June 16, 2022
By: Dwayne Page
Full and part time county employees may soon be getting a bonus for their service during the height of the pandemic from American Rescue Plan Act funds.
The budget committee last week voted to recommend to the county commission that full time employees each get a bonus of $2,500 and that part time staff each receive $1,250. In order to get the bonus, these employees must have worked for the county at any time during the fifteen-and-a-half-month period of March 13, 2020 to June 30, 2021 and they must still be employed by the county. No matter if a full time employee worked for the county during the entire period or only part of that time, he or she would get the full $2,500 bonus. The amount would not be prorated. Part Time EMS staff must have worked a minimum of 400 hours to get the part time bonus pay of $1,250. All other part timers must have put in at least 250 hours during the fifteen and a half month period. Twenty nine volunteer firefighters who met the criteria would get a bonus. Firefighters who made 75% training attendance would qualify for a $300 bonus and those with 100% training attendance would receive a $350 bonus for the period from March 13, 2020 to June 30, 2021. Two county funded employees and eight employed by the state at the DeKalb County Health Department would also be included in the ARP bonus plan.
The proposal to pay these bonuses using ARP money will be presented to the county commission for final approval.
The budget committee took this action after hearing from Circuit Court Clerk Susan Martin who, speaking on behalf of herself and other county officials present, requested that some amount of ARP funding be given to their employees.
In addition to Circuit Court Clerk Martin, other county officials at that meeting in support were Trustee Sean Driver, County Clerk James L. “Jimmy” Poss, Clerk and Master Debra Malone, and Administer of Elections Dennis Stanley.
“When its time to allocate this ARP money I would like for you to seriously consider a bonus for employees. My employees are valuable to me. They keep us going,” said Martin.
At that meeting, Martin had not requested a pay raise for employees but expressed concerns about retaining staff during this time due to other places compensating their employees because of rising prices/ inflation.
Fourth district commissioner Dr. Scott Little, who voted for giving the bonuses, asked why Martin did not ask for more employee pay saying that a one time bonus would not address her worries about staff leaving for other jobs.
“Why not” (seek pay raise for employees), “ asked Commissioner Little. “What is the issue going to be next year? Have you solved anything?. We could give a one-time bonus but that doesn’t help you next year,” he said.
Trustee Sean Driver suggested to the committee that the bonus pay using ARP funds should have already been addressed.
“Before we ever talked about what to do with this (ARP) money, we ought to invest in people. That’s an investment. Good people. When we are competing with Hardees and McDonalds we are not investing in our people. That’s what we are missing for the whole county. If they are giving money we should have never thought about where to place it until we took care of people,” said Driver.