The Monroe County prison board is looking at the overtime hours for the correctional facility employees.

Warden Gary Haidle said the increase is for several reasons.

“One reason is that the number of inmates needing medical transports to the doctor or the hospital has increased in the past months,” he said.

When you have medical transports, it requires having several guards to ride along to the appointments and hospital visits, so to have enough guards at the correctional facility to keep it safe means asking other guards to work extra hours.

As an example, Haidle said, “We have one inmate that goes to dialysis several times a week.”

But the biggest problem contributing to the increase in overtime is the high number of employee call-offs.

Haidle said from May to July, there were 350 call-offs for illness.

The number of guards is down slightly.

“We have 12 people starting the training class, and once they finish training, we hope to get some from the class and then we won’t be so short-staffed,” he said.

A discussion on offering an incentive program was vetoed because the employees already have an incentive program.

Another suggestion was perhaps Monroe County solicitor John Dunn should send a letter to workers with a high number of call-offs. No immediate decision on how to solve the call-off problem was reached.

Other business

• The board approved the purchase of 200 mattresses at the price of $121 each. Some of the mattresses will replace worn out mattresses. The remaining ones will be stored for the future.

• The jail is free of COVID-19. The warden said while they are still following the safety protocols for the jail, they are starting to open the facility to family members and allow the volunteers to come back into the building.

“We have opened the library, and art lessons will also be starting,” he said.

They will also be starting up some new programs, and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has added additional training for inmates to learn skills that will help them transition into jobs when released.