I have requested all department heads to provide members of the Town Board & myself with an explanation of all overtime used during every payroll period.
Additional cost cutting suggestions are welcome...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Another Paul Feiner initiative to make Greenburgh the most open government in the United States!
Be part of the Dialogue...participate...tell us what's on your mind...!
The views expressed in this blog are the personal views of the participants who post comments on the blog and are not those of the town, town employees or town government. The Supervisors views are his alone.
Contributors
Blog Archive
-
▼
2007
(417)
-
▼
September
(24)
- REQUESTING TOWN BD TO HAVE A FUND BALANCE POLICY
- APPELLATE DIVISION REVERSES DECISION- VILLAGES MAY...
- OVERTIME EXPLANATIONS
- SCHOOL TAXES DUE MONDAY, NOT SUNDAY
- FREEZE ON ALL BUT EMERGENCY PURCHASES
- WANTED: TOWN BD COOPERATION ON BUDGET PREP
- K FUNGS HAS BEEN RE-LEASED ON E HARTSDALE AVE
- WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 24--GREENBURGH DEMOCRACY- PLEASE...
- EARLIER EXPRESS TRAIN NEEDED FROM SCARSDALE TO NYC
- 2008 BUDGET REQUESTS DUE THIS WEEK FROM DEPT HEADS...
- GENERATOR BEING INSTALLED AT TOWN HALL
- CLARIFICATION: VILLAGES & TAXES
- THANK YOU!
- GREENBURGH DEMOCRACY-WEEK OF 9/17 POST YOUR COMMENTS
- FITNESS CENTER OPENS ON E HARTSDALE AVE
- TOWN BD CANCELS ROSH HASHANAH MEETING-ONE COUNCILM...
- WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 10--GREENBURGH DEMOCRACY Please...
- SUNDAYS NY TIMES REPORTS ON GREENBURGH'S LEADERSHI...
- DOG SWIM ON SUNDAY 10 to 2
- NON COMPLIANCE WITH NEW ETHICS LAW DISCLOSURE REQU...
- BARNES & NOBLE STORE TO BE USED AS A HALLOWEEN STO...
- GREENBURGH DEMOCRACY-WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 2 --post y...
- NORTH ELMSFORD FLOOD COMMITTEE
- ASPHALT MILLINGS ON SPRAIN NEAR DOBBS FERRY RD
-
▼
September
(24)
54 comments:
Paul, why don't you knock off the gimmicks. Yor are as much to blame as anyone for the waste in this Town. You have failed to keepup with the Town's infastructure or replace buildings that need to be replaced. Now you are going to save the Town by managing the hour overtime a Town employee earns for performing a necessary service. I hope this is not what the Town has to look foward to over the next two years. and
Thanks Paul for fighting hard to save the taxpayers dollars. Don't listen to the post above. No matter what you do you'll be criticized.
Paul
There's a lot of money to be saved if the residents bag their leaves.
If they need help in doing this job they could get school kids to help.
Most of the leaves are picked curbside on Saturdays that's time and a half.
With the machinery that they use they break the curbs,then the curbs have to be repaired.
Gasoline is expensive to run all that machinery plus the wear and tear.
As far as the building dept. goes they should up the amount for permits,and summones .
Parks and rec. maybe this is the time to think about the swimming pool being opened 7 days.and then look at the gym facility at the school.These two can be looked at a later date.
The next thing is getting rid of Kaminer,this will save money from a salary and benefits.
But you must remember what ever you try to do Sheehan will be against the ideas.He's the one who's salary should be brought down to $1.00
Anonymous 6:23 is 100 percent right. Feiner has wasted money for years in this Town. If he wants to save money, lets start with WestHelp. Place the money were it belongs, in the general fund. Feiner wants to worry about 50 dollars in overtime, yet he wants to give millions away. Unbelievable.
Paul, maybe the Town should have a bake sale and you can run it.
Another Feiner idea!
This is a very thinly disguised attempt to discredit the union.
As his Imperial Majesty Paul (Supervisor for Life) Feiner knows, retirement benefits are based on a union member's average total earnings (INCLUDING OVERTIME) during her/his last years of employment. Rather than allowing union members to earn as much as possible for their retirement, now our beloved "Trust Fund baby" Supervisor wants to reduce or remove overtime and effectively cut union members' retirement pay!
How about shutting down the outrageous amounts paid to the white collar criminals who are elected or appointed! No ex-controller deserves the kind of money being paid to Anne Marie Berg - unless that money is a pay-off for her not blowing the whistle on Feiner's corrupt government!
Get real - let's find an honest candidate and write in her/his name in November - as union members we don't have to just accept this kind of crap!
Stop wasting money on the police patrol of the Hudson River. Makes no sense to me. Also do not cut grass in the parks on overtime. How come during Holiday weeks we can pick up recycles and then every other week we can't ?
Why have a police Paramedic and a police officer drive a patient to the hospital ? hire more civilain medics amd EMT's for half the money and those two officers could patrol edgemont and catch the criminals robbing the houses
( Makes sense (cents) to me!
