NORWICH – Rumors have long flown that Chenango County’s public safety employees have been eating meals served in the jail’s kitchen for free, or rather, on the taxpayer’s dime.
Chenango County Personnel Committee Chairman Wayne Outwater, R-Lincklaen, who has presided over the committee for many of his 16 years as supervisor, said recently that he had heard such rumors, too, but didn’t know whether or not they were true.
A couple of anonymous letters to The Evening Sun this winter asked us to investigate whether free meals were being served to employees, and if so, how often and how much money might be saved if the practice were discontinued. Because the county’s elected officials are looking for savings under every crevice within departments and programs in order to combat rising pension and health care costs, we thought we’d take a look.
The rumors are true. But it’s not only Chenango County’s taxpayers who are paying for free lunches – or dinners or breakfasts, as the case may be, depending upon a person’s shift. When the new Public Safety Facility opened on Upper Ravine Road in the Town of Norwich four years ago, it absorbed the Area Agency On Aging’s former kitchen facility and inherited a valuable funding stream for nutritional services from the New York State Office for the Aging.
Therefore, based on details from county’s agency for seniors and the Sheriff’s Office, state and county taxpayer dollars are on track to be tapped this year for about $33,000 to feed the corrections officers, sheriff’s deputies, emergency management services and dispatcher personnel and medical, kitchen and maintenance staff who make up the 114 employed at the Public Safety Facility.
Counts from Chenango County Sheriff Ernest Cutting and a Public Safety Facility employee speaking on condition of anonymity reported that between 40 and 50 percent of the 81 employees working three shifts around the clock, 365 days a year, eat at least one daily meal at the jail for free.
The source said it might not be the same employees eating cafeteria food all of the time, and that others bring their own meals.
According to Sheriff Cutting, back more than 25 years ago, employees of the former sheriff’s office and jail on Court Street in the City of Norwich were given a stipend for meals because, he said, they weren’t authorized to leave the premises during their shifts. The stipend was actually part of a labor union contract at the time.
Cutting said the county eventually renegotiated paying the stipend in order to cut costs, however. And later, when former Sheriff Thomas J. Loughren was elected in 1991, employees began eating meals from the jail’s cafeteria.
“He (Loughren) thought they were underpaid, and found that people were leaving to get meals,” Cutting remembered. “He allowed staff to make a sandwich in the cafeteria, nothing fancy. It wasn’t a negotiated thing.”
Today, Cutting said there were a total of 35 people on day shift, 30 on evening shift and 16 over night. Only those on patrol are permitted to leave the facility. Corrections and law enforcement officers work three, 8 1/4 hour shifts. (The extra 15 minutes is at the start of each shift when officers receive their assignments.) The other two employee groups (all four are represented by different collective bargaining units), the Civil Service Office and medical staff, work 8 hour shifts.
“Some may or may not eat what the kitchen serves. But other than road patrol, they cannot leave the facility during their shift,” he said. The kitchen is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Based on a $2.72 cost per meal estimate, which is obviously already heavily subisidized, it cost taxpayers approximately $90 a day or $32,850 last year to feed employees. The per-meal rate includes the price of paper products and labor as well as food.
But the number of meals served to employees could be greater, especially because the meal numbers aren’t categorized into the three populations. In addition, the senior lunch count in Cutting’s 2010 annual report differs from the number Chenango County Area Agency on Aging Director Deb Sanderson told members of a committee of supervisors. Her count of the lunches made and delivered from the jail for the “Meals on Wheels” program was 82,910, or about 3,600 fewer than the Sheriff reported. The miscalculation muddies the water regarding just exactly how many public safety employees eat for free.
Another discrepancy is found when comparing the total number of meals, about 200,000, according to Cutting, served from the Upper Ravine Road institution’s kitchen in 2010 and the number projected this year. Conversations with the Sheriff in early April confirmed there were three meals being served per day currently to approximately 120 inmates, lunches to 250 senior citizens (the actual number per day varies due to number of sites open, numbers of hot & frozen home delivered meals, fluctuation in number of clients, etc.) and between 30 to 36 meals per day (breakfast, lunch and/or dinner) to employees during their shifts.
Added up, that would mean the kitchen is currently on track to serve 8,450 more meals anticipated this year over last.
The numbers become even more confusing when looking back to 2008 when Sanderson’s department was managing the kitchen at the new Public Safety Facility. Sanderson told county lawmakers that 301,600 meals were served to all populations that year. While the number of out-of-county prisoners and seniors receiving meals may have fluctuated, a discrepancy of more than 100,000 meals over a two-year period is more than curious. It may or may not be an indication of the number of meals eaten for free by employees.
Sanderson no longer keeps the total number of meals served, as the kitchen is now under the Sheriff’s control, and she didn’t return phone calls and e-mails to reconfirm the reported 2008 tally once the subject of this article was revealed. During budgeting season every year since the jail opened, Sanderson is always asked whether her department can provide more state revenues to support the cafeteria operation, including utilities and personnel.
Eating at work for free isn’t common, even at other government institutions. A secretary at Valley Ridge Center For Intensive Care said direct care staff might do so when “modeling” behavior for consumers, but otherwise even they and all other employees pay for food in the cafeteria. Employees also pay at Chenango Memorial Hospital and at BOCES.
Apparently, counties have the jurisdiction to set policy over their own jails. New York State Department of Corrections spokeswoman Linda Foglia said the state does not provide meals to anyone on the job either.
The county’s Preston Manor adult residential home does feed workers, however. Department of Social Services Director Bette Osborne said the practice “increases social interaction” with residents.
When asked to comment for this article, Chenango County Board Chairman Richard B. Decker said he wasn’t aware that employees at the Public Safety Facility were eating for free.
“I have no idea. If something is going on, I would assume there’s a good reason for that. I’m not sure that everybody there that works there does that. If some do, they probably do. I’m not aware of how many are doing it, what the cost implications are,” he said.
Chairman Decker, R-N. Norwich, said inmate and jail employee meals wouldn’t be paid for with state funds for senior nutrition programs, however. He said the food was kept separate in the jail’s refrigerators.
Sanderson said Meals on Wheels menus are designed by a staff dietitian, but she didn’t know to what extent they overlap with the jail population’s menu.