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Wausau HR committee approves temporary $5.20 hourly premium for shelter duties
Summary
The City of Wausau HR committee unanimously approved a temporary $5.20 hourly premium for a community outreach specialist who ran emergency shelter operations, using a 2,080-hour cap (estimated maximum payout about $10,800); fiscal details will go to finance and council.
The Wausau Human Resources Committee on March 9 unanimously approved a temporary duty premium of $5.20 an hour for the community outreach specialist who took on shelter-management responsibilities during an emergency response.
The committee applied a 2,080-hour cap when it approved the premium, a change members adopted during debate to avoid delaying compensation while staff finalizes hourly totals. The cap yields an estimated maximum payout near $10,800; committee members said the exact fiscal impact will be calculated and routed to the finance committee and city council for final action.
The committee heard that the outreach specialist, Tracy, was assigned shelter-management duties in addition to her normal outreach role during a yearlong period of emergency shelter operations. Committee discussion described the assignment as operational and temporary, not a permanent reclassification of the position. Chief Barnes told the committee the specialist handled volunteer coordination, food delivery logistics and day-to-day shelter management for sites housing dozens of people nightly, and that pay tied to documented shelter hours is a transparent way to compensate that extra work.
A member urged postponing approval until staff could present tabulated, documented hours. The committee diverged on whether staff should retroactively break out every hour worked. An HR analyst said retroactive hourly breakdowns would be difficult and offered scenarios showing that, at a 100% application to a year’s hours (2,080), the premium would be roughly $10,800; at lower percentages the amount would be correspondingly smaller. The analyst also said applying the premium would make the city FLSA compliant for the work covered.
After discussion, committee members voted to approve the premium and to use a 2,080-hour cap rather than wait for a retrospective hour-by-hour accounting. Members noted that funding for the premium may come from ARPA and that the finance office must confirm the source and present final numbers to the council.
The committee’s approval is an authorization to proceed; staff will calculate the precise fiscal impact and bring the item to finance and then to the city council for a final vote.