I love this guy Feiner. He wastes millions on an illegal contract and his idea to fix the Town's budget shortfall is to limit overtime. Paul if you want to eliminate overtime than hire adequate staff. You have failed to hire enough police officers during your tenure and I am sure that you have short staffed other Departments as well. If it was not for the Town Council the Police Department would be at staffing levels of the 19990s
Paul it's nice of you to begin to study spending issues within the Town. I thought you had been doing that for the last sixteen years. I must have been mistaken.
Feiner is all about sound bites. Why didn't Paul lets the voters know the Town was in such a poor financial state, beacause its not.
Paul, why dont you respond to some of these posts? Some of the posts make valid points.
We have more policemen with FEiner as supervisor than we had before.
As far as the other dept.highway has more than enough since most of them are watching the others do work.
Everyone complains when Con edison has workers in the field some working and the others standing arround just looking,and we all make the same comment,about how high our bills are,since we are paying for half a crew that is working.
The same goes for the highway dept.
Most of the work that the Highway dept.does has to be done over and over again,why.
It seems that nothing is done right the first time arround.
What is needed a new commisioner that has hands on with all the work that has to be done.
The supervisors are just a lazy as some of the workers.
Check this out and some money can be saved .
From what I understand the highway dept. does not want the residents to bag the leaves,since it will kill their overtime.
This should be looked into.
Dear Lobbyist at 1:03,
Why don't we assign even more overtime to Union workers as they near their retirement? That would be a great way to run the Town.
It should be a priority of taxpayers to see that Union staff earn more overtime so that they will have an even more enriched retirement and can be able to even pay more dues to the Union while they are working.
Of course Mr. Sheehan is pro-Union so I have no doubt that he agrees with you. Let's ask him if he favors this idea.
Francis?
No one is against the unions,but why can't they work their regular hours and not demand overtime.
They seem to slow down during the day and then ask for overtime.
Francis Sheehan, Steve Bass, Eddie Mae Barnes, Diana Juettner have been on a spending spree---spending like there is no tomorrow. Now, the bills are due.
A posting like this, Mr. Feiner, as well as the one about the spending freeze, makes you appear ineffective as a manager. These were not wise blog topics for you from a strategic PR standpoint.
That said, however, anything you can do to get the Highway Department to function properly would be appreciated. Perhaps start with a directive to 1) audit each job's functions and 2) assess overall operations management.
in the town of rye, the superintendent of highways is an elected position - makes that position directly answerable to the voters.
I agree with DND. Feiner is in charge. If there are problems with spending, budgets and overtime, it is because he is an ineffective manager. I also agree with the other bloggers, you are worrying about overtime yet you are willing to give away 1.5 million dollars of taxpayer money to school district and one fire district within the Town. To me that makes no sense. As for the Town having more police under Feiner, that is true, but not because of Paul. He opposssed hiring more police officers. It was the Town Council that pushed for more police officers.
correction: Feiner supported hiring additional police. The Town Board increased the numbers even more.
BS the town council had a say after the proposal by the supervisor to hire more policemen or policewomen.
Here too you are trying to discredit the supervisor.
Yes we do have more personel in that department,but where are they.
People are still missing an important point. Paul is worried about overtime, yet he wants to give 1.5 million away. I'm confused. It is not accurate about Paul increasing the police staffing. He cut staffing levels when he came into office. It has been the Town Council who have consistently increased the amount of police men on the force. How does Paul plan to staff the fitness center at Woodlands or the Community Center on Sunday without increasing staffing or paying overtime. This guy will say anything or do anything that he believes will benefit him politically
Anonymous 8:57 sounds like a guy who never worked for a living.
To 2;41 your points will never be addressed on this blog.
3:10
I was a union member for 30 years.
I worked my butt off during the workday and never asked for overtime.
I gave my employers the best that I could offer and was compensated with a great pension.
Sorry that you thought that I never had a job,and to boot a union position .
The Town Council got carried away with spending. They liked their power. They didn't act in a responsible manner. The voters woke up on 9/18, primary day.
Paul, why do you bother to make post? You started a new post today and you have not responded to one post on this subject. It is truely unbelievable that the best your opposition could come up with was Berger
The Town Council did not get carried away with spending. Feiner would remove many legitimate requests that were made by Department heads so he could lower the tax rate. The Council then had to add back in Feiner's cuts. The cuts made were not frills. These cuts would have impacted on services. Feiner has played a shell game with the budget for years. The Council restored services such as police and recreation not Feiner
The council thinks they can add, add, add and never have a tax increase. duh- if you keep spending taxes won't go down. send the council to the Greenville School in Edgemont for math 101.
Let me see if I have this correct.
The Supervisor asked to review the use of overtime by Town Departments.
According to posters, this is a bad thing.
Samis your sarcasm is getting stale. It is good that Mr. Feiner will be reviewing overtime, and presumably discussing it with the other members of the Town Board. What is less praiseworthy is that one might think that up until now, because he is neither a CPA nor an accountant, and because it requires just 3 votes to change things, he hasn't given a damn.
