Salisbury budget session debates HR spending: employee assistance, wellness funds and new background checks

Human Resources Director Meg Keaton told the Salisbury City Council at its April 20, 2025 budget session that the department is seeking additions to several line items, including the employee assistance program and recruitment advertising, and asked the council to consider where employee‑wellness funds should live.

Keaton opened the discussion by describing the HR request and account coding. “My budget is fairly simple compared to some of the other departments,” she said, and identified HR account 18500 and the employee assistance line referenced in the meeting as 502,038.

The request for additional employee assistance funding reflects increased use of behavioral and mental‑health services by city staff, Keaton said. Jesse, who manages the city’s Thrive/wellness initiatives in the mayor’s office, distinguished the employee assistance program (an external, professional EAP) from internal wellness activities: “The EAP is a slightly different program…our office, the wellness programs are internal activities that we do with staff,” Jesse said. Council members and HR staff debated whether the smaller wellness accounts should be consolidated under HR for tracking and transparency, or remain in the mayor’s administrative budget because the mayor’s office currently performs purchasing and coding.

Council members raised concerns about duplication across accounts. One councilmember argued HR should lead the work and tracking for professional development and wellness, while HR and the mayor’s office staff said the mayor’s administrative team has been handling transactions and coding to simplify purchasing. Staff told the council that finance can re‑code invoices if the council wants the wellness line consolidated in HR.

On employee‑support programming, HR reported that take‑home meals and on‑site employee appreciation lunches have largely replaced an earlier employee pantry. Staff said the pantry’s donations and use declined and that take‑home meals serve more employees at a lower cost. Staff provided these figures during the discussion: the existing wellness allocation is $12,500; food purchases had reached roughly $500 per month when the city was buying stock (about $6,000 annually); take‑home meals are provided quarterly at about 112 meals per distribution; lunchtime appreciation events draw roughly 200 participants; estimated cost per employee for a served lunch is about $2, take‑home meals $7–$8 per person, and the pantry averaged about $15 per person. Staff and council discussed partnering with local nonprofits (including Trinity’s pantry and Emanuel Wesley) and using community partners to reduce storage and staffing burdens. Seeing last year’s actuals just under $9,000, staff recommended raising the wellness line to $15,000 to allow more frequent take‑home meals.

Keaton also said HR requested an increase in advertising costs to centralize job posting and recruitment under HR’s new recruitment specialist. “Now that we have recruitment specialists, we’ve asked to streamline it and everything live in HR,” she said.

On hiring and personnel screening, Kelly Jones, HR specialist and recruiter, urged the council to budget for formal background checks and motor‑vehicle‑record (MVR) checks for hires. “My request was that we run background checks on folks that we’re hiring,” Jones said, explaining the request covers criminal searches and MVRs for positions that require driving city vehicles. Jones said current practice had been ad hoc: departments previously ran case searches, but HR is centralizing the process and proposing a vendor that can perform nationwide criminal searches rather than relying only on local public records.

Staff clarified that the proposed funding would cover background checks for new hires only; performing a universal, citywide background check on all existing employees would require a significantly larger budget and separate policy discussion. Staff also noted that background‑check results would be weighed against the requirements of particular positions and would not automatically disqualify a candidate; the city would consider the nature and timing of any offense when deciding fitness for specific roles.

Finally, Keaton described a proposed annual contract for third‑party safety‑management services to provide inspections, training and safety program support; staff said this contract could both improve safety practices and produce cost savings by preventing incidents. The HR presentation also mentioned the city’s health plan carrier (CareFirst) and an estimated 9% budget allowance for insurance increases pending formal rate notices from actuaries.

No formal votes or ordinance actions on the HR items were recorded in the transcript. Staff and council indicated they would work with finance to re‑code or transfer funds if the council directs that change; staff recommended increasing the wellness line to $15,000 and bringing the background‑check and safety‑management contract items forward as budget requests for FY2026.

The session closed with council members thanking HR staff for the work on recruitment and employee programs.