Glenwood Police Officer Voices Concerns About Proposed Change To Payroll Procedure

A proposed change to the way employee payroll for the City of Glenwood is processed at City Hall is on hold and under review after a police officer voiced concerns about the financial hardship the change could create for some employees.

Police officer Richard Rix shared his concerns at the Sept. 26 meeting of the Glenwood City Council.

The change, proposed by Glenwood City Administrator Amber Farnan,  would create a one-week interval between the day timecards are submitted to department heads to the day employees receive their paychecks.

Currently, employees submit their timesheets on Wednesday morning and receive  their  paychecks via automatic deposit the next day. The proposed change would push pay day back one week and allow more time for payroll to be processed.

City employees are paid every two weeks. Rix said the proposed change would mean that employees would receive just one week’s pay on their first paycheck in November as a result of the transition.

“Bascially, we would be getting one week of pay instead of our normal two weeks of pay,” Rix told city council members. “With that, the week of pay we won’t be seeing immediately, we would not make that up until we would essentially end our employment with the city.”

Rix said the thought of getting a paycheck with only one week’s pay is causing concern and stress for some city employees who are on a strict  budget.

Farnan said she is sympathetic to Rix’s concerns and noted that she proposed making the transition in November because it is a rare three-paycheck month for the city, which typically happens twice a year when employees are paid every two weeks.

Processing payroll for the city’s 44  employees is a multiple-step process for Farnan and City Clerk Jessica Alley that must be completed in a matter of a few hours to ensure employees get paid the next day.

Time sheets are turned into department heads on Wednesday morning, who then forward that information to City Hall.

“We take that information and transfer it by hand on a payroll entry sheet,” Farnan said. “After that’s done, we double check to make sure everything has been moved over.

“We do all that by hand so once we double-check the work, we enter it into our computer system. From there, there’s several steps to get it checked.”

Farnan said each employee’s information must be received by their respective financial institution by mid-afternoon on Wednesday to ensure direct deposit is made on Thursday.

Farnan noted that Wednesdays are also the last day of a pay period so employees are estimating how many hours they’re going to work that day when submitting their time sheets, which is a less-than-ideal situation, particularly for police officers who  sometimes end up working overtime on that day.

“PD (police department) time sheets are really complicated,” she said. “They have differentials and overtime. If they work a holiday, there’s special things we have to do with that.”

Farnan said it isn’t uncommon for  an employee’s compensation to be revised for the following pay period because they don’t end up working  the number of hours estimated for that final Wednesday of the pay period.

Farnan stressed the intent of the proposed change is not to create hardship for employees. She has consulted with another community that made a similar transition in its payroll processing and she intends to have a new option for the council to consider at its Oct. 10 meeting. She would still like the transition to take place in November.

Farnan said a long-term goal is to get the city on an automated payroll system that would allow employees to log in from a cellular phone or computer and upload their hours directly to City Hall.