In a decision that will cost the municipal budget more than $278,000, the Hialeah City Council on Tuesday approved Christmas bonuses for full- and part-time city employees earning $50,000 or less — a scaled-down plan far less costly than the bonus initially promised by interim Mayor Jacqueline Garcia-Roves.
Council members debated which employees should qualify for the incentive, whether to include only full-time staff, part-time or all employees, as Garcia-Roves had initially proposed in a Nov. 18 memo announcing a $1,000 bonus for all city employees, which she issued without first consulting the council. That plan would have cost roughly $1.5 million.
A former Hialeah city attorney told the Miami Herald at the time that Garcia-Roves could not authorize such a payment on her own, leaving elected officials to find a more feasible alternative…