By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
Monday’s regular meeting of the Glasgow Common Council meeting was relatively brief and straightforward, with three of the four action items involving appointments to a committee, a commission and a board.
The other action item was a municipal order making a change to the city’s personnel handbook to provide exceptions to when exempt employees are eligible for overtime compensation.
The current wording in the handbook states, “Exempt employees are not eligible for overtime compensation.”
The new version says they are not “generally eligible” but then provides exemptions from that rule. One is for emergency situations during which exempt employees are “required to work extended hours. The other exceptions are for police officers who are working overtime under a federally sponsored activity or grant or when they are working on special details outside their regularly scheduled hours. In all cases, the pay is 1.5 times the employee’s regular hourly pay rate.
Lance Crimmins, the city’s human resources director, in response to a question from Councilman Terry Bunnell, confirmed that the emergency situations exception is for all exempt, also referred to as salaried, employees – not just those in the police department.
He said the same language is already in place for hourly employees.
“This is not a new thing,” Crimmins said. “This just is kind of putting our current practice down on paper. There’s some federal programs where, when you ask for reimbursement, they require you to have already said you were going to do this, and we haven’t had that in writing before, so that takes care of this.”
He then did confirm that this new wording covers any salaried employee in any department, adding a clarification that it really is for something like a declared emergency. He said an example would be when one of our local 911 personnel went to North Carolina to help out when Hurricane Helene created massive flooding and landslide situations.
With only Councilman Joe Trigg absent, the vote was unanimously in favor of the measure, as were all others during this meeting.
The first three items, not including agenda and prior-meeting minutes approval, were:
– reappointment of Becky Barrick to the Glasgow Renaissance Steering Committee for a two-year term ending Dec. 31, 2026;
– appointment of Tim Gooden to the Glasgow-Barren County Tourist and Convention Commission as a lodging representative filling the unexpired three-year term of Amy Vann, which expires June 30, 2027;
– a joint resolution appointing Thomas Grubbs to the Barren-Metcalfe Emergency Communications Center Governing Board as Barren County citizen member to complete the unexpired term of Linda Wells, who is resigning at the end of this year, so Grubbs’ portion of the term would begin Jan. 1. The joint resolution for this appointment also has to be adopted by the Barren County Fiscal Court, Cave City City Council and Park City City Commission.
The mayor also made note of and City Attorney Rich Alexander briefly discussed an executive order the mayor signed Dec. 4 creating an hourly position of administrative/records supervisor for the Glasgow Police Department. The position has been advertised and comes as Tonya Barrick, who has worked with the department for 27 years in recordkeeping and other office administrative capacities, is retiring.
The next regular meeting, and the last one with the current council members, is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Dec. 23 in Council Chambers on Floor 2 of Glasgow City Hall, 126 E. Public Square.
