Grantsville council pauses vote on ordinance to separate employee breaks from lunch after wide staff pushback

Grantsville City Council on April 23 discussed Ordinance 2025-19, a proposed change to the city's break and lunch policy that would prevent employees from combining two paid 15-minute breaks with a 30-minute unpaid lunch. The debate drew multiple written submissions from employees urging the council to preserve the current option to combine breaks and lunch.

City employees submitted several written comments read into the record. Gina Roberts wrote that "we as city employees were not informed of this" and asked the council to delay action so hourly staff could provide input. Marie Anderson, one of the letter writers, said maintaining the option to merge breaks and lunch "is both fair and essential for the well-being of employees working extended shifts." Several other employees raised the same concerns in letters submitted by staff for the record.

The letters and the public discussion focused on two recurring points: differing impacts on employees who work 10-hour days versus 8-hour days, and operational coverage concerns. Multiple letters noted that employees on 10-hour schedules receive about two hours of paid breaks per week compared with about 2.5 hours for 8-hour employees, and asked the city either to preserve the current flexibility or to align schedules across departments. Department leaders and supervisors stressed the need for coverage during business hours and said supervisors could make individual accommodations where feasible.

City staff and councilmembers compared local practice with other Utah cities and described administrative complications tied to timekeeping. A staff member said the city has had to manually adjust timecards when employees combine breaks and lunch, and that recent timekeeping systems allow managers to make scheduled deductions automatically. Some councilmembers suggested an alternate approach: pay the breaks across the board and eliminate punch-in/ punch-out adjustments, but others cautioned that would carry an expense and asked for a cost estimate.

After extended discussion, councilmembers agreed to gather more information: a cost estimate to pay 15-minute breaks across the board, clearer counts of nonexempt employees, and additional feedback from department heads and employees. One councilmember moved to table the ordinance for further study and broader employee input; the council agreed to revisit the matter at a later date.

Council members and staff said the council is not barring employees from taking an unpaid hour for mental-health or medical reasons if a supervisor can arrange schedule adjustments; the proposed ordinance would only separate the paid break periods from the unpaid lunch so they could not be combined as a single, paid hour.

The council requested a staff report on projected costs, expected operational impacts by department (including police and public works), and further input from supervisors and affected employees before bringing the ordinance back for a vote.