don't know that. We also had three guys retire last year who weren't replaced."

At the Tuesday night meeting, Corbally said the police department had come up with "about $200,000 worth of cuts."