7 July 2025
By Aliana Mediratta
Contributing Writer
(Veritenews.org) — After bureaucratic issues delayed paychecks for dozens of lifeguards and summer camp counselors in June, the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission told city councilmembers at a meeting on Wednesday (July 2) that the issue has been largely resolved.
According to the presentation from Larry Barabino Jr., CEO of NORD, and members of the Chief Administrative Office, 57 of their 77 seasonal workers did not receive timely payment in mid-June due to communication gaps between NORD and human resources and issues with onboarding. Most have been paid since, but eight employees are still awaiting paychecks that were slated to arrive before July 4.
“I appreciate that we found a solution going forward, I do think there needs to be a more aggressive, effort to resolve these problems because something like this seems to happen every year,” Council President JP Morrell told the presenters.
In the future, NORD will no longer be in charge of the onboarding process, instead delegating the entire process to the city’s human resources department, which will also receive increased seasonal staff to handle summer payroll. Additionally, mandatory checklists will be included to avoid incomplete applications or missing documents, which have historically slowed payments.
“It’s difficult when you have so many different hands involved in this that are not [human resources],” Christina Hamilton, assistant to the chief administrative officer, said. “It’s more fair to everyone for us to separate the duties and have HR only do human resources.”
Councilmember Joe Giarrusso asked the presenters why these details are often being discussed towards the end of the summer rather than ahead of time, referencing payroll issues that caused some teens in the city to get paid later than scheduled in 2023. As a result of that high-profile failure and others, the council pushed for a state audit and, later, an overhaul of the city’s systems for paying vendors and contractors.
“Bureaucracy is the hard part here, so just doing it earlier and making sure all the boxes are checked solves the problem,” Giarrusso said.
According to Barabino, the payment problems that affected teens two summers ago were the result of a completely different issue, primarily incomplete applications. This summer, he added, that process has gone smoothly and the stipends have been allocated.
“In the past, it was summer kids being paid with stipends, which is a different process. These are City of New Orleans transit employees, this [process] consists of making sure they’re having background checks, drug tests, different things like that,” he said
Hamilton did not elaborate on what the miscommunications between NORD and the human resources department were when asked by Verite News, stating that there were a range of general miscommunications that affected payroll.
Morrell added that he views it as essential to make sure workers are being paid, especially when they are teenagers who are gaining their first real job experience.
“For many of these kids, their first job is this, and it leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth when a kid’s first job experience is a disappointment,” he said. “You don’t want some young person, this is their first time putting the work in to get that first paycheck, and we mess up so they don’t get paid.
This article originally published in the July 7, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.