City pay issues culminate in demonstration by employees

CLOVIS - Months-long issues with a new city payroll system came to a head on Friday the 13th as dozens of employees packed into the Clovis City Hall that morning and said they weren't going home until the issues were resolved.

More than a dozen trash trucks and other city vehicles were parked outside the city manager's office as workers convened inside to speak with Justin Howalt, upset they hadn't been paid by midnight Thursday as expected.

On Friday morning all but five of approximately 375 city employees had not received their bi-weekly paychecks the night before, with the only exception being new staff that weren't yet on the direct deposit system.

Howalt told The News on Saturday that all city employees were ultimately paid Friday and that all city services had resumed Saturday.

Fire Chief Mike Nolen said city emergency workers - fire, medical and police - continued providing services Friday without interruption, but sanitation staff said they were not working until the payroll issues were resolved.

The Clovis city landfill was closed all day Friday, forcing the city of Portales and other entities to halt their trash disposal operations.

"It's quick, and the biggest impact when somebody doesn't work, it shows up in sanitation departments and waste water departments. It affects everybody," said Public Works Director Clint Bunch. "It not only has an impact on the city of Clovis. We're a regional landfill, so when the landfill shuts down it affects Portales, Texico, Fort Sumner, the surrounding area, all of the businesses that haul to the city."

Bunch declined to say if he was satisfied with the city's promised resolution of the issue - that payments to all city staff would be completed on Friday.

"We understand and share in the frustration the adverse effect this has on our employees," Howalt said in a news release Friday afternoon. "The city of Clovis has a system in place to reimburse employees for any overdraft fees they may have incurred as a result."

The city's brief news release pointed to "challenges incorporating pay raise increases employees received effective August 26," but administrative staff told The News that was only one of a complex of issues that cumulated in the late payroll distributions.

Howalt said the city has "had challenges, obviously, with the implementation of the new software system," which was implemented July 1 for most but not all departments.

"The old accounting finance system itself was no longer supported from a software side, so the city was going to have to transition to a new system or take the risk of the entire system going down and us not having any technical support," Howalt told The News.

First-responder departments of fire and police continue using the Visual Computer Systems (VCS) software, but had to upgrade that system in order to work with the "Executime" system recently purchased by Tyler Technologies and implemented July 1 for time and attendance among other city departments.

"Right now we're working through issues to make these talk together," Nolen told The News. "We're still working on compatibility."

Those issues, coupled with city-wide pay raises of 2.5% processed Wednesday by the Human Resources department, funneled in the latter half of the week to "one payroll clerk who has been working very tirelessly to get this done," Assistant City Manager Claire Burroughes told The News.

City Finance Director LeighAnn Melancon said the final import file for employee payments has to be uploaded for all employees at once, rather than in stages, and can only be managed by one employee at a time.

"So much of it is only one person can be in the system at a time," Melancon told The News. "It was just one thing after another after another."

Burroughes emphasized Friday that city employees would still receive the money in their accounts that day, just not as early as normally expected.

"The word 'delay' is incorrect, because per city policy they will be paid every two weeks on a Friday," she said. "It was never that they were not going to be paid."

Howalt said Friday afternoon he had not yet received requests for reimbursement on overdraft charges.

City staff said they are eager to avoid any more delays.

"We're going to be meeting at the beginning of next week," Howalt said. "I'll be having meetings with the applicable employees to review and analyze processes that can be in place to prevent this in future."