Council raises concerns over temporary worker hours and year-end overspending

Council members questioned whether a temporary wastewater employee has been working beyond the hours authorized by the contract and warned that untracked overtime and cross‑department assignments risked pushing the city past its year‑end budgets.

At the start of the consent‑agenda discussion, a council member asked whether the wastewater temporary employee was limited to “20 hours a week” under the contract. A council member said, “The contract only says 20 hours a a a week,” and added that the city was “overspending, like, crazy already” and could face multiple amendments if the practice continued. Staff replied that the contractor bills monthly and that some months showed more hours; a staff speaker said, “he does bill monthly… only a couple of times he's exceeded 100 hours for the month.” Treasurer Sophie said she found the contract language and reconciled billing records.

City staff and the council debated whether the employee’s pay was being charged to the police department budget or to the department currently using the worker. A staff member advised caution: personnel matters should not be handled publicly and recommended a forward‑looking policy change to clarify the mayor’s authority to hire or reassign seasonal workers. The staff member said, in part, that if the council wanted to prevent similar situations in future, “we might say, we are going to implement a certain kind of new restriction or or a new control in order to avoid this scenario.”

Council members asked the treasurer to keep closer track of hours and to route non‑essential purchases through the spending freeze process. The meeting record shows the council approved the consent agenda after the discussion; no formal disciplinary action or immediate termination was taken during the meeting.