Fargo City Supervisors Defend Amount of Overtime Paid During City Commission Meeting

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) — City of Fargo staff gave a very thorough presentation to city commissioners about the amount of overtime paid to city employees and the pressures of staffing issues.

It was prompted by a request from Commissioner Dave Piepkorn to require any overtime to be approved ahead of time, even though overtime is already included in the budget.

Department heads from public works, fire and engineering made the case for overtime pay saying that when there is a major weather event, fire or road work, people expect the city to respond 24-7.

The city has paid about $3.3 million in overtime on average over each of the last five years, on par with other peer cities.

The debate was initiated after an article on overtime in The Forum.

“There is news and non-news and this is clearly non-news because there’s nothing unusual about it. It’s within the parameters of every other city, there’s not, it was in my opinion having been in the media for about 20 years, blown out of proportion,” said Turnberg.

The commission took no action.

On another topic, they voted 4-1 to direct city staff to study what it would cost to make the mayor’s position full-time and to add two members due to city growth.

Piepkorn voted against the idea citing its potential cost.