The Waynesboro City Council decided Monday night to enact a 45-day employee hiring freeze across the board.

Although the city is in good shape financially at this time, council members say they're concerned about the economy and want to be extra cautious. However, the freeze could affect public safety departments, such as the police, which could end up being a problem.

Deputy Chief William Maki says, "Being fully staffed is a good position for us, and we are working to try and get ourselves back to a position of being fully staffed."

Maki says the freeze could have no effect if the staff stays intact, but there's still a chance it could.

"If it turns out that we lose somebody and can't hire, that can be more difficult because it usually takes me about ten months from the time I take an application to the point that I can release a person from field training," says Maki.

Maki says the selection process is built around three training academies, interviews, testing, and background checks. Even when an officer is hired, he or she still has a lot to learn to do fieldwork. He says a hiring freeze would set back this process even further.

Councilwoman Lorie Smith says, "I think a hiring freeze, if we get through this 45-day period and we need to implement a hiring freeze with regard to specific departments, we'll have better information at that point to move forward with."

Smith was opposed to a 90-day hiring freeze because she wanted to keep evaluating it's effectiveness.

She says, "We don't want to lose any traction there. Public safety is a paramount component of the service delivery that we are mandated to provide, so we want to hold that harmless long term."

Maki says, "Everybody is facing challenges right now, so it would be unreasonable for us to expect not to have to work through this along with everyone else."

Maki says the city did allow police to hire an additional person to replace two officers serving overseas, so they have a bit of a head start. However, the freeze would probably eliminate their ability to get an officer into one of the training academies.