Since this is our first contest, I have no way to gauge what the response will be. But I will share some of the best entries with you in next week's Neighborhood News Flash. Thanks for playing. And remember, you have to be in it to win it. Out With Overtime Managing the City's overtime costs is a constant focus of our weekly CitiStat meetings.
Overtime is no longer an entitlement.
A new mindset has emerged in which overtime is now viewed as a management tool to be used with restraint to achieve discrete objectives and accomplish well-defined goals. Nowhere is there better evidence of this new approach than in our Baltimore City Fire Department. During its last CitiStat session, the Department posted its seventh consecutive period of reduced overtime utilization and fewer personnel callbacks. Since the Department's overtime utilization peaked in late December, the number of overtime hours utilized, and the corresponding number of overtime callbacks generated, have dropped 70.5 and 78.7 percent, respectively. These savings were achieved without putting any of our more than 50 fire suppression companies or 22 front-line medic units out of service.