Health Insurance

Working on health care insurance today. As we have talked before we are working on lowering our 18% premium increase. This is a key issue that needs to get resolved. We are looking at more cost sharing with our employees as the City Taxpayer can not continue to absorb the increased cost. We have an excellent insurance plan that the City has carried and I believe we will be able to continue with our plan but we will need to share more of the cost of this plan as is the norm.

We have a small group of employees and face the same insurance issues that small and medium sized businesses face - our premiums can jump with one costly claim. The previous options we have looked at did not result in any savings and most disappointing was the possible co-op that actually would have cost more.

As always I will update you as we move through this issue. We also start negotiations with our Police and Public Works Unions in the next few weeks.