FOLEY - During the Aug. 16 council, the Foley council approved the COVID-19 Vaccine Incentive Payment Program for city employees. The program is for active city employees, both full and part time, who receive the COVID-19 vaccine on or before Sept. 30.

“A couple points I’d like to make about this, one, no employees are required to be vaccinated with this program, it’s a voluntary program,” said City Administrator Mike Thompson. “Secondly, if someone does want to get vaccinated, they can choose where they get it and whatever vaccine they want they can get, we don’t make any of those decisions. Finally if an employee is not interested in participating in this program, they don’t have to. If they don’t want to participate or if they don’t want to express their vaccination status, that’s completely up to them, they don’t have to participate.”

For employees who do participate, the resolution states full time employees who choose to be vaccinated will receive $500 and part time employees who choose to be vaccinated will receive $250. The program requires that employees provide proof of vaccination within the timeline.

“We would like to do everything we can to keep our employees as safe as possible, thereby keeping our citizens safe because there is interaction on a daily basis,” said Mayor Ralph Hellmich. “We have had COVID outbreaks in just about every department, we’ve been dealing with that, so we hope that this program will raise us to a higher percentage and hopefully not affect us as much as it has.”