Tapping reserves.
Reducing spending.
Hiring more firefighters and police officers.
Those are some of the measures the City of Newburgh is discussing to plug an expected hole in this year’s $44.6 million budget and then reduce fire and police department overtime that is on pace to fall far short of more than $700,000 in hoped-for cuts, Mayor Torrance Harvey said.
Comptroller Kathryn Mack has already instituted a citywide hiring freeze, and Newburgh has roughly $4.4 million in unrestricted, unassigned general fund reserves.
City officials are also exploring raising police officer salaries and identifying federal and state grants to address manpower shortages that fire and police officials blame for increasing overtime, Harvey said.
At its current rate of overtime spending, Newburgh’s police department will fall far short of the $424,000 in savings called for in this year’s budget. Newburgh’s fire department, which was supposed to save $320,000 in overtime this year, is also projected to fall short of its target.