Testimony tonight on MLK Jr. holiday for City of Fairbanks

KUAC | By Robyne

Published December 16, 2024 at 2:30 AM AKST

**Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, sit with three of their children Yolanda, Dexter, and Martin III in 1962. Their daughter Bernice was born the next year.**

A resolution to close Fairbanks City Hall so city employees can do service projects on Martin Luther King Day is before the City Council tonight (Monday.) But it is complicated by some employee contracts that have negotiated the day off … and the cost of paying the other city employees holiday pay.

Council member Valerie Therrien introduced an ordinance at the December 2^nd council meeting to make Martin Luther King Day a paid city holiday. But according to Council member Jerry Cleworth, it ran up against administrative roadblocks.

“With the four different union contracts we have, the holidays are not consistent. It's kind of a mess. So, after the meeting, I asked her if she'd be willing to take another look at it,” Cleworth said.

“He suggested this I wanted to bring this idea of closing City Hall on Martin Luther King Day, but not having it a citywide holiday,” Therrien said.

Therrien and Cleworth worked out a compromise resolution with the City Attorney that will likely be substituted in for the original ordinance. It will be up for public hearing Monday night.

The third Monday in January is a paid holiday for state and federal employees, and in the past, different city mayors have promoted the idea of paying employees who commit to service projects on that day.

“I know administrations have let the staff go, if they wanted to go out and do community service and things like that, without losing any pay, and this just kind of formalizes that,” Cleworth said.

The city has several classes of essential employees that cover a constant workload, 24/7. Police, Fire and Dispatch, especially, and Public Works after a big snowstorm. If city employees work on a paid holiday, they get time-and-a-half.

But under the substitute resolution, if employees take the day to do service projects, or just take the day off work, they are paid normal wages, not holiday pay.

Currently the firefighters have the paid holiday written into their contract. But not the other groups.

“I know that some of the new police officers said they were surprised that we didn't have it,” Therrien said.

Therrien says the resolution to close City Hall instead of creating a City holiday on January 20th it is a compromise…because it doesn’t recognize the civil rights work and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. with the gravity and respect of a paid holiday.

In their long years of City service, this is the first time Cleworth and Therrien have written legislation together.