VIDALIA —Vidalia aldermen last week approved the employee handbook following a one-meeting delay over the town’s drug policy.

The main holdover from the previous meeting was when an employee’s positive drug test should be forgiven. Vacation time was also a concern brought up later in the meeting.

For drug testing, the town’s policy had been, dating back to 1992, on a second positive drug test an employee would be terminated. Previously, Alderman Robert Gardner had said a positive drug test should not hang over an employee’s entire career and Alderman Tron McCoy had said a positive drug test should not follow an employee into another election term.

Gardner had pushed for positive tests being forgiven after a year. Last week, Gardner said five years would be adequate time for a “reset” to occur.

Town Manager Bill Murray asked McCoy last week how his idea of an offense not following an employee into a future term.

Murray said a situation could occur in which a drug offense occurs four months away from a new term.

“After four months, that goes away because it is a new term?” Murray said.

McCoy said the policy manual could change with each administration, and a future administration’s policy on drug testing might work in an employee’s favor.

McCoy later asked department heads what they thought, and many reiterated from the previous meeting that they favored keeping the current policy in place.

To move on, Mayor Buz Craft asked for a show of hands, and everyone except Gardner voted to keep the current policy in place.

Craft said the previous administration allowed employees to accumulate vacation time over the years.

“This is not good business for a municipality,” Craft said. “You might have someone you have to pay for a year and they don’t even show up to work. Or you get stuck writing a big lump check for all that vacation time. You are accumulating liability that one day the town can’t write a check for.”

Craft said if an employee has two weeks, or three weeks vacation, they should use it during the year. Craft said that should be the policy for the town going forward.

“The intent of vacation time is for you to recharge or spend time with your family and come back a better employee,” Craft said. “The same thing is true for personal time.”

However, Craft said taking away the accrued time employees have from the previous administration would open up the town to lawsuits.

Craft said he is hoping to work out agreements with employees that have large amounts of accrued vacation in which the town would offer buy backs over time rather than get hit with a lump sum payment at one time.

The town also decided to have the police department run license checks on employees once a year, tobacco use is not permitted in town vehicles, failing to submit to a drug or alcohol screening could lead to termination and the mayor would recommend merit raises.

Town Attorney George Murray said on raises for employees the mayor only has to come to the board for approval if it requires aldermen to appropriate additional funds.

Craft said if the money is already in a department’s budget because, for example, an employee left and another employee is absorbing new duties.

Craft said in a situation such as that, the mayor could approve raises without board approval. Craft said any raise decision he made would be in conjunction with department head recommendations.

Alderman Jon Betts motioned to adopt the handbook pending approval from the labor attorney and Gardner seconded it. The board voted 4-1, with McCoy being the no vote.