Baxter Aldermen approved a resolution to change the city employee pay period schedule during Thursday night’s meeting.
The change will hold employees’ pay back a week. Baxter Mayor Danny Holmes said the change is to fix a payroll issue and get all employees on the same pay schedule.
“When we have our payroll, it’s due on Wednesday, and then they do the payroll on Thursday, and sometimes, especially with the fire, because they work 24-hour shifts, sometimes they don’t get it in, you know, quick enough, and it just causes a lot of confusion,” Holmes said.
Holmes said the change will make doing payroll easier for the city clerk. Holmes said employees will not miss a paycheck thanks to a bonus approved by the council.
“You know we take good care of our employees, and we came up with this, matter of fact, the department heads were involved with this,” Holmes said. “They asked their employees, and of course, they said if we are gonna do without a paycheck, we don’t want to do that. But we made it work, so they are gonna get a paycheck.”
Holmes said employee input was valuable when deciding to make the pay period change.
“When I came to office, I wanted everybody involved in city government,” Holmes said. “So I told the department heads to check with their employees to make sure that this would work for them, and they all agreed to it, or we probably wouldn’t do it.”
In other business, the aldermen approved one purchase order for the street department, four for the water department, and one for the sewer department.
