YOUNGSTOWN — City council decided to postpone a vote on paying $24,298.48 in overtime to seven health district employees, including the commissioner and five other management workers who normally aren’t permitted to receive extra pay.

During a nearly 30-minute discussion Monday during council’s finance committee meeting, some members said they were either opposed to paying overtime for the extra work this year during the COVID-19 pandemic or wanted to discuss it further with the city’s board of health to explain the proposal before a vote is held.

“My concern is that the health commissioner is — the way I view it — the equivalent of a department head,” Councilwoman Anita Davis, D-6th Ward, said. “They are salaried and don’t get overtime.”

She said she was concerned the city would be setting “a new precedent providing a department head, a salaried individual, with overtime pay. She’s not supposed to get it. How will this not impact other department heads?”

Law Director Jeff Limbian, who wrote a legal opinion that the overtime is permissible, said: “I don’t see any other departments being required to do work with regards to a pandemic. It’s unique circumstances.”

But Davis said the work is part of her job.

Limbian responded: “This is above and beyond what the expectations are of a director of a board of health.”

Council members Mike Ray, D-4th Ward, and Basia Adamczak, D-7th Ward, said they wanted to keep the proposal in the finance committee and meet with the board of health, which recommended the overtime pay, to discuss it further.

Councilwoman Samantha Turner, D-3rd Ward, said she supports the pay and wants to see management in other departments that worked long hours during the pandemic get additional pay.

Health Commissioner Erin Bishop said she and the other health employees who would get the overtime pay through a state grant, using federal COVID-19 relief funds, put in long hours to help keep vaccination clinics operating. The grant is only for overtime during this year and not 2020, she said.

Of the seven employees on the overtime list, Bishop would get the most: $9,915 for 179 hours of overtime this year at time-and-a-half salary. She is paid $36.93 per hour.

The second largest payment would be $8,937.61 to Anthea Mickens, director of nursing, for 205.25 hours of overtime. Her hourly salary is $29.03.

Four other management employees would get between $724.95 and $1,861.02 with Rick Dezsi, a unionized employee who works as an environmental sanitarian, getting $580.39.

Bishop said Monday that she understands she’s salaried, but she worked 12-hour days for seven days per week for periods of time during the pandemic, including last year when she received no additional pay.

Bishop also said the health district received more than $1.6 million in COVID-19 grants and the $24,298.48 in overtime is a tiny fraction of that amount.

The overtime grant money has to be spent by September, she said.

Also, health district employees received almost $30,000 in overtime in 2009 and 2010 during the H1N1 outbreak, Bishop said, so this isn’t the first time they’d receive extra pay.

In a separate piece of legislation, council is being asked to pay $2,069.60 in retroactive pay from April 1, 2020, to this past Jan. 31 to Susan Burnham, a retired public health nurse for the district.

Council members said the retroactive pay is not appropriate and the finance committee approved voting against it at Wednesday’s meeting.

Near the conclusion of Monday’s finance committee, Councilman Julius Oliver, D-1st Ward, asked when council was going to return to meeting in person at city hall. The last time council met in person was in mid-March 2020 and has met virtually since then.

Mayor Jamael Tito Brown said City Hall is reopened and council can return to meeting in person any time its members want.

Davis said when council returns to meeting in person, she wants to make sure people socially distance.