As Seymour police officers and firefighters have planned for retirement in recent years, they have spent their latter days taking paid time off work due to built-in vacation.

While that’s well-earned, it results in both departments being short-staffed while the officer or firefighter replacing them goes through training.

That’s why the leaders of both departments recently presented city officials with a proposal to alleviate that situation: Creating a probationary position.

“This would allow us, with the approval of the board of works, to be able to hire somebody a little bit early, but it wouldn’t add to our staffing levels,” Seymour Police Department Chief Greg O’Brien told the Seymour City Council during a recent meeting.

O’Brien said he has seven officers per shift and the fire department has 14 firefighters per shift, so when somebody retires, they are short one.

“That tends to lead to some overtime issues that we have, so this would kind of eliminate that need for that,” he said. “I know the police department side, it takes us six months to get somebody on the street — three months of police academy and three months on the job. Fire department has a little bit shorter time, but they still have a lot of training that they’ve got to go through.”

He said state law says anyone hired as a full-time officer or firefighter is probationary for one year.

“We’re not even looking for that much,” O’Brien said. “We’re just looking for a couple months so we can get somebody hired so when that person goes on terminal leave, they can fill in that slot.”

In total, the police department has 45 officers, and the fire department has 43 firefighters.

“We can’t go over that number, so this probationary officer would allow us to hire that person earlier and not violate the salary ordinance,” O’Brien said.

To get this accomplished, the council needs to approve an amendment to the salary ordinance and an additional appropriation for the police and fire probationary personnel. The latter would move $30,000 into the salary for the probationary police officer and $30,000 into the salary for the probationary firefighter.

Both ordinances, which were introduced by Councilman Jerry Hackney, chairman of the finance committee, passed 7-0 on the first reading during the April 10 council meeting. A public hearing will precede the second and final readings during the next meeting at 7 p.m. April 24.

Mayor Matt Nicholson also asked O’Brien about a fourth school resource officer position, and O’Brien said he met with Seymour Community School Corp. officials about that.

“They are going to hire a fourth SRO for the city schools to take care of the elementary schools only, and then they actually said in two more years, they are going to have a fifth SRO to split the elementary schools up,” O’Brien said.

He said he will be asking for an additional appropriation to increase the patrol status from 29 to 30 because the department is only budgeted for 29.

“Currently, I budget for the (SRO’s) salary, Medicare, all that, plus a vehicle, equipment,” O’Brien said. “The school pays 42 weeks of what that salary is. The city basically eats 10 weeks of a salary.”

He said SROs don’t take vacation during the school year except when the school corporation has breaks, and they lead a youth camp and attend training during the summer.

“They may work a week or two before they are back to school,” O’Brien said. “School starts in August, so they are only off in the summer for eight weeks. By the time we get them to a couple trainings, they do their camp, we don’t see much of them.”