(Atlantic, Iowa) – Citing issues related to Police staffing, especially on the day shift, Atlantic City Administrator John Lund is expected to request the City Council, Wednesday afternoon, pass a Resolution “Adjusting Overtime Pay for Sergeants and Assistant Police Chief for the Period of Feb. 16, 2023 through March 17, 2023. Lund says “The Atlantic Police Department has undergone an extended period of staffing difficulties, with the day shift having been particularly impacted.”

“Our Police Chief, Assistant Police Chief, Sergeants and Officers,” Lund says, “have had to cancel vacations, cut short scheduled vacations, and add 12-hours shifts on scheduled days off, after having worked three 12-hour shifts in a row, in order to maintain our minimum level of coverage of two officers on the streets, per shift.” John Lund says normally, the City offers traditional compensation time at 1 1/2 times the regular hourly rate for all hours worked outside their scheduled hours or on a scheduled day off, or all hours in excess of 104 in a seventeen day period. “However,” he said, “This compensatory time is functionally useless, as officers are not even getting their scheduled days off, or pre-planned vacactions.” He says “Taking random days off using compensatory time is off the table.”

Lund says along with the Mayor, he and Police Chief Devin Hogue have moved to address the issue, decisively mitigate the situation and bolster morale, and to prevent the further erosion of staffing levels, by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Union for the officers (AFSCME). “The MOU” he says, “allows for a period of double pay to replace the traditional time and a half Overtime in the form of compensatory time, for the period of Feb. 16, 2023 through March 17, 2023, for those officers working the day shift of 6-a.m. to 6-p.m.” And, while the MOU addresses the day shift union officers, it does not address the Sergeants and Assistant Police Chief that work outside of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

“The resolution will see to it our non-union supervisors are offered the same benefits that the unionized officers receive,” Lund said. He noted also, that Chief Hogue has been taking on a lot of the shifts, “including a 15-day work marathon with zero financial benefit and no compensatory time.” Lund adds, “I will continue to work with [the] Mayor on how we can rectify this situation.” And, while traditionally, resolutions such as the one proposed would typically go through the Personnel and Finance Committee, Lund says “There are legal and personnel issues involved that are inappropriate for discussion in a public meeting.”

The issue, he said, needs to be addressed immediately.