by Kristina Gabalski
Brockport Police Chief Daniel Varrenti says it’s costing less to run the Department today than it did five years ago.
During his report at the January 22 regular meeting of the Brockport Village Board, Chief Varrenti said there has been a decrease in overtime and a decrease in cost to the community despite the challenges of running the Department with 11 full-time officers (formerly 14) and maintaining two officers on duty at all times.
“Our goal is always to come in within budget,” Chief Varrenti said.
Varrenti reported that in 2008, there were 4,924 overtime hours; in 2012 that number had dropped to 3,390. He said the operating cost of running the Department is $1.155 million, $200,000 less than five years ago.
“I’m proud to produce those numbers to you,” he told the Village Board members.
Chief Varrenti told the Suburban News he is proud of the fiscal accomplishments of the Brockport Police Department.
“I also want to publicly acknowledge that the best of managers are usually only as good as those they manage. In this particular case, the members of the Brockport Police Stetson Club are by far the most generous group of people I have ever worked with. They continue to give to the community they serve without question or hesitation. Additionally, they are the only union in Monroe County, police or otherwise, that has ever taken a two percent decrease in salary to help with the financial situation the village was once in. The union, along with the sergeants and lieutenant, deserve all the credit.”
During the January 22 Village Board meeting, Chief Varrenti noted the Police Department budget is 91 percent salary based, meaning the two percent reduction in pay makes a huge reduction in the overall budget.
Brockport Mayor Connie Castaneda told the Suburban News she was very surprised to hear Chief Varrenti publicly say that overtime has been reduced.
“Chief Varrenti has repeatedly said, ‘The only way to reduce police overtime is by hiring additional full-time officers,’ yet at the Village Board meeting of January 22, he stated, ‘That overtime has been reduced over the past several years’ – so which is it?,” the mayor questioned.
The mayor said she was perplexed that overtime could go down without hiring more full-time paid employees.
She said Chief Varrenti, “… tries to mislead the public … he blatantly refuses to acknowledge the cost is more than the budget … employee benefits cost much more than that.”
“The total cost of the police budget including employee benefits is $1.93 million, which is 80 percent of the property tax levy,” the mayor says. “Almost all of the tax dollars collected go to the Police Department. There has to be a way we can reduce that and no one on the Board or the Chief have really tried to work on that.”
Chief Varrenti says the hiring of additional full-time police officers is the proper way to resolve overtime issues and notes recently published reports regarding exorbitant increases in overtime faced by the Rochester Fire Department due to the shortage of firefighters.
“Part-time police officers are usually offered full-time positions in other municipalities and as such are usually a temporary solution to a long term problem,” Chief Varrenti explains. “This said, the hiring of additional part-time officers, a better coordinated effort with subpoenaing of officers to court and, most importantly, concessions made by the union, have made a huge difference in overtime. We continue to spend overtime money and/or part-time salary money to maintain the status quo. I personally would rather make an investment but, absent that, I’ll always choose spending the least amount of money possible when given the opportunity to do so.”
The police chief says the mayor does not support the Village and/or the Police Department.
“The mayor has and continues to use numbers that fit her own agenda … elimination of the Police Department,” Chief Varrenti says. “The mayor also said the village was going to have an 18 percent tax increase during the dissolution vote and that never occurred. Additionally, she has signed federal forms attesting to cost figures for the Police Department that are very much different than what she publicly says. Let’s face it, if someone doesn’t like seafood, they probably don’t like lobster; if someone doesn’t like meat they probably don’t like filet either.”
