City to hike employee insurance contribution
City Councilwoman
Cox said the current ratio was established long before the current administration took office.
"...[T]he buck has just been passed and the can has been kicked down the road for years," she said. "So now we are forced to take a 5-percent contribution rate to more like 15 or 20 with the rest of the world and we're going to feel a whole lot of hurt from that because it hasn't been adjusted."
Officials decided they want to see employees' contribution eventually rise to 20 percent. How fast it gets there was the source of some debate.
"If we have to go
Morris went on to propose increasing employees' contribution from 5 percent to 6 percent next year.
That would take a single employee's medical insurance contribution from
The same kind of employee is charged about triple that at
"
Popejoy proposed increasing city employees' contribution to 10 percent next year.
But Morris pointed to the family medical insurance rate for city employees, which at 10 percent would mean paying an extra
"I'm just saying that I think as a city in order to take care of our employees the way they need to be taken care of, we can give them a year," Morris said. "Do I think 10 percent is an unreasonable rate? No, but I think the time frame we're doing it in is."
City Councilman
"We're not running a private company, we're running a city," he said. "We take that money out of the general fund, that's money we're not using for the other 18,000 citizens. So, I apologize to the employees but we got to do the unpopular thing."
Council members met in the middle of Morris' and Popejoy's suggestions by deciding to raise the employee contribution to 7.5 percent next year with the intention of eventually reaching 20 percent in the future.
Officials also discussed parting ways with their current insurance provider and joining a health insurance trust that spreads costs over a large pool of members, which would be beneficial for
Leaders are also considering further savings for the city by no longer offering insurance to retirees who retire after the end of this year.
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