The City of Lumberton’s Public Works Department was the subject of two agenda items during the March 7 meeting of the city’s board of aldermen, with one of those measures approving overtime hours and certain vehicle usage for department employees, while another item regarding tracking devices died prior to an official vote.
The overtime matter regards department employees who work during weekends, and allows board members to authorize overtime pay for those workers. Overtime pay is considered “time and a half,” which means any hours in addition to the regular 40-hour work week are paid as the employee’s regular hourly wage, plus half of that amount.
“The weekend workers actually get paid for a couple of hours each day, that morning, to just check all the lift stations throughout the city,” Mayor Quincy Rogers said. “They just make sure that everything is working properly at Public Works.
“It’s about an hour’s job – it only takes an hour to do it – but we actually pay them two hours for the job. Those employees actually have to take a city vehicle home for that.”
Alderman Bobby Smith brought forth the notion to place tracking devices on public works vehicles in order to better track when and where those vehicles are being utilized. However, that item died for lack of support for a vote.
“(Smith) wanted to make sure that the vehicles were kept inside the city limits and for monitoring their daily activities, just to make sure people could see what was going on with them,” Rogers said. “But the majority of the board did not agree.
“Therefore, they just actually let that die. They skipped through the item; they just let it drop and there was no vote taken on the matter. There was a motion and second to discuss, but after discussion, there was no action taken.”
Rogers said to his knowledge, there has never been any issue with vehicles being taken outside of the city limits or otherwise inappropriately used.
“Not at all,” he said.
