The Jersey City City Council will consider a contract with a company to administer the city’s off-duty police program and provide on-duty scheduling software, which they were told should help reign in over budgeted overtime.
By Dan Israel/Hudson County View
According to Jersey City Police Department Sgt. Jim Woods, this resolution would award a contract to Extra Duty Solutions for the administration of the police off-duty program.
It would also provide for on-duty scheduling software through the Purchasing Cooperative of America for the department.
“The police department has set out on a mission to ensure that customers of the off-duty program get an organized and accountable and consistent product fro the officers who work at these details,” Woods said.
“In order to do this, we believe that a combination of outside administration and robust scheduling software will provide the quality that we’re looking for. Vendor Extra Duty Solutions is capable of providing both.”
Woods said they will handle the program’s paperwork, financial transactions and collections, as well as the scheduling, compliance, and provide a guaranteed payroll to the JCPD, along with providing a host of other scheduling software for the department to use.
“This will allow us to stop using paper forms and increase accountability and accuracy … utilizing modern software with robust… reporting capabilities,” he added.
“Onboarding Extra Duty Solutions will allow us to move several civilian employees of the police department to areas within the department where they’re desperately needed.”
Consistent with the city’s off-duty ordinance, Extra Duty Solutions will charge an eight percent fee per hour which will come directly from the administrative fees we already collect for users of the program.
The resolution also clarifies that Extra Duty Solutions would provide these services at no direct cost to Jersey City, as fees are levied as an eight percent administration fee on customers using JCPD extra-duty officers.
Following the presentation, Woods fielded some questions from council members including Ward E Councilwoman Eleana Little.
She stated that the previous administration’s overtime police scheduling was frequently exceeding what was budgeted for, something she believed the new administration has put a priority on reigning in.
To that end, she asked Woods if he foresees this helping the Public Safety Department to build a more streamlined scheduling procedure would result in long-term cost savings on overtime, to which he agreed.
“This is a two-part thing: We have the off-duty, which is how the city makes money with off-duty officers at construction sites, and then we have the on-duty,” he began.
“Overtime is not paid for off-duty, that’s a separate ordinance-driven rate. The overtime you speak of is a concern.”
While all overtime scheduling is done on paper, but this contract would solve that by moving everything towards an electronic calendar with “tons of checks and balances,” Woods asserted.
“We avoid abuse, but most importantly, we can also plan ahead because we. A see in real time what’s occurring. So whereas right now, this weekend’s schedule lives in a piece of a paper on someone’s desk.”
The term of the contract would potentially be a one-year agreement retroactive to May 4th, with two, one-year renewal options.
