Town Concerned After OT 'Skyrockets' After Solving Deficit

Just one week after ending a fiscal year that had North Hampton officials worried they'd run a deficit due to overspending, the town has once again found itself funding overtime at a fiscally unsustainable rate.

North Hampton Town Administrator Paul Apple told selectmen this week that fiscal year 2013 did end in June in the black after measures were taken to curb overtime overspending, although he followed that good news with something that is "of significant concern" to him "on a number of different levels."

"I am somewhat pained... to report that in the first week of fiscal year 2014, overtime in the [North Hampton] Fire Department has skyrocketed to 220 hours," Apple told selectmen.

The need for that much overtime was largely driven by the fact the department, like other town departments, sees a number of vacation requests come through in July and August. This forces the department to authorize overtime to fill shifts, according to Apple.

Two-hundred-twenty hours is a "significant" increase over usual overtime spending, though, and is something that will be watched "very carefully" due to the issues North Hampton just avoided with overtime spending, according to Apple.

The North Hampton Police Department also used 28.5 hours of overtime last week in the first week of FY'14. Apple said the departments, along with the town's Highway Department, will have to comply with a monthly overtime "burn rate" limit in order to avoid cuts or cost-saving measures.

Apple said the fire department's monthly overtime allotment is about $13,000 a month, which equates to approximately 400 to 420 hours, while the police department's is $7,500 a month. Being that the fire department has already expended half their total in one week, Apple said special attention must be paid in order to come in under budget for the month, and this is precisely why he said department heads are being asked to budget their totals each month within a certain number that doesn't change based on the month or the anticipated activity in the area during that time.

"Our thought was we needed to continue to impress upon our department heads the need to watch in times of plenty [i.e., months of the year that historically have little need for overtime] so that when winter comes we have a little bit more to fall back on," said Apple.

The highway department's monthly overtime burn rate wasn't immediately available.

Apple said FY'14 will "be another tight year," which he said is the reason they need to continue strong efforts to control spending. Selectmen agreed, calling for Apple to compile more data and graphs of historical and current spending for their next meeting on July 22.

Selectman Larry Miller fully supported Apple's and town officials' approach to the issue, as he said the town "can't predict" when it will need to use overtime. The anticipated $25,000-to-$35,000 FY'13 surplus was almost wiped out by a large mutual aid fire at the end of June.

"We should really run on a monthly basis," he said. "We could be sitting here in a year saying, 'Phew, we barely made it again.'"