Carbon prison makes dent in overtime costs

It appears changes Carbon County officials have made to the staffing at the prison are helping rein in the once ballooning overtime costs.

On Wednesday, Warden Timothy Fritz told the county prison board that from the beginning of the year until July, monthly overtime hours for full-time corrections officers has decreased significantly.

He said that in January, overtime hours totaled 1,375.75. That number decreased steadily to 1,238.5 for February; 1,184.75 for March; 1,035 for April; and 454.25 for May.

It rose slightly in June to 648 hours but is on a steady course so far in July at 321.25.

“I think getting us up to the full staff and adding the extra officers is helping,” Fritz said.

There are 43 full-time corrections officers and with personnel actions this month, approximately 15 part-time officers staffing the correctional facility 24 hours-a-day, seven days a week.

“Hopefully it will drop more,” he said.

Part-timers hours are increasing a bit, Fritz added, noting that the number of hours part-timers work will increase as the number of overtime hours for full-time corrections officers decreases.

The issue of overtime came to a head in 2015, when the overtime pay at the prison jumped to $346,000.

In 2016, there were 37 full-time corrections officers and 17 part-time corrections officers manning the prison and overall, Carbon paid out $301,607.17 in overtime.

The county then asked the state Department of Corrections to come in and complete a staffing analysis and make recommendations on ways to cut down on overtime and mandated hours.

As a result, in 2018, Carbon hired additional full-time corrections officers to increase the number to 43.

In other prison matters, the new security camera installation project should be completed by the end of the week.

It was expected to be finished already, but a server that was ordered as part of the upgrade was bad and needed to be reordered.

The new cameras provide better surveillance inside the prison.