A push to hire more police officers has left Denver’s police force temporarily overstaffed while the fire department is filling vacant positions with overtime.
The upshot means the city will have to dip into reserves to pay overtime for firefighters and to pay the salaries extra police officers on the force to keep the budget balanced at the close of this year.
A committee of the Denver City Council on Wednesday forwarded on to the full council the supplemental budget requests. The city had expected between 80 to 85 police officers to retire this year. Instead, between 45 to 50 have retired.
With a new class of 65 recruits hitting the streets this month, that left the city with about 65 more police officer than the 1,447 it had budgeted at the beginning of the year.
Mel Thompson, the city’s deputy safety manager, said as officers continue to retire the overstaffing will disappear.
Still, the city will have to dip into reserves by $2.5 million to pay for the overstaffing for this year, Thompson said.
Meanwhile, at the fire department, overtime will cost the city $2.6 million, half of which will go toward overtime to keep fire stations staffed at their required strength. The rest of that overtime will be reimbursed by other jurisdictions, such as California which asked Denver to help fight fires that attracted national attention this year.
Thompson said that next year the city plans to hire more fire fighters to avoid similar overtime problems.
It’s been a tough year for the city’s reserve fund. Typically, the city spends about $8.4 million of its reserves. This year the city expects to exhaust its full $16.7 million emergency reserve fund to pay for unexpected costs, including snow removal costs and increased street maintenance related to the Holiday Eve blizzards.
The city’s budget for 2008 will restore the reserve fund, however.
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
