To make up for lost revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, McComb City Administrator Dirkland Smith proposed freezing all purchases, hires and promotions until the end of the fiscal year.
“I have another option for the board to consider in order to get a better grasp or to lessen our pain or produce additional savings ... due to the financial situation,” Smith said Tuesday.
This freeze, which would last from July 1 to the end of September would put a stop to all hiring, promotions and transfers until the city, which was already in a financial crunch before the pandemic shut down stores and slowed the economy to a halt, can recoup the projected losses from the pandemic.
Mayor Quordiniah Lockley said just because there is a freeze does not mean the city cannot hire anyone. He said if an employee quits or is fired, the city can hire someone to fill that position.
“You freeze the work force as it is,” Lockley said. “If we have 150 employees and someone leaves tomorrow, then you can fill that position back up to 150.”
There are currently 22 open positions in the city, counting the police department with 10 vacancies and the fire deparmtent with three. A fourth fire vacancy will occur Saturday because an employees is leaving.
The freeze would extend to all discretionary purchases, with Lockley noting that all purchases will have to get approval from the head of the department from which the purchase originates, as well as from Smith.
The two board members at the work session asked Smith how much money the city would save if such a freeze is approved. He said he did not have concrete numbers, but added that the money saved on health insurance premiums alone would be about $25,000 for the three-month freeze.
“Just from the health benefits side, that is $25,200 that the city would save for the months of July, August and September,” Smith said. “No one is in those 22 positions, and we don’t have any prospects for them.”
This comes after the city originally froze all hiring in November 2019, but did not include the fire and police departments like the new freeze proposes.
It also comes after the board voted against a 10% pay cut across the board for all city employees and officials.
