LAWTON — Lawton City Council has signed off on a plan to reward employees who worked through the pandemic.
The council recently authorized City Manager Michael Cleghorn to use part of the city’s American Rescue Plan Act dollars to implement the plan. The measure covers all city employees who physically worked between March 23, 2020, and May 30, 2021, and are still on the payroll.
The federal government has awarded about $18.2 million in ARPA funds to Lawton, which received the first half – approximately $9.1 million – in May of this year. The second half – another $9.1 million – will not be available until sometime in 2022.
City officials worked with attorneys at the Norman-based Floyd Law Firm to devise a plan that would satisfy ARPA’s intent, which was to provide more premium pay for the city’s lower-paid employees, Cleghorn said. The attorneys proposed a three-tiered plan, which ties an employee’s premium pay to their current salary.
The city will use approximately 19% of its total ARPA funding to implement the plan, Cleghorn said.
“It’s a considerable amount, but those employees worked diligently and worked without complaint through the COVID epidemic in those months,” he said.
Premium pay
The city previously earmarked about $3.6 million in ARPA funds for premium pay, said human resources director Craig Akard. He said that category of pandemic relief funding is intended for lower-income employees, as well as essential personnel and government workers.
“It can be calculated in a bunch of different ways, but one basic point is it is in addition to an employee’s regular pay,” Akard said.
The pay plan divides employees into three tiers, based on their annual salary. Workers who earn less than $50,000 per year plus premium pay are in the first tier, while employees who make $50,000 to $67,889 annually plus premium pay are in the second tier. The third tier is for employees who make more than $67,889 annually, plus premium pay.
Workers in the first tier will receive an additional $2 per hour that they worked during the period from March 23, 2020, to May 30, 2021, up to a maximum of 2,080 hours.
Employees in the second tier will get an extra $1.50 per hour of work during that period, and those in the third tier will receive an extra $1 per hour.
“That takes care of all the employees of the city, the ones that work side by side but may make different salaries,” Akard said. “They’re all going to be paid something.”
He said officials had to subtract vacation days and other types of paid leave when calculating how many hours employees worked during that period, because employees could only be paid for the time when they were physically present.
“If they were home doing telework, they had to take those hours out,” Akard said.
Incentives
In addition to premium pay, the city is offering $1,000 incentives to current general employees who are fully vaccinated and receive a booster shot and/or a third dose before June 30, 2022.
Cleghorn will negotiate with the local police and fire unions over their eligibility to receive premium pay and vaccination incentives, which will mirror the extra pay for general employees. He may use any left-over ARPA dollars to offer vaccination incentives to fully vaccinated new employees who receive a booster shot and/or a third dose after six months of satisfactory performance, on or before June 30, 2022.
The last piece of the puzzle is an incentive of up to $1,000 apiece for new hires, designed to help the city fill positions that have been open since COVID-19 struck.
“This is a back-to-work incentive to try to get people that are sitting at home, that want to go back to work but really don’t want to come back to work, an incentive to come back,” Akard said.
City Manager Cleghorn said staff spent several months working with the Floyd Law Firm’s attorneys to develop the plan.
“We believe it’s a fair and equitable distribution of any sort of premium pay,” he said.