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Dade City Employees Can Take Benefit To The Grave

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By CHRISTIAN M. WADE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 29, 2008

Updated: 05/29/2008 12:22 am

DADE CITY - Faced with a mountain of overtime debt, officials in this small, east Pasco County municipality have come up with a novel approach to compensate workers: offering them plots in the city's cemetery.

For a limited time, eligible city employees will be able to trade in a portion of accumulated compensatory, or comp, time for a reserved spot in historical Dade City Cemetery, off Martin Luther King Boulevard.

The new policy, which began with an employee's request to exchange comp time for a cemetery plot, received a nod from city commissioners Tuesday night.

Under the proposal, only city workers with a substantial amount of banked comp time will be eligible to participate in the one-time offer, which expires in 60 days.

The price tag for a plot in the 130-year-old cemetery runs between $300 and $400.

Mayor Scott Black said the move is about exploring creative ways to reduce costs in a city struggling to maintain services amid state-mandated tax cuts and other fiscal pressures.

"It's a bit unusual, I'll admit," he said. "But we're just a small town with a limited budget."
Dade City Cemetery is one of the county's oldest burial grounds, the final resting place of Pasco's founding families and Civil War veterans. It has been owned by the city since 1901, when it inherited the property from the former Oak Grove Baptist Church.

The city sells plots in the cemetery, which has more than 3,000 occupied gravesites.

City Manager Billy Poe estimates that only seven of more than 70 city employees will be eligible, but he is not sure how many will take the offer.

The idea came from a request made by his personal assistant, Joy McKinney, who wanted to cash in her banked comp time for a space in the cemetery.

"I thought it was a great idea," Poe said. "So we decided to offer it to other employees."

Donnie Shive, a 30-year public works employee, is one of the few qualified to accept the offer. He has at least 200 hours banked. "Maybe that's a good idea," he said. "Myself? I'd rather take my time now and enjoy it."

The cost of accumulated leave is weighing heavily on the city's dwindling general fund, the result of years of allowing hourly employees to bank overtime as comp time.

As of September, the city was carrying about $756,000 in accumulated sick leave, vacation and comp time on its books. At least $63,000 of that is comp time.

"We just don't have money in our coffers to pay out all this comp time," Poe said.

In March, the commission did away with the compensatory system, preventing workers from banking overtime.

Employees were given until the end of the year to use accumulated comp time or lose it.

"We're reducing it," Poe said. "Some of the employees are burning it off by taking a few hours off each day; others are going on vacations or taking Mondays or Fridays off."

Linda Davidson, president of the Florida Government Finance Officers Association, said city governments across the state are grappling with the issue of accumulated overtime.

But Dade City's approach to the problem is unusual, indeed.

"I've never heard of something like that," Davidson said. "It's certainly, well, different."

News Channel 8 reporter Claudia DoCampo contributed to this report. Reporter Christian M. Wade can be reached at cwade@tampatrib.com or (727) 815-1082.

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