The Columbus Board of Public Works and Safety voted to update the community service leave policy for city employees, outlining a new process to give them opportunities to volunteer and receive paid-time-off (PTO).
The board on Tuesday morning approved a resolution repealing and replacing the policy, last updated in 2016.
Arlette Cooper-Tinsley, the city’s human resources director, told board members that the new policy is modeled after one used by the State of Indiana Personnel Department.
The new policy says that full-time city employees and some part-time employees “will be allowed leave with pay from the employee’s regularly assigned duties to voluntarily participate in activities that benefit another Governmental Entity or a charitable organization that is exempt from federal income taxation under Section 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code,” according to a copy of the resolution.
Community service leave time is not to exceed a combined total of 16 hours for full-time employees, 17 for sworn police officers, or eight for eligible part-time employees.
Part-time employees are only eligible if they’ve worked for the city at least a year or have worked a total of 1,250 hours. Cooper-Tinsely said firefighters will have a different policy built for them because their schedule is much different and due to the large amount of community service they already do.
How the policy works is a city employee will fill out a form and designate a non-profit. If that’s approved by their supervisor and “it makes business sense for that department” then the employee can go volunteer, Tinsely told the board.
It includes a section that states that the community service “must not promote religion or attempt to influence legislation, governmental policy, or elections to public office consistent with state statute.”
Currently, the mayor can designate and send people to do community service, as she has done recently sending city employees to help out the Cheer Fund and earlier this summer to help the city of Bloomington in the aftermath of a storm.
However, the previous policy had a financial cap of $10,000 in terms of how much collective PTO can be paid annually for the purpose.
“If you go over that amount, you could be getting into areas that are unlawful to employ city employees to do community service, with regard to ghost employment,” Cooper-Tinsley said of the financial cap, which no longer will exist.
In addition, the policy allows for city departments as a whole to do a day of service once a year for a non-profit.
Cooper-Tinsley added that showing the city places an emphasis on community service is “a really strong recruiting tool” they’ve found.
“I think it’s a good thing in the community for the public to see that the city staff really do care about the community that they work for,” Ferdon said.
