SPANISH FORT, Alabama—City employees will find tomorrow’s paychecks a little fatter due to a “one-time salary adjustment” approved Monday by the City Council.

Full-time employees with more than one year’s experience will receive $600 added to their salary this pay period, according to the measure added to the council’s Dec. 3 agenda and passed unanimously.

For full-time employees with less than a year’s experience, the one-time salary increase will be $175. The year-end “adjustment” applies to all full-time employees who started work Dec. 3 or earlier.

That $175 salary increase will thus apply to Cody Grimes, the city’s newest police officer, who was sworn in at Monday’s meeting.

In other business, the council appointed Gregory A. Kuhlmann to the board of the city’s Cooperative District of 181 Public Facilities and the city’s Cooperative District of Highway 98 Public Facilities.

During the work session at City Hall prior to the council meeting, Mayor Mike McMillan said there was also a vacancy on the Planning Commission, which the council would be looking to fill.

“I’d love to see someone from the Eastern side come on,” McMillan said. “There’s a void on the Eastern side of town (on the commission).”

McMillan also informed the council that a grant from the Emergency Management Agency had been received for five tornado sirens in the amount of $150,000. The grant requires a 25 percent match by the city, or $37,500, the mayor said.

“ I think it’s been long overdue,” he said.

At the work session, the mayor said he and City Clerk Mary Lynn Williams had met that day with the Alabama Department of Transportation and learned that ALDOT’s 10-year budget had been cut from $4 billion to $1.5 billion.

“It directly affects the widening of Highway 31,” McMillan said. “It is now dropped from our 10-year plan.”

The mayor added that the city would experience growth as a result of Airbus Americas locating in Mobile, and “we’re going to have some issues if we don’t widen (Highway) 31.”

Finally, the council went into a private executive session from  the work session, instead of from the council meeting itself, to discuss “good name and character and pending litigation or controversies likely to be litigated,” according to the announcement made by City Attorney David Conner.