DAPHNE, Ala.—The Daphne City Council heard three more requests for exemptions to the hiring freeze put in place for the fiscal year to save the city $300,000 while not paying for vacant positions to be filled.

Councilmen Derek Boulware and Ron Scott said Monday at a work session that the city council was beginning to look “silly” since so much extra work was required to keep the city running efficiently.

“I have made this argument so many times now I dream it at night … here is the thing: it is so easy to point fingers but I don’t blame any department head for what they are doing. They are fighting for every single person they can get. They are bringing every single person to the council as we requested. We put a hiring freeze in place but it is getting kind of silly up here ya’ll. We are not even conducting a true hiring freeze,” Boulware said.

Boulware said the city council created a situation where department heads have to make cases to the council as to why they need to fill positions.

“We created this storm ourselves. We built this thing,” Boulware said. “What we have got to do is be serious about this. I am afraid it is a matter of who isn’t going to make a good argument.”

Boulware said the hiring freeze was not working out as he had imagined it would.

“Why are we not using people we already have and spreading it out during this hiring freeze?” Boulware said. “I wanted to see a better utilization of the people we have, but that isn’t happening.”

Scott said calling the measure a hiring freeze was a misnomer and the anticipated savings came from positions being vacant while searching for a new employee.

“I am also tired of this rebuttal. When we created this we were looking at $300,000 to balance the budget … open months will add up to get us there. We are $530,000 above for the first six months of the year. We are not in a financial crisis,” Scott said