City payroll costs grow 25 percent, report says

1,000-plus new workers hired in last four years

The city of Boston has hired more than a thousand new employees in the last four years, driving up personnel costs by 25 percent and drawing criticism from a fiscal watchdog group that warns that the city needs to keep a lid on hiring.

A report released yesterday by the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-funded, nonprofit organization, says that the School Department has added 658 positions since 2004, the Police Department hired 266 employees, and the Fire Department hired 78. The total city workforce is now 17,075.

The additional employees, combined with increases in the cost of health insurance, pensions, raises, and other benefits, meant that the city's personnel spending grew to $1.6 billion, an increase of $312.5 million. Personnel costs now represent 69 percent of the city's total budget.

Boston officials defended the growing payroll as necessary to respond to vital city needs.

They added educational staff to make good on promises made by Mayor Thomas M. Menino to establish more full-day kindergarten programs and an initiative to cut the number of school dropouts. They beefed up the city's police force to counter a rise in violent crime. And they said the Fire Department needed more personnel to cover for firefighters out on sick and injured leave, in order to save on overtime costs.

"The places where you're seeing increases reflect the mayor's priorities," said Lisa Signori, the city's chief of administration and finance.

"The administration understands the importance of managing the level of the city's workforce and continues to make strategic investments that improve the efficiency of operations," she said.

In some ways, the budget analysis reflects a city administration returning to the spending pattern to which it was accustomed before large cuts in state aid in 2003 required Menino to slash his workforce and curb his penchant for new programs.

Since then, his administration and its spending have gradually grown back to earlier levels. Despite the hefty personnel increases, Signori said, the city is still 2 percent, or 356 employees, shy of its 2002 workforce.

Samuel R. Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, said in an interview yesterday that the city should resist the urge to return to 2002 staffing levels.

"Who's to say that was the optimal level?" Tyler said. "That probably was a number that was too high."

The School Department, which added the most to its payroll, added 105 kindergarten and special education teachers, 96 instructional aides, and 98 support staff. The additions were part of Menino's efforts to close an achievement gap in city schools that leaves many poor and minority students struggling to keep up.

In addition, the city added to its School Department payroll some 51 staff members who had previously been funded by grants. The city lost federal grant funding during the past several years because enrollment in city schools dropped by 10 percent since 2002, a decrease school officials chalked up to shifting demographics.

The Police Department added about 180 police officers since 2004 to combat an increase in violent crime, including a homicide toll that reached 75 in 2005, the highest number in a decade.

Violent crime has since dropped by 10 percent, police officials report.

As many as 12 percent of the Fire Department's 1,578 firefighters are out injured or sick on any given day, costing the city millions of dollars in overtime each year for firefighters to fill in those shifts, city officials say.

With hope of saving some of that money, city officials decided to hire more firefighters, increasing the total number of firefighters by 58 since 2004, according to the bureau's analysis.

In addition, Signori said, the city is trying to negotiate changes to the firefighters' contract that would eliminate a provision allowing firefighters who are injured while filling in for their supervisors at a higher pay grade to collect the higher rate of pay while they are out injured.

Also, the city would like to introduce a requirement that firefighters who call in sick provide a doctor's note for each absence beyond 10 sick days a year.

Currently, firefighters who call in sick are not required to provide medical documentation for each absence until they have racked up 15 or more absences within a year.

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.