Tucumcari officials propose personnel-policy revisions including comp-time caps, holiday premium pay and sick-leave donation rules

City staff presented a package of proposed revisions to Tucumcari’s personnel policy during a work session, recommending limits on accumulated compensatory time, new holiday-pay rules for selected departments, tighter rules for sick and annual leave requests and donations, and updates to drug- and alcohol-testing procedures that reference federal Department of Transportation rules.

A staff member who led the discussion said the city’s existing personnel policy allows compensatory time (comp time) to accumulate without tracking the pay rate at which it was earned. “When I had payroll go and read those numbers, if we would have paid out any money as it is since now, we could have paid out almost $28,000 in comp time,” the staff member said, adding that one employee had accumulated about $2,600 in comp time.

The presenter proposed eliminating the option of carrying comp time for most employees and paying out accrued time instead, while retaining a cap for first responders. Under the proposal, emergency medical services and law enforcement employees could retain up to 40 hours of comp time; hours above that would be paid at the overtime rate. For other departments, the staff recommendation is to pay out accrued comp time rather than allow ongoing accrual.

Why it matters: the city faces a potential one-time liability if accrued comp time is cashed out at current payroll rates, and managers warned the change would shift recurring costs into overtime budgets.

Details and scope

Officials said the city previously permitted larger carryovers during staffing shortages: the governing body once allowed employees to carry as much as 120 hours when the city was short staffed. Under the current practice discussed at the work session, 80 hours had been used as a cap in policy language; the presenter said four employees exceeded that threshold at the end of the fiscal year and that the city paid out roughly $7,000 in comp-time payouts in the most recent year.

City staff identified departments that commonly accumulate comp time: cemetery, community development, EMS, library, maintenance, parks, police, sanitation and wastewater. The presenter told council members that the overtime cost would need to be accounted for in departmental budgets: "At budget time, that's when we needed to look at increasing the overtime rate," a council member said during the discussion.

Holiday pay and scheduling

The proposed edits would codify premium holiday pay for employees who must work on city-observed holidays. The presenter described premium pay as time-and-a-half for scheduled 12-hour shifts in EMS and defined specific treatment for half-day holidays: employees who work a half-day holiday would receive regular pay unless their hours qualified for overtime, in which case they would receive overtime pay.

Discussion touched on adding sanitation employees to the list of positions eligible for premium holiday pay for multi-day holiday periods. Council members debated whether the policy should list affected departments explicitly or give the city manager discretion to designate which crews must work on holidays.

Leave use, donations and documentation

Staff proposed changes requiring annual-leave requests to be submitted before the leave is taken and asking for more documentation when employees take sick leave immediately before or after a holiday. The presenter said the city has seen patterns of employees using sick time adjacent to holidays and recommended that sick-leave requests around holidays be accompanied by a doctor’s note when applicable.

The draft would also limit leave donations to annual leave only; donating sick leave would be removed. The presenter said the donating employee must retain a minimum balance of 40 hours of annual leave after donating. The change is aimed at reducing a potential long-term payout liability the city faces for annual leave while preventing donated leave from inflating future retirement or separation payouts.

Discipline, performance improvement and drug testing

Proposed language would require that disciplinary actions, including coaching and verbal warnings, be documented in personnel files so supervisors can track patterns of performance. The package adds a formal option for a corrected probationary period and a mechanism for placing employees on a performance-improvement plan.

On drug and alcohol testing, the draft adds language that supervisors may require testing at the city’s reasonable cost and states that refusal could be grounds for immediate discharge. The presenter referenced federal commercial-vehicle testing rules and cited 49 CFR 382.33 in the discussion. City staff said the city employs a DOT-certified tester who can administer tests at a facility identified on file at City Hall; if a new hire or a post-accident test yields a positive result, the plan is to send the employee to an outside medical review agency for confirmation.

Process and next steps

No formal motions or votes were taken during the work session. Council members and staff asked clarifying questions about budget impacts, which departments would be affected, and whether some language should delegate decisions to the city manager. The presenter and a staff member named Jake said the proposed changes can be revised and brought back; the work session concluded with the items to be considered at a future meeting.

Ending

City officials described the package as a broad update to align policy language with current staffing and federal testing requirements, but emphasized that budget adjustments and additional review are needed before any final adoption. The proposals will return to a subsequent work session for further discussion and possible formal action.