In October, the City Council approved payouts (not to exceed $12,000) to police for leave-time that remained unused due to officers not being able to use leave-time while having to work during the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, and in November approved an $11,620 payout for the town manager for the same reason.

The potential payout in both cases was reduced from what had been proposed by having recipients try to expend as much of the unused comp-time as possible, or by carrying over some of the unused time into 2121.

Councilwoman Diane Foster, who was seemingly uncomfortable with the way the process played-out overall, noted during the council’s November meeting that no guidance regarding employee time-management during emergency situations was addressed in the employee handbook.

Foster told the council that she had suggested to City Manager James Wieprecht that he develop an emergency plan (regarding employee time-management during emergency situations) – "since all of this falls outside what is normally allowed in the employee handbook."

The proposed rules, she stated, "doesn’t have to be anything like the handbook. It could be some addendum to the handbook – a couple of pages – that would only apply to these certain situations and what we will … and will not do," she stated.

The councilwoman said she suggested that by the first of the year, Wieprecht should "develop such a plan with some definite rules that apply across-the-board to all departments, and we work from there, and I offered to help him if he needed me to develop this plan."

When it was brought up that the COVID-19 pandemic may be slow in subsiding, Foster said, "That is exactly why I mentioned coming up with an addendum to the employee handbook that addresses such situations – public disasters, pandemics. We don’t need to be making it up as we go along. We need to have something (in the way of employee time management) on paper."