Following a Friday legal opinion and Tuesday discussion, the Meridian City Council voted in an emergency meeting Thursday to freeze salaries for 66 employees at Oct. 1 levels. 

The city’s attorneys advised Mayor Percy Bland’s administration that salaries for 66 employees, all of whom had salaries that surpassed the 1991 pay band, violated a state statute that said employee pay had to be established by City Council. 

Ward 1 representative George Thomas repeated his Tuesday commitment not to cut any salaries, regardless of the pay band, because of the commitment the city made to that employee.

“I’m going to vote for this because it’s the only way to freeze the salaries,” Thomas said. 

The order, as worded, gave the council until Jan. 1 to establish and update the 1991 pay bands and consider whether to align salaries closer to the state averages reported in the Mississippi State University Stennis study.

“This is giving us time to really evaluate the Stennis study pay band,” Kim Houston, the representative for Ward 4, said. “We still have 430 other employees we have to address.”

Houston said she hoped that the salaries of other employees, other than the employees already outside of the 1991 pay band, could be discussed at a future work session.

Fannie Johnson, who represents Ward 3, voted against the pay freeze but didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.