North Pole council delays vote on on-call compensation for city utility workers

The North Pole City Council on Monday put off a final vote on an ordinance that would compensate city utility workers for on-call duty, after a rewritten version reached members shortly before the meeting. The council voted 6-0 to take the measure up again at its Nov. 2 regular meeting.

As introduced Oct. 5 on a 6-1 vote, with Mayor Larry Terch casting the only no vote, the ordinance would give the one utility employee on call each week one hour of comp time for each day on call. Council members David Brandt and Santa Claus sponsored it.

City Attorney Robert Palmer said the original language "conflated comp time or compensatory time with the utility on-call policy." Under city code, he said, comp time generally means pay at 1.5 times the hours actually worked, with the employee choosing comp time or overtime. After talking with Brandt, Palmer said, it became clear that was not the intent, and the substitute followed.

Palmer received the substitute about an hour before the meeting and said he had not had a chance to fully digest it. Terch said he had not read it either.

Councilman Schuster questioned why the attorney's memo arrived the day of the final vote when the measure had been on the agenda for weeks. Utility workers now receive no comp time, Schuster said, and he wants the measure to pass. Palmer said the late memo was "on me, completely on me."

Thomas McGhee, a resident who was sworn in to the council later that evening, urged a delay. "The public hasn't reviewed it, and I don't see any utility employees back there ready to speak on it," McGhee said.

Claus agreed to wait but said he still wants "this or something pretty close to it" approved for the utility workers.

Terch suggested another approach. For less than $350 a month, he said, an Anchorage call center could answer nonemergency utility calls and email them to the city rather than waking a worker at 1 am. Workers who are called out already get a two-hour minimum, he said.

The council adopted the substitute language 6-0 before postponing. Written testimony is due by 4 pm the day of the Nov. 2 meeting.