McDonough is the latest local municipality to raise the minimum wage for its workers.

The City Council voted at its February 18 regular meeting to approve a request from the human resources department to establish a $15-per-hour minimum wage for all city employees, with any earning less than that at the time receiving the appropriate increase to that standard, effective February 16.

Mayor Sandra Vincent said several council members had brought up the subject recently and it was discussed at them recent council retreat. She expressed her excitement at they taking what she termed a “bold step” to support the city’s workers.

In other business, the council approved a $25,600 expenditure for the police department to cover the cost of 25 E-citation licenses provided by Tyler Technologies for use on laptops or tablets. The above amount includes an annual maintenance fee, hosting fees and software fees. There will be a recurring annual fee of $5,600.

A request to purchase bi-monthly 45,000 pounds of CC 2000 chemicals for operation of the solid wastewater treatment plant was approved at a cost of $12,600 per purchase. Plant supervisor Jeremy Newton noted that the material has been used by the city since 2019 and is more effective than what was previously used, but has recently gone up in price.

A $38,301 allocation was approved for the purchase of Cisco servers for technology services, and it is included in the SPLOST V network infrastructure plan submitted to the council last August.

The council approved the $25,000 purchase of the ClearGov platform for the finance department. Assistant finance director Deborah Upshaw called it “more interactive and data-driven” than what the city has been using and will make the website more easy to access, lending more transparency to the process, and also reducing the need for paper. The system is used by many other municipalities.

The appointment of Latonua Hawkins to the Planning and Zoning Committee by council member Vanessa Thomas was approved.

Vincent is currently serving in the city administrator role and said a number of applications have been received for that position. While that process is beginning, the city will also be looking for a new finance director due to an upcoming retirement, and the city will be making a major push to fill many vacancies throughout the ranks of the city’s employees.

“Thank you to all the employees who have done more with less,” said Vincent. “We haven’t missed a beat.”