Long Island’s towns and cities paid their workforce less in 2013 than in 2012, with payrolls totaling $692 million — a 4.7 percent decline from $726.5 million the previous year, a Newsday database shows.

The payrolls reflect an overall cutback in personnel, but eight of the Island’s 15 cities and towns added employees. The biggest staff reduction was in Oyster Bay, where retirements and a drop in part-time workers shrank the workforce. The biggest increase was in Long Beach.

Police officers in the two cities — Glen Cove and Long Beach — and East End towns with their own forces were among the highest-paid workers. Overtime compensation for police officers often made up a big part of their pay. Among town and city police chiefs and commissioners, the highest paid was Long Beach’s Michael Tangney with $315,797, which includes a partial retirement payout. East Hampton’s Michael Sarlo, who replaced Edward Ecker Jr. at the end of 2013, had the lowest at $156,520.The combination of state property tax cap, stagnant sales taxes and declining state aid has forced municipal officials statewide to reduce head counts, said Peter Baynes, executive director of the New York Conference of Mayors.

“These reductions have been in all sectors — both nonuniformed and uniformed” and have averaged about 1 percent per year since 2008, Baynes said in an email.

New York State Department of Labor numbers show a long-term trend of shrinking local government employees, almost entirely through attrition, said E.J. McMahon, president of the Albany-based Empire Center for Public Policy Inc., a conservative think tank.

“Local government is a people business,” McMahon said. “The price of their people keeps going up and so the way they hold down expenses is to reduce head count through attrition.”

The challenge for municipalities has been to attract talent with competitive pay packages and balance the need of keeping property taxes down.

The average pay for city and town workers dropped 2.2 percent to $34,178 last year from $34,956 in 2012, Newsday’s database shows.

That includes full-time, part-time and seasonal workers whose pay drag down the average.

Southold had the highest average pay at $53,050 last year. Babylon had the lowest at $20,648.

Snow cleanup was an added cost factor for many municipalities in 2013 after a February nor’easter dumped more than 30 inches on some parts of Long Island. The lingering impact of 2012’s superstorm Sandy also could be felt as some municipalities had increased overtime or hired more workers in 2013.

Brookhaven, in particular, felt post-Sandy overtime costs. It has a large, active landfill that other towns used for storm debris. Almost 11 percent of its salary expenditures in 2013 went to overtime.

Long Beach had the highest proportion of its salary going to overtime expenses — more than 12 percent — and Hempstead and East Hampton had the lowest at 2 percent. Some of those overtime costs won’t be fully borne by local taxpayers because they were, or will be, reimbursed with federal disaster funds.

The top executives in Long Island’s towns and cities had varied salaries, with Huntington Supervisor Frank P. Petrone coming in as the highest paid at $163,665 in 2013. Islip Supervisor Tom Croci was the lowest paid executive, making $72,144 because he did not accept pay for the portion of the year he was stationed in Afghanistan.

© 2014 Newsday