Parks employees will not have to return mistakenly paid hazard bonuses
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Parks employees will not have to give back hazard compensation they were accidently overpaid.
The city council said this week, the money will instead come from Parks savings.
If there isn’t enough savings, the city’s general fund will cover it.
A parks employee who wanted to stay anonymous said he found out about this news from FOX 17 News reporter Rachel Tiede, and said he’s relieved.
“I feel great about it,” the employee said. “I think it’s the right thing for them to do.”
At the latest city council meeting, there was a common question from council members: how did this oversight happen?
“Do we have anybody that’s found the reason as to why this happened?” council member Larry Hager said.
Council member Russ Bradford said, “It’s not fair to the employees. It’s not fair to the taxpayers that we don’t know how this happened and how to stop it from happening again.”
Council member Sean Parker said, “I’m not sure exactly how it happened, as some of my colleagues have touched upon.”
So, FOX 17 asked. We’ve asked this question before, but now we have a solid answer. Mary Jo Wiggins, the city’s deputy finance director, directed Tiede to the latest Budget and Finance Committee meeting.
According to Wiggins, different departments were supposed to send in the number of hours or percentage of hours worked that were eligible for hazard pay. The parks department instead sent in the total number of hours worked, resulting in an overpayment of $270,000.
But Wiggins said this won’t happen again.
“It was an inadvertent mistake on the submission, and it won’t happen again because we don’t have hazard pay coming forward again,” Wiggins said during the committee meeting.
Council member Steve Glover was the only person to vote against this measure, saying he didn’t feel it was fair to taxpayers.
“Too many proud employers have lost their businesses, or have called me over last week when this came out, just furious that we were even considering this,” Glover said.
Councilmember Kyonzté Toombs told me today city staff are looking at the other numbers to make sure they’re correct, and that she and other councilmembers felt making the employees pay back the money wasn’t fair.
“Some of our lowest paid employees were in the middle of a pandemic -- we know that everybody has been hit hard by the pandemic,” Toombs said.
Something employees are relieved to hear.
“I’m glad they did make the right decision,” a parks employee said.
