MERIDEN - Instead of paying unemployment for 16 of Meriden's 38 crossing guards this summer, the city paid them to work, finding summer jobs for them in various departments.

The move did not necessarily save money but translated into more productive expenditures, said Finance Director Michael Lupkas. The $20,471.06 spent on paying the crossing guards to work is just about what the city would have spent on their unemployment during the summer months, he said.

The only hiccup in the plan was that the guards' pay came out of the department budgets, such as Engineering and the Public Library. Now Lupkas wants to transfer money from the unemployment account to compensate the various departments.

A resolution to do so is before the City Council and will be discussed by the Finance Committee. Committee Chairman Brian F. Kogut does not anticipate any problems.

"It ended up being a very positive thing," he said of the city offering work to the guards.

Last year was the first summer the city offered employment in lieu of layoffs. Only three took the city's offer but the number has since increased.

Working during the summer is not mandatory, but crossing guards are essentially laid off when school is not in session.

Sue Flynn, a guard at Washington Middle School, worked at the Meriden Public Library both summers, helping to interfile books. She would rather work than collect unemployment during the summer.

"I love working there," Flynn said of the library. "I want them to do it every year."

Other guards worked as staff at city parks and performed clerical tasks in city departments like Management Information Systems Department and Finance.

While Flynn was excited about the employment opportunities for the guards, not everyone shares her enthusiasm.

Local 595 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the city's municipal employees union, filed a grievance this summer over the city's decision to offer guards summer employment, saying that summer jobs should have been offered first to workers who had just been laid off at the start of the new fiscal year. The union saw two part-time employees and one full-time employee lose their jobs.

City Manager Lawrence J. Kendzior has said that the jobs were offered to those workers but that they declined to take them.

Diana Naimo, Local 595's president, said the grievance has not been addressed yet, but that even though summer is over the union remains concerned about the matter and is prepared to see it through.

"It's not a moot point," she said.

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