Keeping Tisbury's officers in the town's ranks
By Janet Hefler
Published: October 16, 2008
For several years, Tisbury has struggled to close a revolving door in keeping the police department fully staffed. The town has hired police officer candidates, sent them for police academy training, and paid them while attending, only to lose new officers - some within a matter of months - to other departments on and off Island that consequently reap the rewards of Tisbury's investment.
Town officials and police department personnel agree it is a combination of factors that contribute to the exodus, including the challenges of Island life and the high cost of living, and are seeking a balance in addressing both with wages and benefits.
At a selectmen's meeting on October 7, Tisbury Police Chief John Cashin recommended making conditional offers of employment to police officer applicants Dustin Shaw, who worked with the Oak Bluffs department as a teen, and Joe Ballotte, who joined Tisbury's department as a special officer in 2007. The move to fill an existing vacancy and one left by the resignation of Tisbury police officer Nicholas DiCicco in August brought the department's ongoing staffing issues to the forefront again.
Mr. DiCicco, who worked as a special officer in the summer of 2006, was tapped by Chief Cashin to come back as a special in July 2007, with the approval of the selectmen. In addition, the chief recommended moving Mr. DiCicco into a vacant full-time officer's position after he completed the next available police academy program. The selectmen agreed to pay the cost of his academy training as well.
However, after Mr. DiCicco finished the program, which ran from January through April 2008, he served only about four months as a full-time Tisbury police officer before resigning on August 29 for a job opportunity in Worcester, where he is from.
Chief Cashin's announcement about Mr. DiCicco's resignation at a selectmen's meeting on August 27 did not sit well with the board, particularly Tristan Israel, a selectman of more than 12 years. "I'm very disappointed the individual is leaving," he said. "I hate to keep putting people through the academy and getting burned - but we can't force people to pay us back."
Selectman Denys Wortman suggested the town should be competitive in attracting people who want to serve the town instead of trying to force them to stay.
*The number of full-time sworn personnel in the department has changed little over 27 years, from 10 in September 1981 to 11 in September 2008.
*Of 34 entry-level patrol positions filled with new hires since 1981, 2 were former Tisbury police officers who resigned and were rehired.
In a follow-up phone call, Mr. Israel acknowledged, "It's not just Mr. DiCicco - it's been a chronic problem."
As he recalled, "At some point when we got burned, we went to town counsel a number of years ago and asked if we could make someone pay us back - we were told we could not, and there's the rub."
Town administrator John Bugbee confirmed that town counsel advised that Tisbury has no legal authority to force police officers to repay the town for the cost of attending the academy.
Instead, Mr. Bugbee explained, "The town asks police officer candidates to sign a Memorandum of Understanding [MOU] stating that they agree to repay the town a prorated amount of the cost based on how long they are employed as an officer in Tisbury - if they stay here a year, they pay a certain amount, and so on. We ask for a year and a half of service as the amount of payback time."
As Mr. Wortman observed, "We make an investment in somebody, and we would like to at least get some return on that investment."
Mr. DiCicco did sign an MOU with the town on November 28, 2007. The MOU specified that the reimbursement amount for leaving his job between his first 12 and 26 weeks of employment would be $2,000. Mr. Bugbee said Mr. DiCicco paid half that amount before leaving in August and that he was
confident the remainder would be paid in a matter of months.
"I think he's a nice fellow," Mr. Wortman said in retrospect. "Things change, but if you take on the responsibility for what you said you were going to do, that's admirable."
A matter of investment
Massachusetts General Law requires that police officer candidates be paid at a regular rate of pay while attending the academy. Tisbury, however, extends a conditional offer of employment to police officer candidates, paying them at the rate of a special officer while attending the academy, and at the rate of a step one full-time police officer upon successful completion.
As Mr. Bugbee has pointed out in previous selectmen's meetings, although the police academy fees are $2,500, the total expense to the town can add up to $10,000, including wages, transportation, and housing and meals off Island.
Another option is for towns to endorse special police officer candidates for self-sponsorship to the academy, which means they are responsible for the costs. Since 1993, Tisbury's policy requires a self-sponsor candidate to work as a town employee for two years prior to getting a letter of endorsement.
Since 1981, TPD has sponsored two special officers to attend police academy training at no cost to the town. One remains employed by the department.
Noting that the last two police officers Tisbury lost have gone off Island, Mr. Israel said, "I'm concerned not only about the money we outlaid for the academy, but also that we lose someone who gives a commitment to the town."
The other police officer was Nicholas Monaco, who resigned in August 2007. After Tisbury paid for Mr. Monaco to attend the police academy from September 2006 to February 2007, he worked as a full-time officer about seven months before taking a job in Rutland.
The Martha's Vineyard factor
Chief Cashin said that both Officer Monaco and Officer DiCicco cited Martha's Vineyard's high cost of living as a factor in their decisions to leave. Mr. Bugbee agreed that is a recurrent theme in exit interviews he conducts as the town's personnel manager.
"It's hard to balance paying new hires a salary they can afford to live here on, while not busting the police department's budget," Mr. Bugbee said. "We're in a cycle right now - officer candidates come in thinking they can afford to live on a certain salary, and it turns out they underestimated how expensive it is to live here. They're caught in a bind, and many are choosing to take jobs off Island."
