Kentucky City Hall Protects Employees with Security Enclosure

A clear, protective enclosure is being installed this week in the first-floor lobby of Owensboro City Hall as a precautionary measure to protect citizen-service representatives.

• By Jessica Davis
• Mar 22, 2019

Owensboro City Hall is installing a clear, protective enclosure in the first-floor lobby of its building this week. City officials said the enclosure is a precautionary measure to protect citizen-service representatives from potentially disgruntled customers.

According to Owensboro City Clerk Beth Cecil, who supervises the city’s three part-time citizen service reps, she doesn’t know of any major employee safety problems. However, she wants to ensure those employees are safe in case an issue arises.

"We're doing this out of an abundance of caution," Cecil said. "It's precautionary. We do sometimes have citizens who come in and are disgruntled about a variety of things. I thought it would be a good idea to keep those employees behind a barrier in case things were to get out of hand."

Citizen-service representatives at City Hall are CityAction employees who are responsible for fielding complaints, answering questions and directing citizens to the correct departments.

Owensboro contracted with Kentucky Mirror & Plate Glass Co. to install the glass enclosure, separated on the east side of the lobby with a door. The city’s Finance and Support Services Department tax counter on the north side of the lobby is already separated from the public by a glass enclosure.

Assistant City Manager Lelan Hancock said the Finance and Support Services Department tax counter has experienced issues with particularly angry visitors before. In those situations, CSRs are exposed, he said.

"Sometimes people are upset about the taxes they pay," Hancock said. "Some people have become absolutely irate. It's certainly not common, but, for the protection of the employee who may be dealing with those people, we decided this was the safest step."