SARATOGA SPRINGS — The city’s public safety department overspent $903,868 this year in what Commissioner of Finance Minita Sanghvi calls a “dramatic increase” in police and fire overtime and comp time pay.

Sanghvi said that she has told Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Coll to get excessive overtime spending under control “from the get-go,” but that he “doesn’t seem to care.”

“We do know that overtime has gone up significantly under Mr. Coll,” Sanghvi wrote in an email to the Times Union on Friday. “Some of it may be contractual. But better planning and management can also help with the high levels of sick leave in public safety. Similarly, we can plan and better use our current police force for special events and city council meetings instead of using overtime.”

Coll, a Democrat who will be sworn in for a second term on Jan. 1 after running unopposed, wrote in an email that the budget was overshot for a few reasons. He said one factor pushing up costs is a fire department memorandum of agreement, signed by former Mayor Ron Kim, that requires minimum staffing of 17 firefighters for every shift.

“At that time, Finance Commissioner Sanghvi expressed concerns about the city’s ability to afford the 17-person minimum staffing level, though she ultimately supported the agreement,” Coll wrote in an email to the Times Union. “Calendar year 2025 marked the first full year in which the 17-person minimum staffing requirement was in effect.”

He also said special events, like the five-day Belmont Stakes Festival, drive increases in police overtime.

“Hours associated with police services at special events have increased from approximately 2,500 hours in 2023 to 5,000 hours in 2025, largely due to the Belmont Festival,” Coll said.

In an Oct. 30 budget workshop, Sanghvi spoke about public safety spending, which makes up 60% of the city’s 2025 budget of $62.6 million. She noted that since 2022, the public safety budget has gone up $4.75 million, from an estimated $31.9 million to $36.7 million, while all other departments, she said, remained flat. Sanghvi also explained that the equivalent of all of the city’s revenue gains ($937,302 in property tax and $3 million in sales tax) made since 2022 went to public safety.  

“We have supported DPS,” Sanghvi said at the workshop. “In fact, if you look at the other departments, they have flatlined. … The bulk of the increases in our revenues have gone straight to DPS in this budget.”

She offered a long list of items that supported public safety, including a radio micro transmitter, ambulances, a third fire station as well as additional staff including 22 firefighters, 13 police officers and three dispatchers. In 2025, Coll hired a records management clerk, an animal control officer and an additional police sergeant.

However, she said overtime and comp time for the department remains a huge issue. Before Coll took office in 2024, she said, public safety department’s overtime was a little over $1 million a year. When he took office, it rose to $1.89 million. As of the end of October, Sanghvi said, overtime and comp time for the department stood at $1.7 million. Yet figures released by the finance department on Friday show overtime for public safety reached $2 million. With comp time calculated in, the total cost of both was $3.23 million. Sanghvi only budgeted $2.32 million.

Figures also show that police overtime totaled $845,639, with comp time totaling $618,077. That comes to about $1.46 million in spending that does not include an additional $50,261 in overtime for dispatch, $8,082 in overtime for the traffic garage and the $31,341 for the city’s Stop DWI program. In 2023, Sanghvi said, the city spent $590,969 in police overtime.

For the Fire Department, finance department figures show that the city has spent $1.07 million in firefighter overtime and $602,536 in comp time. Code enforcement overtime for 2025 was $4,549. In 2023, the city spent $382,205 in overtime for firefighters, Sanghvi said.

In the 2026 budget, Sanghvi cut the overall overtime for public safety to $742,000. 

“We were told if we hire the people, we won’t have overtime,” she said during the workshop. “Then we were told if we train the people, we won’t have overtime. Training is done, shadowing is done. We need to start seeing some of the saving here. … This is unsustainable.”

When asked on Friday about the overtime and comp time, Mayor John Safford said he couldn’t comment as he was in contract talks with both the firefighters’ and police unions and that a comment could jeopardize his efforts. Coll, however, said that he has no control over the contractual costs.

As for special events, Coll said that he “will not support any special event in this city that compromises public safety due to inadequate staffing.” 

It is unclear how much more next year’s Belmont Stakes Festival at Saratoga Race Course will cost the city in police and fire overtime. Since 2024, the number of days the track is open has increased. In the first year of the Belmont Stakes, the track hosted a record 44 days of racing. In 2025, that number increased to 48 days. In 2026, the track will host 51 days of racing.

Coll said Sanghvi, who is leaving City Council at the end of the year to join the Saratoga County Board of Supervisors, knew these overtime costs were coming because “they were presented in full.”

This all comes at the same time Coll is pushing the City Council to approve a new $25 million police station. Safford said estimates are coming in closer to $35 million and that the city is trying to figure out how it will move forward on the station.

“The facility is so bad and should have been addressed years ago,” Safford said. “Something has to be done about the police station.”