By DAN TOMASELLO
LYNNFIELD — The Police Department is looking to hire a full-time investigator in the next fiscal year, Chief Nick Secatore told the Select Board last week.
Secatore is requesting a $3,607,644 operating budget for fiscal year 2024, which represents a 3.4 percent increase over FY23’s $3,490,249 spending plan.
“The needs for the Police Department are centered around staffing,” said Secatore. “The Police Department currently has 22 positions. When I had last spoken to the board, those positions were filled. But as soon as those positions were filled, we had somebody leave and somebody retired. We have 20 officers at the moment and we have one in the academy, so we will have approximately 21 in six months.”
Secatore has budgeted $2,563,776 for police officer salaries in FY24, which is 9.3 percent higher than the $2,345,349 allocated in FY23. He said a supervisor and three patrolmen work each shift.
“Every shift where somebody is off is filled with overtime,” said Secatore. “We are currently filling 10 shifts a week with overtime. Being reliant on overtime strains our budget. I am asking for a 23rd position, which would be an investigative position. We have no redundancy anywhere else. We have no extra officers to draw from when people leave.”
Secatore requested an investigator position last year, but the staffing request was not funded. He said adding the 23rd officer would give the Police Department flexibility if any shift needs to be covered.
“We have a particular need during the summertime,” said Secatore. “We know that we are going to have to fill 10 shifts a week this summer. If we have two officers on vacation, that is 20 shifts a week. That is sustained for a large portion of the summer. We don’t want to continue doing that. We want to make sure the officers don’t exhaust themselves all summer long.”
Secatore said adding the investigator would reduce overtime costs.
Select Board Chairman Phil Crawford asked about the status of filling the two vacant positions.
Secatore said the police officer enrolled in the academy will be graduating in five-and-a-half months.
“We are still working to fill the 22nd officer through Civil Service,” said Secatore. “We had people lined up at the door waiting to be hired for many years. We had a shortlist of applicants that applied. We are vetting those applicants. We are being selective because we want to hire the right people. Hiring qualified applicants is hard. We feel we are on the right path, but it takes time.”
In response to a question from Select Board member Dick Dalton, Secatore said the three patrolmen and the supervisor patrol the town during each shift.
Dalton followed up by asking if the proposed new investigator would be patrolling town as well.
Secatore said the new investigator “would not be assigned to the street.”
“They would be assigned to investigations,” said Secatore. “They can work on the street. They are still going to be a police officer, but they would be assigned to investigations.”
“So if that additional officer is assigned as an investigator, that doesn’t help you keep the target then?” a frustrated Dalton asked in response.
Secatore said Dalton was correct.
Select Board member Joe Connell said he understood why Secatore is looking to hire an additional officer.
“You have been doing a great job with what you have,” said Connell.
Secatore said the Police Department’s staffing issues has been “a challenge and a balancing act.”
“We have brought in retirees to help work details,” said Secatore. “We don’t want to compel our officers to work both shifts and details. That goes to a wellness issue. Sometimes they have to do that extra work, and everybody understands that.”
Secatore has also requested to add $50,000 to the Police Department’s overtime budget, totaling $470,000 for FY24. The Police Department originally budgeted $420,000 for overtime in FY23, but the line item was increased to $595,000 after Fall Town Meeting voted to transfer $175,000 into the overtime budget.
“I am looking to narrow the gap between what is always transferred in and what is built into the budget,” said Secatore. “We get into the position of spending a lot of overtime, particularly now where we are down officers. We look for areas in our own budget where we can transfer money. The salaries from the people who are not hired goes first, but a lot of the times we transfer money from our training budget to backfill that. In this day in age, we don’t want to sacrifice training to fill our shifts. With all that has been going on over the last several years and with police certification coming in, we understand that we need training to be at the forefront.”
In response to a question from Crawford, Secatore said the Police Department has “not sacrificed training.”
“There have been times where we haven’t trained 100 percent to our training allocation money wise, but that is not sacrificing training,” said Secatore. “We want to make sure the Lynnfield Police Department’s officers are always trained.”
Capital budget
Secatore also gave an overview of the Police Department’s proposed $245,000 capital budget for FY24.
The Police Department is requesting two new cruisers, totaling $110,000. Secatore said the two new cruisers would replace a 2014 cruiser and a 2016 cruiser.
“The price of vehicles has gone up over $10,000 from 2022 to 2023,” said Secatore. “We used to purchase vehicles off the state bid list for $33,500 or $34,000. They are now $43,000. The price has been raised quite a bit.”
Secatore has also requested $95,000 to fund the second year of the mobile dispatch console project. He recalled that the project was first funded last year.
“We are looking to purchase it, move it to the temporary station and bring it back to the new station,” said Secatore. “This is not something that is going to be purchased and will be going away. It will replace the aging one that we have.”
Secatore has also requested $40,000 for three computers and associated equipment for police cruisers.
“This will enable offsite work and linking offsite computers and the substation at MarketStreet,” said Secatore. “We need to replace the network switches, firewalls and get a couple of standalone PCs to do that.”
