The Village of Boyle has voted to update its communications allowance policy during its regular council meeting held OCt. 2.
Coun. Mike Antal moved to direct administration update the communications policy and to bring back to the next meeting for final approval. The motion was carried unanimously.
Acting Chief Administrative Officer Tina George said under the current policy, the Village provides public works employees with cell phone for their use during work hours. This resulted in Motion #16-197 being passed at a council meeting held May 4, 2016.
"Council decided to get rid of the phones, let public works use their own, and provide a phone allowance of $100 per year to offset the use," George said. "But I believe this is not in line with the percentage of use they use for Village business."
She pointed out that in a single month, employees could possibly use it 34 per cent of the time for Village use.
"They could take pictures with their phones, they could use them for research, or for even email access," George continued. "Only giving them $100 per year is really short. We currently have three public works employees, and they can be charged anywhere from $840 to $1,476 per year."
Coun. Barbara Smith said during deliberations that it should not cost an employee money to work for the village.
"I always found that most employees would rather have an allowance than a phone provided," Mayor Colin Derko added. "Then they can use their personal phone for whatever they want, whereas with a company phone they are always under scrutiny because it belongs to the Village."
Coun. Shelby Kiteley said with the current system, employees are getting only about $10 per month.
George suggested they could could give out about $25 per month, which would amount to about $300 per year.
Employee Policy
Some changes to the village's employee policy were presented at the council meeting.
Under Section 30, which covers Hours of Work, each employee will now be paid for 7.5 hours per day unless otherwise specified. It takes out the wording that "the inside staff will work an extra half hour each day and take 1 flex day every three weeks in exchange."
Under overtime, the policy takes out wording that one overtime hour will equal one time in lieu hour, and will be replace with "time off in lieu of overtime pay, with time off to be calculated at 1.5 times for all overtime hours worked. No employee shall be forced to take time off in lieu of receiving overtime pay."
Smith made the motion to approve the changes as recommended by administration. The motion was passed unanimously.