(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
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Former EMS director sues City of Eldridge for alleged wage-and-hour violations • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]
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Date: 2025-04-16
The former EMS director for the city of Eldridge is now suing the city for allegedly failing to pay her almost $100,000 in earned wages.
Maile Carter served as the director of emergency medical services in Eldridge from March 2020 through August 2023. In her recently filed lawsuit against the city, she alleges that at the beginning of her employment, City Clerk Chandra Kyte informed her she did not need to track her hours because she would be a salaried employee and exempt from overtime pay, so her timecard should always show 40 hours worked regardless of her actual hours.
Carter alleges that she was on call, responding to emergency calls, or on the work schedule, nearly all week, every week, to ensure that there was adequate coverage for emergency response teams. She alleges she was never “off the clock,” always had her pager on, and was required to restrict her movements to a limited geographic area so she could respond immediately to emergency calls.
She left her job with the city in August 2023 and alleges that in June 2024 she discovered the city had misclassified her and other city employees as salaried employees, rather than hourly employees eligible for overtime pay.
According to the lawsuit, Carter then worked with the city’s mayor pro tem and the head of the city’s finance committee, Carey Callaway Morton, to determine her actual hours worked. They allegedly determined Carter was owed, conservatively, at least $95,000 in unpaid wages.
At around that same time, the city council allegedly acknowledged it had failed to pay its current chief of police and Carter’s successor as EMS director overtime dating back to June 2022. The two were awarded lump sum payouts of $35,569 and $12,557, respectively.
Despite that, the lawsuit claims, the city has refused to approve the payment of overtime for Carter. According to the lawsuit, the city doesn’t deny it owes Carter unpaid wages but has placed the burden of proving the hours worked on Cater.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, seeks unspecified damages for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Iowa Wage Payment Collection Law.
The city has yet to file a response.
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