Town Meeting Boosts Stoughton Police and Fire Staffing Levels

Town Meeting members gave a of both the Stoughton and Departments Wednesday evening, May 9 at the second session of .

The second session tackled 29 of 44 budget items, including Police and Fire.

After a lengthy discussion, Town Meeting approved the Police Department's budget for FY2013, which is just north of $4.8 million ($4,863,783), approximately $250,000 more than the department received in FY12.

Included in the FY13 police budget: funding for three additional patrolmen, two resource officers and a deputy police chief.

The article to establish the position of deputy police chief was .

However, Town Meeting member Dr. Roberta Camacho, who was a vocal opponent of having a deputy police chief, made a motion Wednesday night during the budget vote to zero out the salary for deputy police chief from a prorated amount of $63,900.

The motion failed 88-16.

Following the meeting, , who is attending a conference in San Antonio, told Stoughton Patch that he plans to use the two added resource officers in the schools.

There is currently a juvenile detective at the schools - not a resource officer.

The SPD had also requested a third resource officer, which would have been a housing/senior citizen liaison officer, but a third resource officer position was not funded in the proposed FY13 budget and no alternate motion was made Wednesday night to add the position to the budget.

Town Meeting also voted to restore three positions to the Stoughton Fire Department which had been lost due to budget cuts over the last decade.

Town Meeting approved the Fire budget of approximately $3.6 million ($3,617,307), which is an increase of about $99,000 from FY12, without discussion.

Following the vote, said that the three restored firefighter positions will allow him to have 12 firefighters per shift, instead of only nine.

It will allow for a cutback in overtime costs, but more importantly, it will allow the SFD to staff its second ambulance on a more consistent basis, which would lead to a decrease for mutual aid calls for out of town ambulances, Dolloff said.

Town Meeting is set to resume Monday, May 14 at 7:30 p.m. for session #3, where votes on the budget will continue.