Mayor Michael Gonnelli and the Secaucus Town Council introduced an ordinance at the council’s May 24 meeting updating police fees for extra-duty service.
Extra-duty employment includes police related employment not performed during regular duty hours. The extra-duty service is conditioned on the actual or potential use of law enforcement powers by a police officer, including but not limited to, traffic details and side jobs paid through the Secaucus Police Department.
Under the proposed ordinance, the current fees for extra-duty employment services provided by the Secaucus Police Department would be kept on file in the Town Clerk’s Office. The fee for extra-duty employment shall be paid by the person or entity requesting the services and an itemized invoice shall be provided by the Department.
The ordinance also allows for the establishment of fees for records and documents. After the meeting, Town Administrator Gary Jeffas described the introduced ordinance in an interview with the Hudson Reporter. Jeffas said was spurred by interactions between the town’s police department and PSE&G.
“When PSE&G does a job, they pay our police back for the time that they spend having their cars on the site and protecting the traffic,” Jeffas said. “So we’re allowed to have an administrative fee. And PSE&G essentially said: ‘If your administrative fee is from an outside company that you’ve hired, we’re not paying that company fee. You can’t pass that through to us, but if your municipal employees do the work, you can pass their administrative fee on.'”
According to Jeffas, Secaucus did not fall under the aforementioned scenario, but wanted to make that clear to PSE&G.
“Our employees do it, and always have,” Jeffas said. “So we’re just passing a resolution to kind of make that clear to PSE&G, that if they’re getting billing from Secaucus, that’s all in house being performed. Because they don’t want an outside agency having exorbitant fees and just people passing it off to them.”
This ordinance, along with two others regarding licenses for both vaping and food establishments, will be up for a public hearing and final passage at the next council meeting on June 28. For more information, go to secaucusnj.gov and click on the link on the calendar webpage.
For updates on this and other stories, check www.hudsonreporter.com and follow us on Twitter @hudson_reporter. Daniel Israel can be reached at disrael@hudsonreporter.com.
