Board ponders 4-day week for city employees
Published 5:00 am Wednesday, July 16, 2008
With cities and towns around the state going to four-day workweeks to save fuel and energy costs, the Brookhaven Board ofAldermen are mulling the idea of instituting a shorter week aswell.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, Ward One Alderman Dorsey Cameronsaid he had recently heard discussion of other cities that wereconverting to four 10-hour work days. He wondered if it would be agood idea for Brookhaven.
“It might help our workers save on gas getting to and fromwork,” he said.
Gov. Haley Barbour recently began discussion and research onmoving state employees to the shorter work week. He said it wouldsave them a day of commuting costs, but that it is still too earlyin his deliberation to make a definite decision.
Mayor Bob Massengill said a new work week schedule could be aconsideration when the aldermen begin budget work sessions on July29.
Aldermen also discussed the progress on the spray parks slatedto be built by Labor Day at City Park and Bicentennial Park.Massengill and City Clerk Mike Jinks said the water taps are in onboth, and bids should open up soon on the construction.
“They won’t take an awful long time to build,” Massengill said.”We waited on this project to see if we were getting the grant, andthat’s why it’s taken us this long.”
At one point city officials had hoped to receive a 50 percentmatching grant from the Pearl River Basin Development District tofund the project, but were told the funds were unavailable for theyear.
Ward Six Alderman David Phillips also updated the board on thefirst meeting of the city’s Web page subcommittee.
“We talked about domain name, hosting and design,” saidPhillips, adding that the subcommittee would meet againThursday.
Other aldermen said they had gotten positive feedback on theidea, especially being able to pay water bills online.
During a brief discussion, it was pointed out that residentswould need to have a checking account to pay it. Phillips saidthings like credit card payments, Paypal and other third-partyprocessors had been discussed to try to find a viable option forcity residents to pay.