Cheshire Town Council Reviews Fire, Police, and Building Budgets in Dense Work Session
Town Council · Meeting of March 28, 2018
CT CHESHIRE — Cheshire Town Council hears sweeping public safety budget requests with no votes taken. At the March 28 work session, town officials presented proposals covering the fire, police, and building departments, with the police budget alone proposed to rise $222,903, or 4.06 percent, including $112,358 to fund a 48th and 49th sworn officer. Fire Marshal John Andrews defended a $20,000 part-time inspector line — reduced from a $30,000 ask — saying his office was already below state-mandated inspection compliance and that further cuts would halt required inspections of licensed occupancies.
Police Chief Daniel announced that Officer Jason Piccarillo had been sworn in from Bloomfield and that two academy recruits, Michael Morley and Timothy Bud, would begin training April 6; he argued the 48th position was essential to place an officer on the Statewide Narcotics Task Force and said nine opioid-related deaths occurred in or involving Cheshire residents in 2017. Building Official Pete reported 250 permit requests since February 1 and asked only for a reclassification of an existing electrical inspector to assistant building official, already budgeted, to allow two independent inspection teams. The council asked staff to return with staffing-impact data and deferred all decisions to future sessions.
In the full story:
- The complete report — 1,118 words
Source: the Town Council meeting of March 28, 2018, reported from the official video recording and transcript.
CHESHIRE — March 28, 2018 — The Cheshire Town Council held a wide-ranging budget work session Wednesday, hearing requests from fire, police, and building department officials that together account for more than $300,000 in proposed new spending and raised unresolved questions about volunteer firefighter pay, fire inspection fees, dispatcher staffing, and school security.
The session was largely informational. No formal votes were taken on any of the budget requests presented, which will continue to be deliberated as the town works toward adopting its fiscal year budget.
The Full Story
Town Manager Michael opened the evening by walking council members through the fire department's proposed budget, found on page 103 of the budget book. He identified roughly $10,000 in increased equipment maintenance costs, a $7,500 rise in pension contributions, and a $7,000 recommendation to raise pay-per-call compensation for volunteer firefighters from $5.00 to $5.50 — a rate that has not increased since January 2013. He also noted a $3,000 line for a blight enforcement officer. Stripped of those additions, he said, the salary side of the fire budget would have risen by just over $10,000, or about 2.2 percent.
Fire Chief Jack Adams, Fire Marshal John Andrews, and other department members then walked the council through two decision packages. Andrews defended the $20,000 line for a part-time fire inspector — originally requested at $30,000 and reduced by the town manager — arguing it was the only resource keeping the office near compliance with state-mandated inspection schedules. He described the breadth of the office's obligations: annual and biennial inspections of licensed occupancies, plan reviews, public education programs, school fire drills at eight schools, and daily emergency response. Andrews said his two full-time deputy fire marshals each spend the majority of their work hours on fire department response rather than inspections.
"The majority of the inspections that are required have not been done, and we need to catch up, but we also need to continue." — Fire Marshal John Andrews [no timestamp index supplied]
Andrews also presented a preliminary fee schedule for fire marshal plan reviews and licensing inspections, drawn from comparable towns including Hamden, Orange, and others. The town currently charges nothing for most of those services. The town manager said the concept was worth council consideration but cautioned that processing an estimated 600 additional annual transactions would itself require staffing investment. Council member Paul Bowman questioned whether new inspection fees amounted to additional taxation and raised the possibility of billing insurance companies for highway-accident responses, recovering costs through state legislators, or seeking additional contributions from large institutional users of fire service. No action was taken on any of those ideas.
On the police budget, the town manager reported that the proposed increase of $222,903, or 4.06 percent, included full funding for a 48th and a 49th sworn officer position — together representing $112,358 of the total increase — and a $25,000 boost to the overtime account, bringing budgeted overtime to $400,000. He noted the department spent $449,000 on overtime in fiscal year 2016 and $445,000 in fiscal year 2017, making the proposed figure still $45,000 to $50,000 below recent actual spending. Police Chief Daniel briefed the council on current hiring: Officer Jason Piccarillo, a certified officer recruited from Bloomfield, was sworn in the preceding Friday and would be on independent patrol within weeks. Two academy recruits, Michael Morley and Timothy Bud, were appointed the same day and will begin the 22-week academy on April 6, returning for 12 weeks of field training before going solo around the start of the next calendar year.
"In 2017, we had nine opioid-related deaths, either overdoses that occurred in town or people from town who overdosed in other towns in the state." [no timestamp index supplied] — Police Chief Daniel
The chief argued the 48th position would allow him to assign an officer to the Statewide Narcotics Task Force, a slot the department has not filled since roughly 2014. He said the 49th position was specifically linked to placing a school resource officer at Cheshire High School, a move that drew public support at a recent community meeting following national attention to school security. He cautioned, however, that he was not yet prepared to request the 49th at the start of the fiscal year.
The council had an extended discussion about dispatcher staffing. The chief presented data showing Cheshire has far fewer full-time civilian dispatchers than comparable-sized towns, with one dispatcher often covering an entire shift alone. He described the risk of unanswered non-911 routine lines during busy incidents and said he could not simply hire additional dispatchers without first reopening contract negotiations with the dispatcher's union over their obligation to handle fire dispatch duties — an issue that surfaced during a prior grievance.
Building Official Pete and electrical inspector Conrad closed the evening by presenting the building department's single major budget request: reclassifying the electrical inspector to the title of assistant building official, at a cost already included in the proposed budget. Pete said the department had received approximately 250 permit requests since launching online permitting on February 1, including 11 new single-family homes, a 50,000-square-foot medical office building on Route 10, and several pending demolitions and commercial alterations. He said the reclassification would allow two inspection teams to operate independently, freeing him to stay in the office to process permits and certificates of occupancy rather than losing ground whenever his assistant was unavailable.
"At a time when we're trying to do everything we can to really create an incentive for economic development and grand list growth, the last thing we want to do is give lousy service in the first office that they're going to visit." [no timestamp index supplied] — Building Official Pete
Why It Matters
Cheshire's fire department is operating below state-mandated inspection compliance levels, with a part-time inspector line funded at $20,000 against an original request of $30,000. The council heard testimony that any further reduction would effectively suspend mandated inspections of licensed occupancies. At the same time, a volunteer recruitment crisis — call pay frozen at $5.00 since 2013, an aging demographic base, and changing work patterns — is reducing daytime fire response capacity. On the police side, the council must decide whether to fund a 48th officer before the July 6 academy start date and whether a 49th officer and a school resource officer at the high school are fiscally achievable in the same budget cycle. Budget deliberations continue, with the next session scheduled for the following evening, March 29, beginning at 7 p.m., preceded by a solid waste committee meeting at 6:30 p.m.
Key Motions & Votes
No formal votes taken at this meeting.
Source
Cheshire's community access TV: Town Council meeting, March 28, 2018