TIFTON — The City of Tifton is giving back to their employees this holiday season in the form of a compensation plan for on-call officers and a one-time incentive for all of their workers. These two programs were each given unanimous approval by the city council during their Dec. 11 meeting as a means of accommodating their workers for their hard work and dedication to the city.

The incentive will provide all city employees with a stipend to an amount determined by the amount of time they have worked with the city, taken from a $385,000 line item created to support city employees after the coronavirus pandemic, while the compensation plan will ensure officers on-call are given one hour of pay for every day they spend on call, with two hours granted for serving on call on weekends.

At the council’s previous meeting, city manager Emily Beeman explained that the incentive would help provide for city employees negatively impacted by inflation, while police chief Steve Hyman hoped the on-call program would compensate officers having their personal time encroached and already stretched thin by a lack of proper staff size for on-call work.

While the stipend will most likely be a solitary program, the council expressed interest in extending the compensation program to a more permanent run as well as broadening its reach to all of their public safety departments.

At the moment, it is planned to act as a means of supporting the city police department through the end of the year, but city staff have suggested looking into it further at that time to better develop and expand the program.