The $300,000 in overtime pay spent by the Mandeville Police Department each year is giving the City Council fits.

August is budget time, and for the five members of the Mandeville City Council it means long budget discussion meetings meticulously dissecting each item in each category before adopting the next year’s budget.

This year, the council stumbled over the exorbitant overtime expense budgeted for the police department, one of the overall costliest, yet needed expenditures of the city. Salaries for the department totaled $2,172,500 last year with a projected $2,267,000 for the next fiscal year. The estimated overtime pay for last year and this year is $300,000, but at the close of the 2008 fiscal year, the city ultimately paid an estimated $370,000, or 17 percent of the total salary, to the department for overtime pay, Finance Director Milton Stiebing said. That worries the council because the department will likely exceed its budgeted amount again next year.

Upon request, Chief Tom Buell recently provided council members a breakdown of the overtime hours.

According to Buell, school activities like football and baseball games consume 1,165.75 hours, and special events like parades and festivals require 1,635.25 hours, but the costliest category concerns holiday pay, which may only use 742.50 hours but costs the city nearly $150,000, half of the overall overtime pay.

Although the PD only recognizes 14 holidays per year, Buell said about two years ago the department adopted a new holiday payment policy that provides the 22 patrol officers and eight dispatch personnel double time and a half their next day of work following a holiday.

For instance, he said, if Christmas falls on a day the officer is scheduled off, when the officer returns to work a day or two later, he or she would be paid their regular salary plus time and a half.

This compares to city employees who get a regular payday when they are off on a holiday.

Buell said patrolmen and dispatchers aren’t paid for getting off holidays, and that’s why they have the system they do. As confusing as it sounds, Buell said about 14 other police departments in Louisiana utilize the same system.

But Mayor Pro Tem Trilby Lenfant said the overtime pay might need re-working when compared to sister city’s Covington and Slidell.

Covington’s overtime pay was only $80,000 last year, or about 6.15 percent of its total $1.3 million salary. The Slidell overtime pay of $500,000, or 14 percent of its $3.5 million salary, was higher than Covington’s but still short percentage wise of Mandeville’s, whose estimated 15,000-person population is half of Slidell’s estimated 30,000.

“I think that probably warrants a further study,” Lenfant said. “I think the council will want to review it in more detail and possibly find ways to reduce it.”

Buell said the budgeted overtime pay has been at $300,000 the last few years, and he doesn’t understand why the council is taking issue with it this year.

Buell said hiring more officers would help reduce some of the overtime, but after his request for additional funds for more officers was turned down last year, he decided against asking again.

“Two more officers would definitely help in a lot of ways,” he said. But with the hiring of more officers, more salaries and benefits have to be paid, and Buell thinks by paying more in overtime, the city is actually saving money.

Buell said the department currently has a 94 percent retention rate. The council will likely discuss the budget at tomorrow’s council meeting.