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City approves COVID-19 vaccine incentives policy for employees

Tue, 11/09/2021 - 10:53 am

The city of Breckenridge adopted a plan to offer incentives to employees who receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The city is hoping the incentive policy will increase the number of vaccinated employees to ensure they are able to continue to provide services to the community. The proposal was approved during the commission’s meeting held last Monday, Nov. 1.

Breckenridge City Manager Erika McComis brought the proposal to the commission’s attention during their last meeting, Tuesday, Oct. 5. The item had been tabled until McComis drafted a policy the commission could review and discuss.

“At the direction of the commission, last meeting you asked that we (bring) a policy forward. This was a combination of a policy from the city of Abilene and the city of Pflugerville,” McComis said during the commission’s Nov. 1 meeting. “(...) When we first started talking about this, it was when COVID numbers had gone up again, and it seems like we just have a cycle of up and down, up and down, so I’m hoping that it stays where it is now. There’s a possibility that it could go up, so that was the purpose of talking about it a few months back when we first started this discussion.”

Due to the surge of COVID-19 cases in the area, the city had seen an increase in the number of employees who were out of work due to COVID-19, which affected productivity, the agenda memorandum states.

According to the policy, which went into effect Tuesday, Nov. 2, the purpose of the incentive program is to “aid the health and safety of the city’s employees, their families, and the greater community by rewarding and encouraging vaccination against COVID-19 and its related variants.” All full-time city employees are eligible for both the personal holiday and paid quarantine leave incentives.

“What it does is says if an employee gets the vaccine by a certain date, they get three days of flex time, or personal holiday time, and then if they are required to quarantine, then the city will pay for that time out, if they get the vaccine,” McComis said. “If they get the vaccine by a certain time, then it’s three days, if it’s after a certain time and they get it, it’s two days, and it goes down from there.”

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