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BUCKHANNON -- How much should City of Buckhannon employees hired on or after Oct. 1 be required to contribute for family insurance coverage?
During a discussion of the draft ordinance at Tuesday's regular meeting, Buckhannon City Council decided to reconvene the city's insurance committee to have more conversations about what those numbers might be.
Under the draft of Ordinance 437 presented Tuesday night by city attorney Tom O'Neill, the City of Buckhannon will continue to pay 100 percent of the health insurance premium for family coverage for employees hired before Oct. 1.
Mayor David McCauley added that future spouses and future children will also be covered for full-time employees hired before Oct. 1.
O'Neill said for those hired on or after Oct. 1, there are different contribution amounts for employees based on the coverage they choose.
For example, for an employee plus his or her spouse, the employee would be required to contribute $150 per month towards the premium cost as defined in the ordinance.
For an employee plus child, the employee would pay $125 per month and for spouse and child it would be $200 per month.
Councilman Robbie Skinner asked, "How did we come up with those numbers?"
O'Neill said the $150 per month represented approximately a percentage of the amount the city would pay into the claims pool for the person who meets the criteria but said the numbers are placeholders.
Councilman David Thomas said this was the first he heard of a specific amount being in the ordinance and thought it should be a percentage and that he felt new employees needed to be "somewhat responsible" for their insurance.
Thomas said, "I always thought we were going to have an employee pay a portion but we didn't want to be overdoing it either."
Skinner said he understand what director of finance and administration Amberle Jenkins meant about trying to find an appropriate percentage and said in the business world the percentage is typically 80/20 split.
"To your point, Dave Thomas, we have employees not making a whole lot of money," he said. "When you have an employee making under $30,000 a year, and then needing to come up with a few thousand bucks perhaps with their family and themselves for insurance premium- that's prohibitive. They could find another position somewhere else that even if they had to pay a portion of their health insurance, they would make potentially more money."
Skinner said he thought the insurance committee should come together to crunch numbers.
"I don't want to harm future employees, nor do I want to become a place where people do not want to work because it's not feasible for them to work because they can't afford to work here," he said. "We have excellent employees...we want to continue that legacy...we have to be competitive."
Skinner said, "This is a huge philosophical change for an organization to go forth with this. I like that we are taking our time. It's important we take our time. We don't want to screw this up and we don't want to create any fear for our current employees."
O'Neill said the definition of premium is different with the partially self-funded insurance plan.
Under the partially self-funded plan, the City of Buckhannon funds a claims pool that is then drawn down as claims are submitted to the plan.
"We have a back-stop high deductible insurance plan to cover any catastrophic losses, but we don't really pay a premium like you would pay to any other provider out there," he said.
"We are in a position where we are partially funding our own claims."
McCauley said, "I think it's a really excellent first draft."
He suggested the insurance committee meet with O'Neill sometime before next council meeting scheduled for Thursday, July 18.
The insurance committee includes McCauley, Thomas, Skinner, Jenkins and Barb Hinkle.