Queensbury becoming safer for town workers

June 14--QUEENSBURY -- Making the town a safer place to work is now helping the town financially, too.

The town's workers' compensation insurance is going down 13 percent, about $100,407 less than last year's bill.

Liability and property insurance costs are going down, too. A few years ago, the town's claims were high, with many workers injured, and the town was paying $298,000 in liability insurance. That has been going down steadily, and the new bill will be $162,000 when the town renews the policy on July 1.

The savings are an acknowledgement of a bigger success: workers aren't getting hurt as often.

A few years ago, some workers ended up having surgery from simple mistakes. The biggest error: they would try to lift something that was just too heavy. The town has machinery to help, but some workers would try to do it by themselves anyway.

Now workers have started using equipment that was designed to help them lift heavy loads. They have also started following, at the very least, the minimum safety requirements for each piece of machinery.

In the next 12 months, Supervisor John Strough said he would focus on reducing injuries among volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers.

"They've been good," he said of their accident rates. "But there's been a little rise lately. Conversations have started with fire and EMS."

Considering the town's history, it is still not as safe as other towns of the same size. Insurance carriers consider the town to be 27 percent more dangerous than similar towns. But that's a huge improvement from a few years ago, when the town was considered 50 percent more dangerous.

Officials from Perma, which insures the town for workers' compensation claims, got involved as soon as the town switched to Perma in 2014. They joined the safety committee. They also told the town exactly what it should do to try to make work safer, and they still go over every claim with the town, searching for ways to prevent that accident in the future.

That level of openness and willingness to listen to insurance companies has also won the town lower rates.

"You do things right," Marshall & Sterling Vice President Ken Gray told the Town Board at Monday's workshop meeting. His company shopped around for quotes for the town for liability, property and cyber liability insurance. Perma was the lowest quote for workers' compensation insurance, and Gray recommended keeping the town's current general liability and property insurer, Trident, which was also the lowest quote in that category.

"We talked to Trident. They're very impressed with all the risk-management programs you have," he said.

Between all the policies, the town will save $110,455 over the next 12 months.

You can reach Kathleen Moore at 742-3247 or kmoore@poststar.com. Follow her on Twitter @ByKathleenMoore or at her blog on www.poststar.com.

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