City of El Paso may return to five-day work week

The El Paso City Council is considering switching back to a five-day work week. Right now, city offices are only open Monday through Thursday. Employees work 10 hours a day, four days a week.

Mayor Dee Margo said he has heard from many residents who want city offices to be open on Fridays.

“We’ll certainly be more user friendly for the city of El Paso who want to come down on a Friday to a particular city department which has historically not been open. The bulk of us work five days a week. I think we ought to be open five days,” Margo said.

If the council approves the new work schedule, it would go into affect at the beginning of next year.

“I don’t know if there were be any cost savings, but we will certainly be more user friendly for the people of El Paso,” Margo said.

The change to a four-day work week occurred when the city occupied the downtown building that was torn down to make way for the ballpark.

“It was a sieve when it came to utility costs and they had to do something to stop the bleeding. And so to stop the bleeding, on what I would call a temporary basis, they went to four days a week. That was the sole reason. That building was in such poor condition that the utility costs were unbelievable,” Margo said.

City offices are now spread out in four downtown buildings.

City Rep. Alexsandra Annello took issue with city staff sending out an email to employees about the potential change. Annello said that email was not sent to council representatives.

“I would like to be aware of these things before the fact. We have a staff that we need to deal with. We need to understand our scheduling and for an email to go out to all of the city staff and the council not be included or informed of this change I think is really disrespectful,” Annello said.

Dionne Mack is the deputy city manager of Public Safety and Support Services for the City of El Paso.

“One of the things that I think was very important to us as an organization is not to shock staff and have them be very surprised about anything we might be planning in the future,” Mack said. “We are not asking people to move away from that (four day work week). We are asking that our staff ensure that we have our facilities open to our public utilizing the resources hey have. So they do have flexibility.”

The City Council will ultimately vote on the potential change.