by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
According to William Wilkerson of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s continuous improvement division, the JSO spent $1 million in fiscal year 2008-09 on overtime for officers who had been subpoenaed to either give depositions or testify in court.
“In 2008, there were over 8,700 overtime instances,” said Wilkerson.
Those subpoenas are issued by the State Attorney’s Office, the Public Defender’s Office and private attorneys. The overtime is a result of those officers being subpoenaed to testify on a day off. Wednesday, Wilkerson went in front of the City’s Information Technology Steering Committee to propose a possible solution.
Wilkerson said the best way to avoid paying the overtime is to subpoena officers to testify while they are on duty. The problem is, the SAO, the PD and other attorneys don’t know when officers are scheduled to work. Wilkerson said the City can either purchase a software system that keeps track of which officers are working when or the IT Department can integrate software into its Employee Information System (EIS).
“There would be real-time savings and no more hand delivery of subpoenas,” said Wilkerson, who’s also an inspection sergeant for JSO. “The lack of accountability is an atrocity. A subpoena is time-sensitive. If the officer does not get it in time, it puts the officer in a precarious position and the courts in a precarious position.”
Wilkerson also said it’s the citizen who’s relying on the court system who also suffers because trails are often delayed.
“That’s a common occurrence and it’s not the officer’s fault,” he said. “We are too big and there are too many square miles.
“This would help JSO, the State Attorney’s Office, the Public Defender’s Office and mostly help the citizens of Jacksonville.”
To purchase such a system that tracks when officers are on duty would cost about $250,000, said Wilkerson. The cost to add such a system to the City’s EIS hasn’t been determined and that’s where the IT Steering Committee goes to work.
Kevin Holzendorf, chief of the IT Department, said his department would evaluate Wilkerson’s request and determine the next best course of action. He said it would likely be a couple of months before he came back to the Steering Committee — which unanimously approved moving the project from concept to research — with a suggested course of action. Whether such a system would save money doesn’t appear up for debate. How it is bought or implemented must be thoroughly vetted.
“We will go out and evaluate the system and get prices and then see if it can be done internally,” said Holzendorf. “Two meetings from now, we will vote on the money side or the reallocation of resources, then implement the plan.”
Holzendorf created the committee about two years ago, shortly after he joined the City’s IT Department.
“This was one of the first things I set up,” said Holzendorf.
The committee consists of the City’s department heads and a representative of the City’s five Constitutional Officers and the meetings are often attended by division chiefs. The Steering Committee doesn’t technically have to abide by the State’s Sunshine Laws, but Holzendorf notices the meetings and believes that if IT is talking about ways it plans to spend taxpayer dollars, then the monthly meetings should be open to all.
“I think the biggest impact is we have come up with enterprise-wide (the City as a whole) solutions,” said Holzendorf, whose department created a computer-based system that allows each department head — some have resisted and still use paper — to track, monitor and submit payroll hours.
“The group is all voluntary and because it’s a partnership, everyone has a voice,” he said. “From a business perspective, it’s an opportunity for us to learn what our business owners — the department heads — want.”
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