In addition to money being an issue, Chief Cashin said another detriment for the Tisbury Police Department's (TPD) is that its small size limits opportunities for advancement for young police officers. The TPD is authorized 13 officers and currently has 11, counting Chief Cashin, although his job is largely administrative.
Selectman Jeff Kristal advocates recruiting locally, reaching out to candidates familiar with Martha's Vineyard, such as special police officers in other towns who might already be academy-trained and looking for year-round employment.
In talking to Sgt. Robert Fiske, who was hired in 1995, he said that most of the officers he works with came from off Island, as he did. With a focus on an Island pool of candidates, Sgt. Fiske said, "No doubt they will end up dealing with people they know, which can be a downside."
Sgt. Fiske started as a summer hire in 1988 with the TPD doing foot patrols on Main Street and directing traffic at the Steamship Authority Terminal. He suggested targeting young people for recruitment at the high school's job fair and getting teens interested in police work. "We are a graying department," he noted.
Comparing notes
The TPD also faces competition from neighboring towns. The lure of other Island police departments may be linked, in part, to higher wages and better benefits than Tisbury's, a sticking point under scrutiny against the backdrop of stalled contract negotiations between the town and the Tisbury Police Union.
"We heard that same thing, about how much less Tisbury is paid, so I requested copies of contracts from Oak Bluffs and Edgartown to make a comparison," said Tisbury town accountant Suzanne Kennedy, who is involved in the labor negotiations. Since the TPD's contract expired as of June 30, 2007, she based the comparison on fiscal year 2007. Ms. Kennedy did not include the Aquinnah, Chilmark, and West Tisbury police departments because they do not have union contracts.
"What I discovered from doing that exercise is that we are lower in pay than some of the other towns, but also are much higher in some of our compensatory benefits, such as sick time and vacation time," Ms. Kennedy said.
As Ms. Kennedy's pay rate comparison shows, the annual base salary at step 1 for Tisbury patrolmen is $47,794, Oak Bluffs $51,729, and Edgartown $49,378. Oak Bluffs and Edgartown offer a shift differential for officers in charge, which Tisbury does not. The other two towns also pay a higher rate for evening shifts than Tisbury.
In comparing some of the benefits, Tisbury police officers receive more paid vacation time, accruing 12 days up to the first year of service, while Oak Bluffs and Edgartown police receive no paid vacation until after one year of service.
The problem for many of the Tisbury officers, however, is that they have no time to use it. A list of highest paid town employees in the town report lists several police officers, many of them making more than the police chief. However, what the figures don't show is the amount of overtime pay they received above their base salaries for covering vacant shifts that had to be filled.
Overtime is not available to non-union management personnel, which explains a lack of interest in a lieutenant's position that was approved by the selectmen several years ago.
Education incentives differ among Island police departments, as well. Oak Bluffs accepted the provisions of the Quinn Bill, an incentive program that rewards police officers with extra pay for furthering their law enforcement and criminal justice education, upon certification by the board of higher education.
By accepting the Quinn Bill, Oak Bluffs is reimbursed by the state for half the cost of the education incentives. Although Tisbury and Edgartown did not accept the Quinn Bill, both towns have provisions for education incentives. Edgartown's are higher than Tisbury's.
All three towns offer health insurance plans for which employees pay 25 percent of the cost. Tisbury offers $25,000 in life insurance to police officers. Oak Bluffs offers dental insurance, for which the town pays 50 percent.
Regarding maternity/adoption benefits, Tisbury allows 12 weeks off with no pay under the Family Leave Act, Edgartown six weeks at no pay for female officers, and Oak Bluffs four weeks with pay for members of the union.
A major difference among the three towns is that Tisbury requires police officers to be certified as emergency medical technicians (EMT's), which is optional in Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. In the TPD, a $2,500 differential is deducted from a new officer's pay until he or she completes EMT training. Oak Bluffs and Edgartown offer monetary incentives for EMT training, a lump sum of $1,500 in Oak Bluffs and $2,500 in Edgartown.
As Officer Michael Gately, union shop steward, points out, "It's a second career - we have to recertify with 30 hours training over two years, as well as with a Department of Transportation requirement for driving the emergency vehicles, which requires another 24-hours of training."
Where things stand
Contract negotiations between the Tisbury Police Union and the town began in November 2007. Mr. Bugbee said there was some delay in negotiations after the contract expired because the police department was in the process of leaving one union and forming its own, the Tisbury Police Union.
The police department formerly belonged to the same union as Tisbury's department of public works, although the two were in different locals, Mr. Bugbee said. According to Officer Gately, the Tisbury Police Union, which includes sergeants and patrolmen, plans to affiliate later with a national police union. "It makes it easier for the town to negotiate one contract, although we haven't been successful yet," he said.
In a phone call last Friday Mr. Bugbee said a mediator from the state's Joint Labor Management Committee is working with both sides. "Hopefully over the next couple of weeks, we'll be able to work towards a solution/agreement that both sides are comfortable with," Mr. Bugbee said. "It's been a long process; it's not easy. But each side continues to work at it, and hopefully we'll come at this with an open mind, and we'll work on the remaining issues so we can get an agreement and put this behind us."
Being more than a year into the new three-year contract period, Mr. Bugbee said he realizes it won't be long before the town and the TPU will be negotiating again. "But we understand where each side is coming from a lot better than we did going into it, and a lot of the work that would be put into a new contract is being hashed out now.
