Decatur Offers COVID-19 Vaccine Incentive Program For City Staff

DECATUR, GA — The city of Decatur is now offering a COVID-19 vaccination incentive package for all of its full-time city employees, including first responders, to encourage them to get vaccinated.

The Decatur City Commission passed the incentive package at its Tuesday meeting, offering extra vacation time, automatic entry into a gift card raffle and health credit for the city's voluntary wellness program, according to Tracy Carter, the city's human resources director.

"The goal of the vaccination incentive program is to encourage all of our full-time employees to receive a COVID-19 vaccination as it becomes available in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus," Carter said during the meeting.

Fewer than half of the city's 150 first responders — which includes police officers, firefighters and public works employees — have gotten vaccinated, Deputy City Manager Hugh Saxon told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He said about 40-45 percent of them chose to get vaccinated, despite all first responders landing in the top priority category in the state's vaccine rollout plan.

In addition to the incentives, the city of Decatur will also be providing educational materials to all city employees about the COVID-19 vaccine "so they can thoroughly research the COVID-19 vaccine prior to getting the vaccination," Carter said.

"We know that there may not just be one tool or one incentive that is going to be the silver bullet that's going to convince everybody to do this," City Manager Andrea Arnold said in the meeting. "We do understand that there may be some skepticism ... so this incentive program is going to go hand-in-hand with that educational piece."

The incentive program will be active until all full-time city employees are eligible to get vaccinated. Georgia is still in Phase 1A+ of the rollout, so the vaccine is eligible to just Georgians age 65 and older, first responders, health care workers and long-term care facility residents and staff.

"At the end of the day, the goal is we want our employees to be healthy, we want their families to be healthy and protected, and ultimately the public that we're serving we want them to be protected as well," Arnold said. "We do believe this is one option that will allow us to achieve that."