The University recently granted permission to the police department to fill three vacant patrol officer positions despite a school-wide hiring freeze that has been in effect since 2007. According to Craig Hutchinson, vice president of Student and University Life, a committee granted the request to fill the positions because of concerns of safety on campus. "I refer to it as a ‘hiring cooling,’ Hutchinson said. "A hiring freeze intimates that absolutely nobody is hired and that is not the intent of the process, nor was it the intent to completely freeze hiring." Two of the open patrol postions were due to recent resignations. The third was a "holdover position" that Hutchinson said was not filled last year to meet a target for budget cuts. The University also eliminated a detective position and a Training and Development position last year as a result of budget cuts. "We are pretty much at bare-bones in terms of meeting the 24-7 nature of the operation." Hutchinson said. "Any hire at the University for the past year and a half or so has had to go through the exception process," he said. Requests for exception from the hiring freeze must meet one of four requirements by a review committee of two University Vice Presidents and the school’s Chief Financial Officer: the position must be related to health and safety, increase revenue for the school, be a required position to comply with state or federal laws, or must be somehow critical to the mission of the University. The committee determined having a fully-staffed police department qualified as a matter of health and safety. "There is a fair number of personal required to provided police coverage for multicampus, multishift, 365 [days a year] coverage," Hutchinson said. "We do not have the luxury of simply not doing the shift if there is not an officer to cover it," he added. "We do have adequate staffing now," said Lieutenant Kevin Conger of the USM Police. "We’re able to make sure there’s somebody’s working whether it’s through overtime or moving people around or whatever." But overtime can sometimes end up being more costly than just hiring more people. "At some point in time it becomes more expensive than it would be to have that position regularly populated because that person is paid time and a half," Hutchinson said. The police department has positions for seven full-time patrol officers, three sergeant and four lieutenants, which annually cost the university around $1.45 million. The salary of each of new hire is likely to be around $35,000, Hutchinson said. Conger declined to say how many applicants they had, but said the department is currently reviewing "a fair amount" of potential hires. He did not know when the positions would be filled. "It’s kind of a lengthy process. We’re hoping [to fill them] in the near future," he said. he said.
