Finance director says $20,664 covers police overtime costs

Moscow received its first payment from Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil contract hauler Mammoet.

The payment reimburses the city for its costs for staffing police officers to handle crowd control since the oil company began transporting overlegal shipments of refinery equipment through the city in July.

The $20,664 payment covers costs from mid-July to November 1, said Don Palmer, finance director. The city is drafting an invoice for November costs now and will send monthly invoices in the future.

The city sent its first reimbursement request to Mammoet in October.

“I was kind of happy to see it,” said Palmer. The city did not anticipate so much police overtime when it was drafting its 2011 budget. “We’re offsetting our overtime budget. Otherwise it would go over budget.”

Moscow Police Chief David Duke said overtime for officers associated with the Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil shipments has been handled as a special line item in the budget since the beginning, as is typical when an outside agency covers those costs. An example would be the Idaho Transportation Department’s reimbursement to police departments for impaired-driver emphasis patrols, he said.

The Latah County Sheriff’s Office began sending invoices in late October for overtime costs.

“We haven’t received anything yet, but that doesn’t surprise me since we applied about three weeks after the city did,” Sheriff Wayne Rausch said.

Because of Thursday’s snow, Mammoet canceled the movement of two shipments from Lewiston through Moscow on Thursday night, along with another shipment parked north of the city since December 6. Imperial shipments have been suspended through the holidays, with the next possible shipment to occur mid-January, according to Duke.

(By Brandon Macz, Moscow-Pullman Daily News)