CASH LURE proposed for vaccinations.
Fayetteville jump sought by official
FAYETTEVILLE — Lottery tickets. Hunting and fishing licenses. Pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes. Driving a couple laps on the Talladega Speedway. Cities and states have become increasingly creative to encourage people to get a covid-19 vaccine.
A Fayetteville City Council member hopes cold, hard cash will do the trick.
Matthew Petty said he wants to use a portion of the $17.9 million the city is receiving from the American Rescue Plan for a voluntary cash incentive program for private businesses to get their employees vaccinated. The city would match $50 for every $50 an employer would provide to an employee to get vaccinated, bringing the total to $100 for each worker.
Petty said he hopes to bring the council a proposal by its Aug. 17 meeting, although there are logistical details to work out. He said he doesn’t have a specific dollar amount in mind but would want to discuss a range with his fellow council members.
President Joe Biden has encouraged state and local governments to use their share of American Rescue Plan money for just such a program — giving $100 to people who get fully vaccinated. Biden made the announcement days after Petty floated the idea before the city’s Advertising and Promotion Commission, of which he also is a member.
Petty said he got the idea after talking with employees and business owners in the service industry who have frequent, direct interaction with the public.
“People who aren’t vaccinated right now aren’t necessarily objecting out of ideology,” he said.
Some people haven’t gotten a shot as a matter of convenience or fear of missing a day of work, Petty said. A $100 incentive could be enough to convince those on the fence, he said.
The delta variant is the predominant strain of covid-19 in the region, as it is in the United States, according to health professionals. The variant is far more
transmissible than previous strains of covid-19 with more severe symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 43% of 432,007 residents 12 and older in Benton and Washington counties are fully vaccinated, according to the Arkansas Department of Health. Another 11% or so have received one shot of a two-dose vaccine.
In the state, nearly 43% of more than 2.5 million people 12 and older are fully vaccinated, with another 13% partially immunized.
There are about 53,800 workers in Fayetteville, according to the city’s Economic Vitality Department. The University of Arkansas is the largest employer with about 4,900 employees in the city.
University spokesman Mark Rushing said the institution isn’t offering cash incentives for employees to get vaccinated. However, the university is working on such a program for students to be announced soon.
Fayetteville started offering a $50 incentive to city employees in April. Rogers offered $125 to employees starting in May. Benton County Judge Barry Moehring proposed paying county employees $100 to get a shot, but the Quorum Court rejected the proposal in June.
Fayetteville’s incentive program ended in June. To qualify, staff members self-reported receiving their shots by June 11. The total amount the city spent on the program was $37,859 for 466 employees. Each employee received $50, and the city paid the taxes on the amounts.
Rogers’ incentive program ended Aug. 1. The city spent $39,500 to pay 316 employees $125 each. Employees paid taxes on the amounts, like with other income.
THEN AND NOW
Some Fayetteville restaurant owners have tried incentive programs of their own. Todd Martin, owner of Southern Food Company and East Side Grill in Fayetteville and Theo’s in Fayetteville and Rogers, started offering a $50 incentive to employees in April when hospitality workers became eligible for shots. Response was strong early on but waned, he said.
Martin upped the amount last week to $100 in hopes of catching the last few holdouts. He gave an additional $50 to those who received their vaccinations before. About three quarters of his 125-employee workforce is fully vaccinated.
Martin said he plans to suspend his program by the end of the month. If the city helps with matching the amounts, he’d probably be able to keep it going, he said.
There’s a financial concern for the business in addition to the concern for the health and well-being of his employees, Martin said. The CDC recommends fully vaccinated people who are exposed to covid-19 wear a mask in public, monitor their condition and get tested after three to five days if they show symptoms. Unvaccinated people exposed to covid-19 need to quarantine for two weeks and get tested.
The investment to ensure Martin has more vaccinated than unvaccinated employees is worth it, he said.
“That’s a huge difference,” he said. “If I have a bunch of unvaccinated employees, and they don’t even get it, but are exposed, I may lose the ability to have enough staff to run the business.”
Martin acknowledged some employees oppose the vaccine regardless of incentives. He said he has no intention of firing those people but wants to do his best to educate and motivate them to get the shot.
The best way out of the pandemic is through vaccination, Martin said. If money talks, so be it, he said.
MOVING THE NEEDLE
About one-third of more than 7,000 unvaccinated people surveyed by the University of California, Los Angeles said a cash incentive would make them more likely to get a shot, according to a New York Times report. Some states and cities have taken that carrot-over-the-stick approach. The jury is still out on the effectiveness.
In May, West Virginia offered $100 savings bonds or gift cards to people 16 to 35 years old. Gov. Jim Justice said more than 20,000 people registered for the program two weeks into it. However, numbers on the program’s efficacy haven’t been released, according to the Mountain State Spotlight, a nonprofit local news site in West Virginia.
New York City last week began offering a $100 prepaid card to those who get their first shot at certain vaccination sites, according to Forbes.
In the private sector, grocery store chain Kroger saw the number of vaccinated employees move from about half to about three quarters since offering a $100 incentive in February, according to a White House news release.
Montine McNulty, chief executive officer of the Arkansas Hospitality Association, said there’s a lot of pressure on the industry to keep people safe. She said she hadn’t heard talks of a statewide cash-incentive program. But if a city wants to start one, and it’s even partially successful, it could help save lives and livelihoods, she said.
The vaccination rate among hospitality workers could be better, McNulty said. Restaurants are looking for new hires, and offering cash to get a vaccine may help attract more to the workforce, she said.
“The rise of the delta is another crisis that we have to deal with, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to go away,” McNulty said. “I think anything they can do will help.”
Representatives of Fort Smith, Springdale, Rogers and Bentonville said the cities haven’t discussed providing a matching incentive for businesses to pay their employees for vaccination. In Fayetteville, the idea has the backing of the city’s Advertising and Promotion Commission and Chamber of Commerce.
“We think it’d be a wise use of those funds, and we think it would be beneficial,” Chamber President Steve Clark said.
The city’s chief financial officer, Paul Becker, said the challenge with such a program would be working out the details. Even if a cash-incentive program for businesses is an allowed use of American Rescue Plan money, there are still reporting and tracking requirements, he said. The city also would need to work out who would do what duties to implement the program and how the money would be delivered to those receiving it.
“It sounds like something that could be accommodated, but it would depend on the details,” Becker said. “The devil’s always in the details.”
Petty said he plans to speak with the city administration to iron out the details.
The biggest risk involved with the program is time, Petty said. Hospitals in the region are hitting a critical point in their ability to care for people as the disease takes a toll on the unvaccinated, he said.
“As it takes us longer to get enough people vaccinated and reach that herd immunity — every week that goes by along the way means dozens or hundreds of more lives,” Petty said. “It’s not enough to just say it’ll eventually happen.”