LAWTON – City of Lawton employees who have not submitted proof of vaccination against COVID-19 and a booster shot to City Hall will have until the end of the year to supply that information.
The Lawton City Council voted Aug. 23 to extend the deadline for city employees who need to supply proof of vaccination until Dec. 31. However, the council rejected a proposal to boost the maximum incentive for new hires from $1,000 to $7,500.
In December 2021, the council approved a plan to reward employees who worked through the pandemic and encourage people to go back to work. That plan included $1,000 incentives for current employees who were fully vaccinated and received a booster shot and/or a third dose by June 30, 2022.
The city also offered incentives of up to $1,000 for new hires in hopes of filling positions that have been open since the pandemic began. Employees had to perform their duties satisfactorily for at least six months before they qualified for the incentive.
City officials later realized that the plan did not give employees enough time to get both the vaccine and the booster shot, said Human Resources Director Craig Akard.
“It was a day or two after you all passed this whole package that we realized – setting this for June 30, 2022 – that only gives current employees and future employees about a three-week window to start the vaccination, because it takes about six months to get fully boosted,” he said. “So, there were discussions held about extending the vaccination through December the 31, 2022.
“I’m going to take the hit on this one because I really thought, with all the discussions that we had on this, that I actually brought it back to the council. But it comes to find out that we did not.”
Akard said any new employee who has not gotten vaccinated yet would not be able to complete the process by the end of the year. Consequently, the extension applies only to current employees and new hires who are either fully vaccinated or close to reaching that goal.
Akard said the city has hired some new workers thanks to the back-to-work incentive, but many positions remain unfilled. He said boosting the incentive to $7,500 could help address that problem.
“Because there are others out in the community that are offering more than $1,000, that we initially had approved, to come back to work,” Akard said.
The city tapped part of its share of American Rescue Plan Act dollars to pay for the vaccination incentives as well as the back-to-work incentives. Officials had earmarked approximately $3.6 million out of the city’s first installment of ARPA funds to pay for the incentives, and about $826,000 remains unspent.
Councilman Sean Fortenbaugh said he did not think increasing the amount of the back-to-work incentives was a good idea, especially since the council recently voted to raise utility rates and service fees by 15% to help balance the books.
“I think the problem is, we’re all having trouble finding employees,” he said. “We need to figure out why that is. What’s causing us not to be able to get there? But just giving them money, it just doesn’t seem like that’s going to help.”
City Manager Michael Cleghorn said ARPA guidelines allow cities to offer premium pay and back-to-work incentives to qualified employees.
“We can only spend this money on this particular issue, or something related that’s allowed under the ARPA Act, like water- or sewer-type projects,” he said. “So, this was an authorized expenditure of those funds.”
Councilman Randy Warren said he understood that employers were finding trouble finding workers. However, he said, increasing the amount of the back-to-work incentives was in keeping with the city’s original plans for spending its share of ARPA funds.
“This is not being spent any different than it was originally intended to be spent,” Warren said. “The money was earmarked for this type of spending – for incentives – one way or the other – so I’m going to make a motion to approve.”
Warren’s motion was to approve the entire item, but that motion died for lack of a second.
Fortenbaugh then made a motion to extend the vaccination deadline until Dec. 31, 2022, without boosting the back-to-work incentives. The council approved that motion on a 6-0 vote.