YOUNGSTOWN — City council’s finance committee will discuss Monday the controversial issue of whether to pay $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 the additional money.

The administration is seeking the overtime pay for the seven, which includes a union member, for extra work they did during the COVID-19 pandemic this year. The money would come from a state grant.

During a June 14 finance committee meeting, it was decided to postpone a June 16 council vote on the overtime payouts until it could be further discussed.

That discussion will occur Monday, said Councilwoman Lauren McNally, D-5th Ward and finance committee chairwoman.

“I don’t know if they can be paid overtime,” she said.

Health Commissioner Erin Bishop pointed to almost $30,000 in overtime paid to health district employees for overtime related to the H1N1 outbreak in 2009 and 2010 as precedent.

But since then, city officials changed the salary ordinance and determined who is exempt from overtime and that includes management employees at the health district.

“We used to pay overtime in a different manner,” McNally said. “The law department needs to answer that question.”

Law Director Jeff Limbian wrote a legal opinion to Bishop and Mayor Jamael Tito Brown, who is chairman of the city’s board of health, stating the overtime is permissible.

“Given the unique situation” of the pandemic and the governor’s emergency health orders, “such overtime must be paid,” he wrote.

Bishop would get the largest payment: $9,915.70 for 179 hours of overtime this year at time-and-a-half. Her hourly salary is $36.93.

The second largest payment would be $6,937.61 to Anthea Mickens, director of nursing, for 205.25 hours of overtime. Her hourly salary is $29.03.

The four other health district 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 overtime for her department isn’t budgeted, including for union members.

Also, this wouldn’t include numerous extra hours the health district staff worked in 2020, she said.

“Some people are hung up that the health commissioner is getting overtime because she’s considered a department head, but she’s not a traditional department head because she answers to the health board first before anything comes to” council, McNally said.

Councilwoman Anita Davis, D-6th Ward and a finance committee member, said the health district workers are salaried and aren’t entitled to overtime.

In his legal opinion, Limbian wrote: “Ms. Bishop would have been irresponsible and neglectful of her responsibilities if she had not exercised her duties as enumerated in the Ohio Revised Code. Certainly, those duties extend past a 40-hour work week. It would be unconscionable to deny her remuneration for work that was mandated by statute.”

Council has asked Bishop and a representative of the city board of health to attend Monday’s finance committee meeting.

This will be only the second in-person meeting for a city council committee since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020. Council’s community planning and economic development committee met Thursday.

Council’s next full meeting is July 28.

AT&T BUILDING SALE

Also at Monday’s committee meeting, Finance Director Kyle Miasek said he will discuss the potential sale of a city-owned building in the Salt Springs Road Industrial Park, that the city had leased for years to AT&T, to a Fairlawn company that is looking to expand to this area.

It’s a lease-to-buy proposal, he said, adding that terms of the deal will be provided Monday.

The property was vacated by AT&T a few years ago — though the company continues to lease a nearby garage — while the city searched for a buyer.

City council has to declare the property as surplus for economic development before a deal can be made, Miasek said.

dskolnick@vindy.com