Health Insurance

The City provides each full-time

police officer with health and dental
insurance at a cost of about $918 per
month / per employee.
With ten full-time police officers, that
is a yearly expense of $110,160.00.
The new budget allocates only
$70,000 for police officer health
insurance, a $40,000 shortfall.
Officer Staleys health insurance
through December 31, 2015 adds
another $5,508 to this budget deficit.

Small Equipment
According to a Clerk-Treasurer
report, the City spent $27,811.58 for
police equipment between July 1 and
September 30. Then, in November,
the City Budget Ordinance was
enacted allocating only $2,000 for
this purpose.

The City was already over-budget by

$25,000 in that category before the
City Council even voted.

Police Uniforms
The new City budget allocates
$12,800 to police uniforms for the
year. By September 30th, the City
had already spent $11,431 for
uniforms.

Repairs and Maintenance

Three months into the new fiscal
year, the City has already spent
$7736 of its $10,000 budget for
repairs and maintenance.

Off Budget Spending

There are at least three different
categories of City spending,
amounting to $7681.06, in three
months, that are not part of the
budget at all:
Other expenses
Police discretionary
Uncategorized

$2,951.39
$100.00
$5,630.67

Total

$7,681.06

West Buechels new budget

understates actual Police Department
costs by at least 20%. The
Depatment will run out of money
before the end of April.
Tom Fox | 3712 St. Francis Ave. | 502-442-8308 | tomwfox@gmail.com

The Buechel

BYPASS
November 16, 2015

Issue number 1

City Budget: DOA

Part One
City of West Buechel
Police Department Budget
July 1, 2015 - June 30, 2016
Mayor Richards introduced his
City budget proposal in June, and
the City Council finally approved
a modified Budget Ordinance at
the Councils November 10 regular
meeting.
Mayor Richards used exactly the
same budget format he inherited
from former Mayor Fowler, including
all its flaws.
The City budget is divided into
five basic expense groups,
Administration, Police, Public Works,
Community Center and Capital
Outlay.
West Buechels Police Department is
the largest expense group of the five,
and that is where we begin.
The following is the allocation of City
funds for the West Buechel Police

Department, as approved by the City

Council on November 10.
Salaries
$570,000.00
Office Supplies
$3,000.00
Dues
$300.00
Health Insurance
$70,000.00
Retirement - CERS
$130,000.00
Uniforms
$12,800.00
Small Equipment
$2,000.00
Training
$3,250.00
Gasoline
$40,000.00
Repairs & Maintenance $10,000.00
Investigation
$0.00
Discretionary
$0.00
TOTAL

$841,350.00
-oOo-

Base Salaries
The West Buechel Police Dept. has
ten full time employees who work
five 8-hour shifts per week, and
two part-time employees who work

two 8-hour shifts per week each.

All employees are sworn police
officers with arrest powers.
An employees annual base salary
(no overtime) is computed by
multiplying their respective hourly
pay rate X regular weekly work
schedule X 52 weeks in a year.
This is the base annual pay for the
ten full-time (40 hours per week)
police officers, and Officer Staley:
Cammack
Clark
Fortwengler
Lakins
Madison
Mitchell
Sharp
Sherrard
Sievert
Staley ***
Thomas

$48,505.60
$43,680.00
$43,680.00
$48,505.60
$45,760.00
$47,091.20
$62,816.00
$52,208.00
$52,208.00
$18,189.60
$56,368.00

*** Laura Staley is on paid leave

through the end of 2015.
This is the base annual pay for the
two part-time (16 hours per week)
police officers:
Brown
Hairgrove

$17,472.00
$17,472.00

The total annual base pay for all

Police Department employees is

$553,956.

Employer Tax Contributions

Everyone knows about payroll
deductions for Social Security and
Medicare taxes that are withheld from
the employees pay. The employer
also pays an equal amount on top of
the employees contribution.
Each employee pays 6.2% of their
gross pay to Social Security and
1.42% to Medicare. These automatic
deductions are shown on the
employees pay stub and annual W-2
form.
The employer pays the same amount
to Social Security and Medicare, but
these employer contributions are
invisible to the employees.
In addition, the employer pays
Federal or State unemployment
taxes, which is about 0.6% of gross
pay.
These added Social Security,
Medicare and Federal Unemployment
Tax Act (FUTA) employer
contributions are well known
additional cost of payroll. These extra
costs add another $44,040 to the
police officers base pay, for a total
annual payroll cost of $599,491.18.
That is $29,491.18 more than the
amount budgeted for police payroll.

Monster Pay Raise

Effective July 1, Mayor Richards gave
each full-time West Buechel Police
Officer a $10,400 annual pay raise.
This is a flat $5.00 per hour rate
increase.
Part-time Police Officers got a $4 per
hour pay rate boost.
The reason for this change is not
clear. The added expense was
implemented without the knowledge
or consent of the West Buechel City
Council.

No Overtime Pay
The law requires employers to pay
extra to non-exempt employees for
any hours worked in excess of 40
hours per week. Overtime pay is
150% or the regular hourly pay rate.
Increasing the hourly base pay by
150% also increased the Employer
Tax Contributions by 150%.
Since annual employee base pay
plus employer tax contribution are
already projected to exceed budgeted
payroll amounts, there is no room in
this new City budget for any police
overtime.

Retirement Costs (CERS)

(CERS
In recent months the City of West
Buechel decided to move its police

officers from a non-hazardous

retirement contribution classification
to hazardous duty contributions. The
budget impact of this decision was
to roughly double the cost of police
retirement payments to the Kentucky
Retirement System.
The required contribution are a
percentage of an employees gross
pay, and the contribution rate
changes from one year to the next.
For fiscal year 2015-2016, the
contribution rate is 32.95% of gross
pay, but part-time employees (less
than 100 hours per month) do not
receive this retirement benefit.
For the ten full-time employees,
the annual required retirement
contribution will be $171,014.45.
Any overtime pay this year will cause
this amount to grow.
Also, the City must make additional
retirement contributions to make
up for failures of the Fowler
administration in the past. One City
official recently estimated the City
owed an additional $20,000 to the
Kentucky Retirement System.
Between the base pay retirement
contributions (not including any
overtime pay) and the retirement
underpayments from the past, the
City is looking at paying a minimum
of $185,020.98 this year.
The new budget allocates only
$130,000 to retirement payments.
This is at least $61,014.45 short of
what is actually needed.