Although it took no official action, Hillsville Town Council took steps to take care of a couple of problems with one stone during its September 14 meeting.

Hoping to rectify an existing situation, and prevent future ones, council discussed the possibility of on-call protocol for town employees to handle after-hours emergencies. Hillsville Town Manager Larry South admitted the town’s policy over the past 16 years has basically been hoping a town employee is reachable when you call. For a person with a busted waterline at 3 a.m., that is a horrifying thought. Not to mention the possibility of a major catastrophe.

While the plan would help ensure that someone is always readily available in the case of emergency, it would also help compensate those employees who would be disrupted from their personal time. Council discussed the possibility of paying an affected employee three to four hours of callback pay, even if the situation only took a few minutes to rectify, for their troubles. Obviously, any affected employee should be paid for taking away time from their family or awaking them from their sleep. And it’s relatively safe to say the person with a home in danger of flooding in the wee hours of the morning wouldn’t mind a few extra town dollars going toward that cause.

Council did not vote on the plan at the meeting, instead electing to make the plan “a little more bulletproof,” as Councilman Ed Terry said. Regardless, it’s good to see the Town recognizing a problem and taking steps to remedy the situation now, before it becomes a much bigger one for some unsuspecting town resident(s) in the future.