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Police overtime: majority is mandatory staffing; city updates policies and eyes new timekeeping system
Summary
Police officials told the subcommittee mandatory overtime accounted for 81% of sworn overtime in FY24–25, driven largely by minimum staffing; staff described policy changes, a legacy overtime system replacement and the financial pressures created by higher overtime costs and pension rates.
Phoenix Police Department officials and budget staff briefed the subcommittee on the department’s overtime usage, drivers and budget impact, and described policy and technical changes intended to improve control and forecasting.
Assistant Director Jody Wolf and Deputy Budget Director Aaron Mertz presented a breakdown of sworn overtime for fiscal year 2024–25 and described measures the department has taken to manage overtime. Wolf said mandatory overtime — primarily used to cover minimum staffing gaps, call-outs and holdovers — accounted for 81% of sworn overtime in FY24–25 while discretionary overtime (training, case work, pre-briefs and similar planned activities) accounted for 19%.
The nut graf: city staff described mandatory minimum-staffing needs, an aging legacy overtime-tracking system and new supervisory and policy controls (for example, limits on hours in a 24-hour period and a requirement for at least one regularly scheduled day off each week). Staff also said the city is pursuing an enterprise replacement for its time-and-labor system to improve forecasting and proactive oversight.
Budget staff walked through financial figures presented to the subcommittee. They reported a FY24–25 sworn overtime cost (including fringe) of about $98,600,000, a budgeted overtime amount (including fringe) of about $45,300,000 and the average value of general-fund sworn vacancy savings calculated at about $77,000,000 (based on an average vacant sworn position value of roughly $164,000). Deputy Budget Director Aaron Mertz explained those vacancy savings have been used over prior years to add positions and to subsidize public-safety specialty funds; last year specialty-fund transfers totaled about $19,400,000. Taken together, Mertz said, the uses exceeded vacancy-savings-plus-overtime-budget by roughly $12,000,000 in FY24–25.
Wolf described policy changes implemented after an internal leadership review, including requiring thorough documentation and supervisory review for overtime, prohibiting overlapping overtime requests, restricting total work hours in 24-hour periods and requiring at least one day off per regularly scheduled week. She said the current overtime-tracking system is a legacy, reactive system and that the city has begun procurement for a modern enterprise time-and-labor platform to allow forward-looking forecasting.
The presentation also included pension-cost context: Mertz noted the public-safety pension rate (PSPRS) cited in the briefing was roughly 93% and said rising pension rates and recent class-and-comp pay increases have increased the value of overtime in recent years.
Ending: Staff did not propose immediate ordinance changes; they outlined policy, training and IT steps to improve overtime management and said they will continue to work with the city auditor, budget staff and department leadership to refine forecasting and controls.
