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Highlands Today

County Gets An Extra Paid Holiday

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By Jim  Konkoly | Highlands Today

Published: September 21, 2007

SEBRING — Employees of the Highlands County Board of Commissioners will get an extra paid holiday starting next year, while employees of the sheriff's office will have one less.

Paid holidays for commissioners' employees are going up from 12 to 13 in 2008. In the sheriff's office, paid holidays will go down from 12 to 11.

Commissioner Barbara Stewart and county Administrator Carl Cool both said they were not aware of the extra paid holiday when the commissioners voted on Aug. 7 to adopt next year's holiday schedule.

Minutes of that meeting show there was no discussion on the holiday schedule. Commissioners followed their tradition of the past 10 years in adopting the same holidays as the Tenth Judicial Circuit Court.

Since learning of the extra paid day off, Stewart calls it a bad decision, Cool supports it, and the other four county commissioners said they have no particular interest in reconsidering the issue.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Susan Benton said she won't give her employees the additional paid holiday for county and court workers – Yom Kippur, which falls on Oct. 9, 2008. Benton said she's also cutting one current paid holiday from the 2008 schedule, Rosh Hashanah, which falls on Sept. 30 in 2008.

Benton said the additional holiday would be a budget buster for her operations, especially when "we squeezed so much and readjusted so much" to add officers and boost service in fiscal 2007-08 with no increase in the budget.

"We pay double time for working on a holiday," Benton said. That costs between $60,000 to $80,000 per holiday on top of the sheriff's daily payroll of about $40,700, Benton said.

"Every time we approve an additional holiday, that rings up in your budget," the sheriff said. "Just in light of coming events with the tax cuts, we decided that we couldn't afford any more holidays."

As a constitutional officer, the sheriff can follow the county's holiday schedule or set her own.

About the county's additional paid day off, Stewart said, "I see no reason for having an extra holiday, because it will cost the taxpayers extra." Twelve paid holidays, she said, "is generous."

"If I had been aware of it," Stewart added, "I would have voted no and I would have argued against it. I would have tried to convince the others that it is not the correct thing to do."

Guy Maxcy, chairman of the commissioners, said he will schedule discussion on the extra paid holiday if Stewart brings it up at a commission meeting.

"I didn't have any heartburn over it," Maxcy said, because commissioners simply maintained the same holiday schedule as the court system, as they've done for years.

"This is certainly something she (Stewart) can bring up and we can look at that again, if that's what she wants to do," Maxcy said. If Stewart asks to reconsider the issue, he said, "I'll be interested to hear the other commissioners as to what their opinion about it is, and I'll have an opinion about it too."

Stewart said she won't bring the issue up at a commissioners meeting because it's clear she doesn't have the votes to change the decision.

"And," she said, "once something is done, it's a lot more difficult to take it away."

The extra paid holiday for county workers resulted from the tumble-down effect of a scheduling decision by the Florida Supreme Court.

Cool said he was not aware that the Tenth Judicial Circuit Court had added a holiday when he passed that schedule along for adoption by the county. Sometime after the commissioners vote, Cool said, he became aware of it and asked Judge David Langford of the Tenth Circuit Court about the extra holiday.

Cool said Langford told him the Tenth Circuit court adopted the same holiday schedule as the Florida Supreme Court, which expanded its paid holidays from 12 to 13 for 2008.

"Likewise, we followed suit with the (Tenth Circuit) court's schedule," Cool said.

Except for EMS service, which must be maintained every day, Cool said, the extra holiday will have minimal, if any, cost to county government.

"In my mind, the bigger issue is the level of service," Cool said. "To me, I don't think it's a huge dollars-and-cents issue. It's a question of service, it's one less day the county offices are open."

Asked if he agrees with the extra paid holiday as far as service to the public, Cool answered:
"I'm OK with it. I think we need to strive for uniformity, to avoid the confusion of the courthouse being closed and the county (offices) open."

Cool added that he has no vested interest in the issue, since he will retire on June 30, long before the new holiday next year.

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