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Maywood Board Votes Down $2,500 In Maywood Fest Overtime Pay For Mayor’s Assistant


Friday, October 11, 2019 || By Michael Romain || @maywoodnews 

Featured image: A young child goes down a jumbo slide during the 2019 Maywood Fest, which took place in September. | File 

Maywood Mayor Edwenna Perkins said that she’s going to keep trying to find a way to get her executive assistant compensated for overtime related to planning this year’s Maywood Fest. The payment failed to garner the full approval of the Board of Trustees.

During an Oct. 1 regular meeting, the Maywood Board of Trustees voted 3-3 on a budget amendment that would have allowed for the assistant, Jonette Greenhow, to be compensated $2,500 for 64 hours of overtime that Perkins said Greenhow put into organizing the fest. The motion died for lack of a majority.

Perkins, along with Trustees Isiah Brandon and Miguel Jones voted in favor of the motion while Trustees Kimyada Wellington, Melvin Lightford and Nathaniel George Booker voted against the motion. Trustee Antonio Sanchez was absent.

Booker said that there was no time sheet attached to the payment request and that, despite his asking for an update on the Maywood Fest at meetings in June, July, August and September, “we never got one.” He also asked why village staffers did not ask for additional volunteers or make contingency plans if they knew that Greenhow would need to work 60 more hours.

Perkins responded that a time sheet and an update on the fest were both forthcoming. She added that trustees were supposed to recommend individuals to volunteer — something that not all trustees, including Booker, did, she said.

“Who made this rule?” said Lightford, referencing the recommendation for volunteers. “I’ve been on this board for 10 years and I’ve not one time been asked to do that.”

“When we asked for an update in June, July, August and September, this was never once said,” Booker said. “If this was a policy, I would have had no problem volunteering my services or someone else’s. I’m concerned that we’re approving 60 hours of overtime simply because we didn’t ask anyone to help. Was staff made aware that we’d need more than 60 hours of overtime?”

Booker said that he was also concerned with the fact that the village had already paid 40 hours to replace Greenhow in the mayor’s office while she worked on fest activities, in addition to 40 hours of regular time for Greenhow.

Brandon said that he had questions about the overtime payment, as well. He said that after being told Greenhow’s fest-related responsibilities, the overtime payment made more sense to him.

“We’re talking about weekend hours that were spent working on this,” Brandon said. “You’re talking about showing up earlier all that week to help out with the carnival and things like that. That’s my understanding of why this was being requested, because of the work that went into the final days of the fest.”

The village budgeted $50,000 for the annual fest, which was held Sept. 14 through Sept. 16. A final tally of actual fest expenditures has not been reported yet. Perkins said that Greenhow headed up the four-person fest committee and was the only village employee in charge of putting it together. Perkins said that more than 5,000 people showed up on Sept. 15 and that the Fest has grown over the years, from having only one vendor in its first year under Perkins’ mayoralty several years ago to featuring 20 food vendors, 20 service and merchandise vendors, and 15 nonprofit vendors in 2019.

“She deserves it and is entitled to it,” Perkins said of Greenhow’s overtime pay. “They don’t understand how much energy and time it took to do that fest. It makes them look good. Nobody stepped up and said, ‘I’ll do it, but they benefitted, as a result of what those four people who put the fest together did.”

When asked how she would proceed since the overtime pay failed to pass, Perkins said that she’ll keep trying to secure the compensation for her executive assistant.

“We’ll move on and see what the next steps are,” Perkins said. “We’ll have to find out what those are, but I’ll keep trying to make sure she gets it.”

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