Auburn Police Department Detective Bill Gleason began working 4 p.m. to midnight in recent weeks.

He moved to the evening shift in a program the APD is piloting to use its staff more efficiently. Before the start of the program, all six APD detectives worked 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. For cases that broke outside of the normal workday, detectives took turns being on standby from 4 p.m. to midnight and midnight to 8 a.m. They were paid for one hour's work - on average $26 an hour - for every eight hours they were on call and got time and a half when they were called in.

The standby model is still in place for the overnight shift, but Gleason's new shift is one of the efficiency measures the APD's top two administrators say they have implemented to do their part in reducing the city's projected deficit.

Police Chief Gary Giannotta and Deputy Chief Thomas Murphy said in an interview last week there is not much more fat to be squeezed from their department's budget. With city councilors scouring the budget for any way to trim a projected 9-percent tax increase, they worry that any more cuts will impact their ability to fulfill the department's duty of public safety.

The 2006-2007 proposed departmental budget of $5.189 million Giannotta presented in December to city manager John Salomone came in close to $26,000 under the APD's 2005-2006 budget of $5.214 million. The proposed budget would have been 3 percent higher if everything requested in the 2005-2006 fiscal year was requested again, Giannotta said. The department also absorbed the 3-percent contractual raise for the Auburn Police Department Local Union 195.

“We absorbed the raise and cut money also, but it wasn't enough,” Giannotta said.

The switch of a detective to the night shift was reflective of the department's efforts to streamline its command structure, Giannotta and Murphy said. Below the police chief and the deputy police chief are three captains, two lieutenants, eight sergeants and the 53 rank-and-file officers.

The department has dropped from five patrol captains to three in the last four years. A captain is no longer in charge of the traffic work, which is now handled by a patrol officer. Responsibilities that were once handled by higher-ranking officers have been delegated to lower-ranking officers in both the detective and identification bureaus and the patrol division.

“It's just a different way to look at how we staff and how we do business,” Murphy said.

Elbow grease is also part of how the department makes up for its cut in resources. A few weeks ago Giannotta was screwing in file folders to the wall in the department's records office when it was changing its cabinet setup. Staff members have scheduled a weeding day when they will all take turns weeding the flower beds and lawn areas outside of the station.

“Quite honestly if something needs to be done, we do it. It's just something we've absorbed over the years,” Giannotta said.

Giannotta said he understands that the stretched-thin tax base in the city is not ready to pay for more police officers. He could use six more alone to investigate drug activities at an estimated 20 hours. In strapped economic times, he knows he won't get more officers but he also doesn't want to lose more.

The call level has tripled in the last 10 years, he said, to more than 20,000, and activities like writing tickets and aiding stranded motorists that don't require official incident reports have also increased.

But the size of the department hasn't. Several senior positions were eliminated through attrition. The department stopped services like providing funeral escorts for every funeral in the city, unlocking the doors to vehicles and guarding bank officials from one branch to another.

If more officers were cut, it wouldn't just be the ornamental services that would be cut. Giannotta said his department would no longer investigate minor motor vehicle accidents and response time would climb up from eight to 15 minutes for noncritical incidents, Giannotta said.

“In the bigger cities, they don't send a police officer unless a crime was committed,” Giannotta said. “I don't' believe we should do that in Auburn.”

“I think that's true,” Salomone said. “That was one of my themes. I was never saying that these weren't without impact. None of these could be absorbed without people knowing they were cut. The city generally has reached the point that to make a lot of further reductions will impact the service level.”

The department's single biggest worry appears to have passed after the Auburn Enlarged City School District agreed to pay for most of the costs of the school resource officers the APD has present in schools around the city. The school budget was approved by voters this past week.

The budget Salomone presented to city council, which is currently under debate, includes cutting the six officers with the intention to negotiate with the school district over paying for the officers, the city manager said. The budget contains a 9-percent tax increase and 26.5 full-time city government layoffs, including the six SROs.

The council hasn't officially voted yet but most indicated that with the school district covering the SRO program, they would vote to keep in the budget the $290,000 to pay the six officers. Two more vacant patrol officer positions also are not funded in the current budget. A probationary officer makes $34,591 and a new, non-probation officer starts at $37,794.

Mayor Tim Lattimore said that while he and the other council members value public safety, it would not be fair to have public safety escape the burn of cuts that other departments face.

“We can't just have a strong public safety situation so all of sudden we're not picking up the trash because we've decimated our finances,” Lattimore said.

While the bigger picture is being looked at by council, Giannotta, like most of the city's department heads, are aware of the city's limited resources, but that has not meant skipping out on the necessaries, Salomone said.

Officers have their bullet-proof vests. The city has made a dramatic investment in computers for both the North Street police station and the departments' 12 marked cars and 12 unmarked cars, up from two computers when Giannotta started as chief 10 years ago.

Giannotta's proposed budget does cut $16,000 out of the $70,000 his department usually spends on radios and laptop computers. The department will also only buy the equipment of three marked cars and equipment when it usually tries to buy five to six police vehicles each year. A clerk's position that paid $36,600 was eliminated in the budget. A laborer position that paid a similar salary also was eliminated.

Lattimore is kicking around an idea proposed several years ago by his father, former Auburn Mayor Paul Lattimore, to have a public safety commissioner running both the police and fire departments. He also thinks that other management positions within the fire and police departments should be examined.

“We're going to do everything we can to change the structure of the management team so it forces more soldiers than chiefs,” Lattimore said.

Giannotta said he thinks it would be a “logistical nightmare” to have one person run both departments and noted that a city charter change would be required to change to a public safety commissioner model because a police chief is written into the charter.

Salomone said with the impending retirement of Auburn Fire Chief Michael Quill, an opportunity is provided to look at different ways of running the two public safety agencies in the city, but he does think it may be challenging to combine management of two agencies that have developed their own cultures over the generations.

“I'm looking at it with an open mind,” Salomone said.

Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net