Dalton Voters to Decide Funding for Police Details Account
DALTON, Mass. — The town will be having a special town meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 13, at 7 p.m. at Wahconah Regional High School to vote on adding additional funds to the police detail fund.
The controversial article has been making waves within the community government this past month.
The police detail fund is a revolving account that is currently paid up to $25,000 but is drained when a large number of details happen. It stays drained until it is replenished by payments from the private entities that hire the details.
When the fund is substantially drained, the payment schedule for officers who work details is unpredictable, Police Chief Deanna Strout has said in previous meetings.
Where the issue lies is that the revolving fund is being drained faster than it can be replenished. When the administration of the fund changed to the police chief in November, Strout made it so vendors are required to pay within 15 days.
Most contractors are able to pay within 30 to 35 days, local businesses pay even quicker, Town Tax Collector Melissa Davis said in a previous meeting.
Even with this change, there is still a risk of going into a deficit when there is a high number of police detail work and the fund is drained.
A number of town departments in the area operate in the deficit despite the fact it is not legal. The Snow and Ice budget is the only budget legally permitted to have deficit spending.
It is not legal to deficit spend in the account but the state Department of Revenue only looks at the fund at the end of the fiscal year, or a some number days after, to make sure it is balanced, Town Manager Thomas Hutcheson told the Finance Committee on Wednesday.
If the account is not made whole within 90 days of the end of the fiscal year, the amount of the deficit is removed from the following year's free cash.
If the deficit is consistent year after year there is a possibility the town would have to raise the deficit on its tax recapitulation.
According to DOR, the best practice is to "supplement that account substantially," so that they are not operating in a deficit, Strout said during a previous meeting.
The fund would need a minimum of $20,000 added to the account to not risk operating in a deficit. They would not need more than $25,000 added to the account, she said during a Nov. meeting.
The Select Board in November approved the request of $25,000 to be added to Wednesday's special town meeting warrant.
The Finance Committee last week voted to recommend that the requested amount for the police detail fund be changed to $20,000, rather than $25,000.
The decision narrowly passed with 4-3 with one abstention. Those against the $20,000 amount felt as though the amount was still too much.
The town has been discussing the police detail fund for more than 20 years, Finance Committee Chair William Drosehn said during a previous meeting.
During Wednesday's meeting and previous meetings Drosehn has reiterated that the responsibility of the police detail should not fall on the taxpayers' shoulders.
In many cases these police details are for private contractors, he has said.
There are other towns that have the officers bill the private contractors directly. In some cities, the local police association handles the police details so the city is not involved at all.
Drosehn pointed this out again during Wednesday's meeting where he added that "this is not a taxpayer problem. This is a functional problem with the way the details are mitigated."
If the fund does not have money on the account then the department should not accept another detail until it is replenished, committee members said.
"The number of details that had been done was no longer curtailed as it had been prior to the in the account being turned over to the police," Committee member Thomas Irwin said.
"And so they're using a kind of 'if there's a detail we're going to take it' kind of an attitude or so it seems."
Irwin went on to demonstrate that since this administration change, the amount of payroll charges have "escalated."
If the department needs to take a detail job when the account is drained they should communicate that with government officials and seek approval, he said.
"I also think she's liberalized the ability to to take on details. That's why there's been this escalation in the deficit ... I think our first duty is if there's a detail that needs to be done in Dalton, absolutely we should shoulder that. That's our problem, our business," Irwin said.
Projects that are outside the town should not be done if there isn't any funds in the account, he said.
"My concern here is that we're still sending out details even though we're in deficit and that is concerning to me, because the deeper we go into deficit, the more likely we are to foist this problem upon the taxpayers," Drosehn said.
There isn't a risk to taxpayers, Strout has said. She has said in the past that town has "never not been squared off after the fiscal year within 30 days."
Operating in this manner will impede companies' ability to complete work, Strout has said. The town gets 10 percent of the detail.
The payment to police officers working a detail is in addition to their regular wages.
The 10 percent that the town gets back is not nearly enough to make up for the cost of maintaining the program, Drosehn said in a follow up.
Not paying officers on the pay period that they worked the detail causes moral and retention issues, Strout has said.
These remarks were echoed by Finance Committee member Kira Smith last week, who added "it's a huge attraction to the profession. I mean, it's why they're able to retire a lot of times. This is a benefit that they can put into the thing."
"I know, multiple state police, local police, all of that, and it's something that they count on in a way as an extra thing."
Another thing the town needs to consider is that Dalton's department has not had the greatest reputation over the years for hiring outside, Smith said.
"I know the reputation of the Dalton Police Department and something that Chief Strout is trying to do is to rebuild that. So, these are things that she's trying to take into account when it comes to how she's doing it."
Tags: deficit, special town meeting,
