Selma’s annual summer hire program wrapped up last week and the former employees are getting rave reviews. 

The program provided jobs for 219 workers over the course of two months and placed its workers in a bevy of different locations, some of which weren’t affiliated with city government.

City personnel director Val Jones said it was the largest program in her 13 years with the city. Jones attributed the size of the program to the city’s decision to split workers into two separate sessions.

None of the workers from the first session were re-hired for the second session, Jones said. The first session ran from June 3 to June 30. The second session started on July 7 and ended July 31. Both Jones and Selma Mayor George Evans said they repeatedly received positive reviews from city department heads about the summer hire employees.

“We received very excellent reports on the work ethic of the summer hire youth,” Evans said. “You always have one or two that come to work late, but as a whole, I would say that 95 percent of the children that were hired this summer were reliable and did a good job.”

The Selma  Fire Department is even keeping one of its summer hire employees for the fall.

Cadrica Halie, who worked as a secretary in the fire chief’s office, plans to stay with the fire department in the fall as its full-time secretary is on maternity leave.

“It’s something that I kind of wanted to do,” Halie said about her work in the summer hire program.

But summer hire work wasn’t just limited to clerical work.

Mike Pettaway, who runs the city’s Cemetery Department said the summer workers allowed him to get significantly more work done.

“If I didn’t have them, I don’t know if would have been able to keep up with the demand that I had for work,” Pettaway said. “There’s always going to be some grass that needs cutting. I had a nice group of young men and girls.”

Other summer hire locations included the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, Selma Police Department and Selma Water Works and Sewer Board.

Each summer hire session included an orientation session, with speakers from Selma City Schools, Selma Career Center, Alabama Cooperative Extension and Rural Health Medical Program.

The orientations addressed topics such as developing a budget for income and workplace etiquette.

Jones said it’s possible for a summer hire or temporary employee to eventually be hired full-time. Though hiring summer employees is not common occurrence, Jones said.

Selma’s summer youth program was largely funded through $75,000 in city government finances. Selma City Schools funded the program to the tune of $10,000 and the Selma Housing Authority donated $2,000.

Private businesses and individuals rounded out the list of donations.

Jones said the total amount of money contributed to the program was about $106,000.

Each summer hire employee earned $7.25 per hour and worked four, four-hour days per week.

Evans said he would like to see the program, which has been around since former Selma mayor Joseph Smitherman’s time in office, continued in summer 2015.

“I think that it should be continued for a lot of reasons — it gives them good work habits, the responsibility of being on time and being reliable,” he said. “I have no doubt that we should continue to do it. For right now I can’t say that we will be able to increase the funding to hire more children.”