Lifetime Health Insurance Taken Off Table

Feb. 16--LOCKPORT -- The Common Council OK'd an employment contract with the new city clerk Wednesday, after striking a tentative offer of lifetime free health benefits for Richelle Pasceri were she to hit the 20-year mark as a city employee.

Objections to the lifetime benefit apparently were raised when the aldermen met in executive session to go over contract terms. As it turns out, grant of the benefit would have been forbidden by the terms of February 2002 Council resolution denying lifetime city-paid health coverage to future non-union employees, City Attorney John Ottaviano said.

Non-union employees including the city clerk, Civil Service secretary and attorneys all have employment contracts with the city. Benefits including health insurance and paid time off roughly mirror what unionized employees receive. The contracts generally are modeled after agreements struck with the city department heads' union.

Pasceri was appointed the city clerk by Mayor Michael Tucker on Jan. 3, to fill the unexpired term of retired clerk Dick Mullaney. The approved employment contract is effective through June 30, after which Tucker could reappoint Pasceri, or appoint someone else, to a five-year term and work out a new employment contract.

The city clerk's salary is $55,000. Like all city employees, Pasceri is not eligible for 10 days of paid vacation time until she's worked one year for the city; her time as 1st Ward alderman does not count in computation of service time, Ottaviano said.

Pasceri said Council objections to the lifetime health benefit in her contract were not unexpected.

As a former alderman, she said, "I understand more than anybody why that (benefit) would not be good. ... If I was a Council member, I'd object, too."

In other business Wednesday, the Council approved creation of a new city job title, code compliance technician. The full-time job is to be filled by Robert Turner, currently the mayor's community services aide in charge of enforcing sidewalk-to-curb laws including the refuse-and-recycling law.

Turner, as a code compliance technician, will remain in charge of enforcing sidewalk-to-curb regulations and will take on some housing inspection duties in addition. He'll be an employee in the building inspection department. His salary, approved by the Council last fall during 2012 budget passage, is $36,699. The part-time community services aide position and budget line were zeroed out.

___

(c)2012 the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal (Lockport, N.Y.)

Visit the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal (Lockport, N.Y.) at lockportjournal.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services