Christmas Comes Early for Bossier City Employees

Bossier City employees are enjoying a nice Christmas bonus as they head into one of the few shopping weekends left before Christmas.

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In an unrelated phone conversation with Mayor Tommy Chandler on Friday morning, he mentioned he was "handing out bonus checks to employees."  Merry Christmas Bossier!

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bossier City applied for and received $1,230,432 from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, allowing for a one-time premium pay allowance of $2,000 to each eligible Bossier City employee.

So what constitutes an eligible employee?  To be able to receive ARPA funds, a

"local government workforce needed to maintain continuity of operations of essential critical infrastructure, such as the employees of the City of Bossier City, who continued to provide in-person interactions with the public, or whose co-workers continued to provide in-person interactions with the public during the declared health emergency are eligible for a premium pay allowance to be appropriated from ARPA funds..."

A qualified employee is classified as follows:

...full time employees of the city who were employed on or before March 16, 2022, and who have remained employed through the effective date of this ordinance in service to the Bossier City Police Department, the Bossier City Fire Department, or as a classified or unclassified employee of the city are eligible for a one-time premium pay allowance of $2,000.  Persons employed as temporary, elected, seasonal, contract, or part-time employees are not eligible for the premium pay allowance....

Mayor Chandler told me Friday morning they were serving PJ's coffee to employees and handing out the bonus checks, and were also planning a holiday "Door Decorating Contest" among city employees, as everyone was getting ready for the weekend.

Was any of this grant money applied for by anyone in Shreveport?  Did Shreveport Police and Fire Department personnel recieve any bonuses?  Maybe they did and we just haven't heard about it... why does Bossier seem to get more things right?  But I digress.... Merry Christmas Bossier employees!