Despite not getting a cost of living raise, full-time city employees should be receiving a $250 bonus at the end of the year in 2014.

Barring any changes to the Washington City Council vote, the City of Washington will hand out an end of the year bonus. This will be in addition to two extra paychecks full-time city employees will receive that will not have health insurance taken out, due to a six percent decrease in the city’s insurance plan.

City employees also received a three percent cost of living wage increase last year, which was the first in a number of years.

“Can I say we have had a lot of recruitment issues because of that,” Susan Hodges, Washington’s Human Recourses Director, said. “I really don’t know that, but I think that’s been pretty much across the board, a lot of people haven’t gotten cost of living adjustments in their different organizations.”

Washington does have flexibility for certain jobs to hire an individual who has strong qualifications and hire them at a higher pay scale.

“There was a time when the city, every year when we got the cost of living adjustment — the CPI (Consumer Price Index), whatever it was in southern urban non-metropolitan cities in December of that year, the city would incorporate that into the budget automatically,” Hodges said.

However, when the U.S. was hit by the Great Recession in 2009, Washington was not able to keep up with the same pace of matching the CPI.

Washington City Manager Brian Alligood came up with a proposal of a half percent, one percent and one and a half percent cost of living increase, according to Hodges. The city council though decided the $250 bonus would be the best.

“I am sure he (Alligood) would have liked to have seen it at a one and a half percent, but he is being fiscally responsible,” Hodges said. “He knows his job is to figure out where the money is coming from or help the council figure out where the money is coming from.”

The bonus is not a guarantee as the city council is still trying to figure out a final budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The council could change their vote to adjust the budget.