MORGANTOWN, W.Va. Police in Morgantown want to do more to support the community and special events, but Vice President of the Monongalia and Preston County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #87, Matt Starsick, believes overtime policy changes and poor communication and lack of budget management prevent that from happening.
The cancellation of the June Pride Parade brought the problems to the forefront.
Starsick said having available officers for extra duty is not the issue; instead, on WAJR’s “Talk of the Town,” he said the city has been unwilling to have consistent pay policies for the events. In the recent past, officers have signed up for “guaranteed overtime” assignments that were subsequently denied when timecards were submitted for approval. Despite letters to the Morgantown Human Resources Department and grievances filed by the union against the city, the officers were still denied overtime pay after working the event.
“Unless you work a special event that the city manager’s office has deemed guaranteed overtime,” Starsick said. Which, in our experience, unfortunately is not always the case, even when they say it is guaranteed overtime.”
According to Starsick, money to pay the officers can’t be an issue due to current staffing levels. In fact, he believes there is enough money to match hiring incentives for certified officers in other communities, like the $10,000 hiring bonus in Fairmont, Huntington has a $20,000 hiring bonus, Clarksburg has a $5,000 hiring bonus, and Granville will recognize longevity earned with another department.
But he said Morgantown has no incentive programs.
“The Morgantown Police Department is authorized to have 80 officers, and we have 60 right now,” Starsick said. “That’s well over $1 million we have in our budget that we could use for special overtime details possibly, like I said, officers are willing to work if they get fairly compensated.”
New personnel rules adopted in July 2022, changing the overtime policy, have caused an exodus within the department. New officers are being hired, however the process is quite lengthy when the time for initial qualification, academy training, and field training at the department level is added.
“That’s experience walking out the door that we cannot replace,” Starsick said. “Over 100 years of law enforcement experience have walked out of Morgantown’s doors and either took early retirement or went to other agencies, or both.”
Supporting the community has never been an issue within the department, but the administrative burdens and uncertainty added by the new and changing rules cause some to pause.
“We want to work overtime, we want to help the city,” Starsick said. “It’s just do we want the headache of are we going to get compensated, and that’s a big thing.”
Deputy Mayor Danielle Trumble has expressed a desire to reallocate unspent budget money for the benefit of police, but so far that effort has been met with a chilly reception from her fellow council members.
Trumble, Mayor Jenny Selin, and Third Ward Councilor Louise Michael held a meeting with City Manager Kim Haws during the Municipal League Conference Wednesday in Wheeling. Trumble said they asked Haws to make sure “guaranteed overtime” is in fact “guaranteed” and to continue dialog on what Trumble called some of the more “complex issues” relating to new personnel rules between the police and city.
“We are meeting again next week,” Trumble said. “But I do hope we can come away from the meeting today with some actionable items the city manager will consider putting into place now.”