6.6 Personnel Budget

To illustrate the preparation of a personnel budget for a police department (PD), assume that you are responsible for the budget construction of Hoosier PD (see Hoosier Police Department video ). Given the population size of the district, you need nine patrol cars at any given time. Patrols are 24 hours per day and 365 days per year. For safety reasons, each patrol requires two officers per car. Those officers work eight hour shifts per day on five days per week. All officers receive three weeks of vacation and and sick leave (i.e., two weeks of vacation and one week of sick leave). The salary per police officer is $61,200 with 30$ fringe benefits. The estimation of the personnel budget requires four steps:

  1. Calculation of personnel hours needed: 24 hours per day \(\times\) 365 days per year \(\times\) 2 officers per car \(\times\) 9 patrols = 157,680 hours
  2. Calculation of provided hours per officer: One officer works 49 weeks (52 minus three weeks) and eight hours per day. Given that the officer works for five days per week, the number provided is 49 weeks \(\times\) 5 days per week \(\times\) 8 hours per day = 1,960 hours
  3. Required number of full-time officers: 157,680 divided by 1,960 = 80.45. Hence, the budget needs to be done of 81 police officers. Given that the service level is required and no overtime is assumed, the number of police officers is rounded up.
  4. Salary and fringe benefit costs: Given the salary of $61,200, the fringe benefits are an additional $18,360. Hence the total budget is 81 \(\times\) $79,560 = $6,444,360.