COVID In Denver: City Council Moves Forward With $400 Bonuses For Vaccinated Employees

DENVER (CBS4)- The Denver City Council is moving forward with a proposal to give $400 bonuses to city employees who received the COVID-19 vaccine. The council still needs to approve the measure at their next meeting.

If the council does approve it, vaccinated employees could see the bonus on their Nov. 26 paychecks.

As of Oct. 1, 98.7% of city and county employees had complied with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

There are 653 employees who received exemptions for religious or medical reasons. Fourteen more are under review.

"Those employees are still eligible for the program, but they have to maintain compliance with the public health order through December 10, and what maintaining compliance means is that during this period of time, they have to not have been disciplined or had disciplinary proceedings initiated against them for failure to comply with the public health order," said one city councilman.

Exempted employees have to comply with a testing requirement to qualify for the bonus. Those employees could receive the money on Dec. 23. The funding for these bonuses comes from the $5 million general fund contingency in the Department of Finance. It applies to full-time, part-time and on-call city employees. Elected officials do not qualify for the bonus.