Council ponders tying 2022 city bonuses to being vaccinated
With news that less than 50 percent of City of Greencastle employees have been vaccinated against COVID-19, a move to tie their potential bonuses to being vaccinated was suggested at the September City Council meeting at City Hall.
With the city salary ordinance (2021-12) up for first reading, City Clerk-Treasurer Lynda Dunbar announced that salaried city workers would receive a 1.9 percent increase in pay next year, while hourly workers will get a 1.8 percent pay hike for 2022.
In addition, if the ability to pay for annual bonuses is determined by the City Council, fulltime employees could receive up to $1,000 at the end of 2022.
“We’ve been pretty frugal this year,” Dunbar noted, “and also our insurance is much lower than what we thought it was going to be. So we felt we had some extra money we could do bonuses to go along with our consultants (telling us) to give people a little extra because we had a little extra.”
That’s when Councilman Adam Cohen suggested the tie-in with COVID vaccinations.
“I’d like to introduce an idea,” Cohen said. “I’m not making this a motion because I don’t know yet if it’s within the realm of state law.
“But I firmly believe in vaccinations,” the councilor continued. “I believe if you look at the statistics, they keep people out of the hospital. They keep our employees at work, and I’d like to suggest that next month, once we check the legalities of it all, diverting the bonus money to an incentive program for our employees who would be vaccinated by a set date in the future.”
Cohen said other cities have invoked such incentives.
“The stats are pretty clear,” he said, “in terms of avoiding hospitalization. It also has a huge impact economically because if you are vaccinated and you are exposed, you do not quarantine. You’re asked to mask up but you can go to work. But if you are not vaccinated, then you don’t go to work and that can create hardships.”
Other City Council members had comments.
First, Cody Eckert said he wanted to get City Attorney Laurie Hardwick’s input on the matter. She was absent Thursday night.
Meanwhile, Veronica Pejril said she was “generally warm” to the notion.
“The devil is in the details,” Councilman Dave Murray responded. “There’s so much misinformation on this right now. We have city employees who can’t come to work because of it. It’s not fair to the public. It’s not fair to people in City Hall.”
Cohen agreed.
“It’s not fair to fellow employees who get called in,” he added. “It also costs us money if they’re working OT (overtime).”
“Our bench is not deep when it comes to city employees, to use a coaching term,” Pejril interjected.
Council member Stacie Langdon then asked how many city employees have been vaccinated.
Clerk-Treasurer Dunbar said the city’s insurance provider was giving employees $50 to get vaccinated.
The last information received, Dunbar said, indicated the city was not yet at 50 percent.
“So we opened it back up and we increased it by three,” Dunbar said. “We did a hard stop date on July 1 and we were disappointed that we were not at 50 percent, so we opened it back up and got three more employees vaccinated.”
Mayor Bill Dory noted that several emails were sent out, encouraging employees to get vaccinated and giving dates of vaccination clinics in the area.
“We tried everything to try to encourage them,” Dunbar noted.
The mayor said city employees will have to use sick time and vacation time to cover quarantines.
“If you’re laid up for 14 days, that chews through a lot of sick time,” Dory said.
“That chews through a lot of overtime,” Cohen responded, “as we try to cover that shift too.”
No formal motion was made to amend the ordinance to include vaccination mandates for bonuses for city employees.
As written the motion passed unanimously on first reading on a motion from Council President Mark Hammer.
The next regular session of the City Council is set for 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 14 at City Hall.