{"id":2309,"date":"2016-06-07T01:10:22","date_gmt":"2016-06-07T05:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/?p=2309"},"modified":"2016-06-07T01:10:22","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T05:10:22","slug":"summer-off-to-a-busy-start-for-lavallette-police-ot-cost-rises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/2016\/06\/summer-off-to-a-busy-start-for-lavallette-police-ot-cost-rises\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Off to a Busy Start for Lavallette Police, OT Cost Rises"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lavallette<\/a>

Lavallette Police (Photo: Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

The first two weekends of the unofficial summer season have been busy for borough police officers, officials said at a meeting of the borough council Monday night.<\/p>\n

During Memorial Day weekend, police responded to 152 calls for service, performed 69 traffic stops, issued 43 traffic summonses and responded to two motor vehicle accidents. Police also made one drunk driving arrest, during which an officer was assaulted, said Councilwoman\u00a0Joanne Filippone, who chairs the council\u2019s public safety committee.<\/p>\n

There were also two borough ordinance violations \u2013 one for lewdness on the beach and another for trespassing on the dunes.<\/p>\n

The activity has also caused police overtime to rise, especially on the dispatching desk, where 217 hours were logged last month. The borough employs three dispatchers, but one has been out of work due to a recovery from a surgical procedure, necessitating more overtime than normal. Making matters more expensive, police officers themselves have had to man the desk at a much higher hourly salary than the dispatching staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dispatchers, collectively, are on the lower end of our pay scale,\u201d said\u00a0Filippone.<\/p>\n

The borough has gone back and forth on hiring a fourth dispatcher, however despite the affordable salary, a dispatcher\u2019s benefits package would make a full-time hire more expensive than relying on normal overtime shifts. A family health plan is worth about $33,000, said\u00a0Filippone, with the majority of the premium being paid by the borough.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been working on three dispatchers for three or four years, at least,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Borough Administrator Robert O. Bennett said he is beginning to study the issue in order to come up with a long-term recommendation for the council. The recommendation could be to continue on the status quo, hire a dispatcher, or experiment with part-time dispatchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had trouble keeping the part-timers because they make approximately $9 and change per hour, and it\u2019s a mdinight shift,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard getting people for those hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first two weekends of the unofficial summer season have been busy for borough police officers, officials said at a meeting of the borough council Monday night. During Memorial Day weekend, police responded to 152 calls for service, performed 69 traffic stops, issued 43 traffic summonses and responded to two motor vehicle accidents. Police also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18,2,8],"tags":[29,566],"class_list":["post-2309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-lavallette","category-police-fire-courts","tag-lavallette-nj-news","tag-police-overtime"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/lavallette_police.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgsn9q-Bf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}