Dear half-baked,
Your job is to withhold praise; Feiner's job is to run the Town. You are invited to run against him in two years and be perfect.
Overtime is a fact of life. There are occasions when it is necessary and economically justifiable. Like most things with repeated use, it tends in time to become a reflex prescriptive rather than something used in extraordinary circumstances. As the bill for overtime creeps up, it becomes reasonable at some point to take a closer look. So, perhaps, it is not because Feiner "doesn't give a damn" but because it did not trigger alarms from breeching arbitrary threshholds. And, the town's Department heads are the operating line professionals who should be closely monitoring this and alerting the Supervisor whenit gets out of hand -- "Paul, we really should add to the roster because it is costing us much more to rely on overtime for our needs".
Of course most employees would prefer earning overtime to adding more workers which may threaten job security.
Department heads monitoring their own Departments is the way it should happen for all Departments. And overseeing all of the Departments is the job of the Town Comptroller, seeking to uncover unusual patterns. Let me backtrack and add "other than the Police Department". There, no matter how many bodies they add, they still seem to need overtime.
Overtime is a necessary part of police work and yes Hal the police department is understaffed
sez who?
Hal, stick to the library. You have know knowledge about police department operations.
HAl's right,the police dept have more than enough men and women.
But where are they?
Thats a question for the Chief. It seems to me he has mismanaged that department for years.
Hal, the department heads have been requesting additional staff for years - and the Supervisor has repeatedly removed or reduced those requests from his proposed budget.
"Just three votes" is a pretty poor reply to a charge of "just poor management."
did feiner use the westhelp funds to secrectly fund overtime police in mayfair knollwood? feiner said he used the money for "neighborhood purposes."
lets hear from feiner and the chief.
Dear 9:46,
The correct answer is to review the overtime and then determine whether additional manpower vs overtime is the better solution.
Department heads always ask for more bodies. Now it is time to look into the needs more carefully.
Why not actually do a "due diligence" review when the requests are made? Does the political reality of needing to appear that Feiner is keeping taxes down trump the reality of the Town's providing necessary services?
Feiner doesn't have time to conduct due diligence of anything - his fulltime re-election campaign requires every waking moment.
Does the police overtime for the Halloween block party need an explanation?
The police are on overtime during halloween anyway --with or without feiner's new halloween idea. Feiner's proposal wouldn't increase the overtime budget.
If you pull the police off of the Hudson, Tech-Rescue (let the fire dept's do thier job) and the waste bicycle patrol maybe we would have enough police on the road. There are more cops working today then ever before!
How effective is the bike patrols ??
Anonymous 1153 you should get the facts before you post. Both the Marine Patrol and Technical Rescue Unit are part time units made up of officers from various departments not just Greenburgh. The bike patrol has been very effective in reducing crime and increasing police community interaction within the Town.
One Fire Department in the unincorperated area wont respond to medical calls in their District unless they are specifically requested, you think they will take on additional duties?
Is there a bike patrol in Edgemont?
Yes there is. E. Hartsdale Ave/Station Plaza has a police officer who rides a bike.
11:58 you get your facts straight!! there are only Greenburgh police/Fairview,Greenville Firefighters on tech-rescue no other Police depts. It's a waste of police resources to have them training to be firefighters when they should be out on patrol.
12:24 how is a fire dept supposed to respond to medical calls if they are not notified of the call?
you make no sense, plus the police get paid to respond by charging a fee. and that makes no sense(cents) to send two police officers to the hospital when you could send a civilain medic and EMT
instead and keep the cops on the road. how many cops are on the road on a sunday or holiday 6-7
but on a weekday you could have up to 20 or more with all the people inside. ask a patrolman sometime when see one they'll tell you.
Anonymous 11:59 I agree. Technical rescue functions should be handled by the fire service. All EMS calls should be handled by the fire department. The police should be totally out of the ambulance business. Let the fire department do it. As to your point about the fire departments not knowing about the EMS call, Hartsdale does not want to be notified ask them! The other paid fire departments go to EMS calls. I would also bet there are more firemen on the technical rescue team than police officers. The unit is a part time unit that does not effect the patrol staffing of the police department. They are not training to be firefighters Those are the facts.
Civilianize the entire EMS program. It is too labor intensive. EMS calls take away more police manpower than any other service the police department provides. As to giving it to the fire departments, the fire departments are not interested in providing EMS full time. 1:25 is right Hartsdale does not even respond to EMS calls unless they are specifically contacted by the polce department, Fairview and Greenville automaticaly respond after being notified by the police ie they want to be notified.
Paul check out the dead wood in all the departments.
You have many just sitting arround collecting a paycheck and waiting for retirement.
You have many people doing the same thing.where as if the work were consolidated it would be less revenue for salaries and benefits.
You have too many people in the parks department.in this department years ago the workers had to use a shovel,today you have machinery but the same amount of people on the payroll.Why?
The same goes for the DPW.With the latest machinery purchased by this dept.one would think there would be less workers,wrong.Why?
The town should be run like a large co. Studies should be made where duplicate services are taken place if so offer buy outs.
Post a Comment