County cites "burnout" in request for three additional vacation days

In the upcoming Lenoir County Commissioners meeting on Monday, there is a resolution to approve three additional days of vacation for county employees in 2021. The proposal in the agenda cites employee burnout as a real prospect in which they hope to avoid by approval of the resolution.

“Across our organization, we have had to rearrange operational procedures, provide services in alternative ways this year and obviously this would put stress on any organization and our employees have been amazingly dedicated to this community,” said Lenoir County Manager Michael James. 

The average daily payroll for county employees is $66,612.24. In 2020 the Board of Commissioners currently provides 14 paid holidays for county employees.

“We didn’t give the employees a raise this year, or last,” said County Commissioner J. Mac Daughety. “We tried to get them one last year, but I couldn’t get the board to agree to do that. We didn’t give them one this year because of the uncertainty of COVID.”

There are 491 full-time employees that would have three additional vacation days available for use, during the next calendar day if the County Commissioners agree to the resolution.  

“I believe all organizations, public or private, are looking at ways to acknowledge their employee’s hard work during a difficult time. Even going into next year our organization is still responding to COVID-19 and employees may need flexibility with childcare or be extra cautious and remain home in case of sickness,” said James. 

The city of Kinston recently added two additional paid holidays for their employees.  

“Providing access to additional vacation days or paid time off days to individual employees does not represent an extra cost to the organization as it would if we were to add days to our Holiday schedule,” said James. 

“My hope is that this is not all that we should do. I am in agreement with this, only if we were working to give our employees a raise in the upcoming budget for 2021 within the framework of the existing tax base, so there isn’t a property tax increase,” said Daughety.

County offices will remain open as normal and only be closed for the regular 14 holiday days. James went on to state, “Additional costs occur when we are closed, which results in holiday pay (time ½) for those employees who do work.” 

No employees were furloughed in 2020, though some part-time hours were reduced due to a reduction in usage of services.  

“These extra days are temporary and are only available from January to December of 2021,” said James. “These days will not remain on the books and do not constitute an ongoing liability in terms of time accruals. If an employee does not utilize the vacation days, they will be taken out of our system at the end of December.” 

All local governments, including Lenoir County, were able to utilize Federal CARES dollars in the response to COVID-19. Among other eligible uses, funds could be used for payroll costs that were directly related to the counties COVID response.