Council greenlights bonuses for all WM workers

Council greenlights bonuses for all WM workers

Municipal employees get end- of- year boost

news@theeveningtimes.com

Bonuses all around for West Memphis city workers. City Council rang up bonuses with each established employee netting the greater of $1,000 or 3 percent. Last year the department representatives on the personnel committee asked that bonuses be ready by Thanksgiving to cash in on the holiday weekend door buster sales. But this year City Council waited to move during the final meeting of the year.

Employee clamor arouse in time for a representative from the Street Department, Frank Paige, and from the electrical department, Carlos Chambers, to voice general pay grievances at the meeting in front of many city workers on hand for the hearing.

The mayor allowed the pair to say their piece before the bonus was twice amended on the floor and approved in a split roll call vote.

The bonus finally passed 8-1, with Budget Committee Chairman Tray Catt the lone naysayer. Councilwoman Ramona Taylor was absent.

Catt was for the bonus before he was against it. The Chairman sponsored the bonus and walked into the City Council meeting to ask for it to be passed, but flipped his stance after a surprise amendment.

The year-end bonuses offered to employees each year since 2012 came with the stipulation that the worker completed one year of service. In the pre-council meeting the mayor asked for half a bonus ($500) for employees with less than one year of service. Catt raised discussion about excluding those in the probationary period and it appeared a consensus had been reached on that provision as Council went to the floor. Then it all changed.

Councilor Lorraine Robinson alluded to Jesus’ parable of the workers in the vineyard from Matthew 20 and declared, “I think we should all be paid the same, regardless of how long we’ve worked here. It’s the teaching of Jesus, that’s what we should do.”

Putting it in the form of a motion she called for $1,000 bonus for all workers with less than a year in addition to the traditional bonus.

City Treasurer Frank Martin was absent from the meeting. After Council adjourned Catt estimated handing out a grand to new workers could balloon the whole bonus expense to $470,000. He said he wasn’t sure, because no one had bothered to consider the math on Robinson’s spontaneous amendment.

“I’m trying to get ahold of the City Treasurer right now,” said Catt. “I voted against it simply because it had not been looked at by the budget committee. No one knows for sure how much it will cost.”

Treasurer Frank Martin ran the math and confirmed the amount the next day at $428,000.

“That includes social security withholdings and all,” said Martin.

“The city has mostly very good workers, in fact some are very dedicated and you have to call a good number of them excellent at what they do. They deserve the bonus but right now we don’t know the cost. But (not knowing how much) is why I voted the way I did.”

Catt thought the department that benefited the most from waiving the probationary period and the one year of service stipulation would be the Police Department which swore in seven new academy graduates last month. He indicated the fount of the financial blessing would flow from, “adequate cash reserves.”

Mayor Johnson told the employees on hand that the City Treasurer had promised the bonus checks would be distributed before Christmas.

Applauds from the gallery and shouts of glad tidings and Merry Christmas were bandied about between some City Councilors and city workers before the mayor returned to the agenda.

By John Rech