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Politics & Government

Town Promotes 2 Part-Time Officers to Full Time

Chief takes 24-hour Sector Car in Riverside-Flanders area off the road.

Two of the 's part-time officers will fill full-time vacancies in the department, a move that in the future could help lower overtime costs that have this year.

The town board, at its Dec. 13 meeting, unanimously voted to appoint Keith Lawston and Warren Gallaway to the police department as full-time officers at salaries of $51,478 each.

In an analysis of police overtime for the first two weeks of November, there were 21 entries for shift shortages, resulting in a total of 168 hours, said Councilwoman Bridget Fleming at a November town board meeting. Fleming attributed the shift shortages to fewer officers in the department.

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During the early November police department pay period, the overtime payout was $13,000 greater than the same time last year, Comptroller Tamara Wright said at the November meeting.

Lawston replaces Officer Daniel Stuckey, whose resignation was accepted in November. Gallaway will fill one of the vacancies in the police officer-3 positions, Wright said. Police officer-3 salaries range from approximately $80,000 to $88,000, so Gallaway’s $51,478 salary represents a savings for the town, she said.

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With Lawston and Gallaway, the department will have a total of 92 sworn officers, though eight are currently unavailable because of line-of-duty injuries, said town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst’s assistant Jennifer Garvey.

At the Dec. 13 meeting, the board also approved $12,000 in overtime for the final two weeks of November, a figure that is within a few hundred dollars of the amount requested during the same time period last year, Wright said. Councilman Jim Malone abstained from approving the request.

Malone asked why Chief William Wilson was able to stay within the parameters set the prior year in the last two weeks in November, but not in the first two weeks.

Fleming said that it could be because he took a 24-hour sector car in the Flanders-Riverside area off the road. Throne-Holst said he removed the sector car three to four weeks ago, and that first responders in the area have since then told her they often arrive to incidents before police.  

With the $12,000 extra in overtime, the police department has spent $714,986 in the budget line to date, Wright said. The chief anticipates requesting another $50,000 in overtime by the end of the year, but the figure could change depending on whether the region gets hit by a snowstorm, she said.

The 2012 budget allots $650,000 for police overtime, up about $180,000, or 38 percent, from the $439,000 this year. 

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