Health insurance costs will rise for City of Daphne employees

By Crystal Cole
Posted 8/24/16

Higher health insurance costs will soon hit the City of Daphne’s employees, as the city council voted last week to increase the amount of employee participation in the city’s insurance …

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Health insurance costs will rise for City of Daphne employees

Posted

Higher health insurance costs will soon hit the City of Daphne’s employees, as the city council voted last week to increase the amount of employee participation in the city’s insurance coverage.

Council members said they didn’t really want to have to increase costs on the city’s employees, but that their hands were tied by an unexpected large rate increase.

“We recently received word that the cost of health benefits was going to be increased by around 30 percent,” Councilman Robin LeJeune said. “We expected an increase but not by that much.”

LeJeune said the city had expected an almost 10 to 15 percent increase this year, but that the 30 percent they were told took them completely by surprise.

“We’ve had to make hard decisions, and that isn’t’ something we’re taking lightly,” LeJeune said. “It’s looking like costs will go up around $5.50 for single employees and somewhere around $30 to $37 more for family coverage.”

Other council members agreed they weren’t happy with having to change the level of employee participation, but said it was something that had to be done.

“We’re really trying to limit the amount it affects the employees, but it’s something we have to look at and deal with because of the large increase that hit us this year,” Lejeune said.

Councilman Ron Scott said the new percentage city employees would have to pay in to use the city’s insurance would hopefully be able to stay the same so that if rates came down, the employees would not have to pay as much in.

“We’re using the same percentage of participation for the employees,” Scott said. “Our employee participation will stay at that certain percentage and hopefully, as our rates go down eventually, the amount the employees have to pay in will also go down.”

The council unanimously approved the participation rate changes.

The council also postponed taking action on an ordinance that sought to regulate how drivers for companies like Uber would be regulated in the town.

LeJeune and Scott said they would prefer to see the council send a registered letter to Uber’s legal team for the ordinance they were proposing.

“I want to make sure we get input from Uber before we do this so that we know we’re crafting something that will actually work for us,” LeJeune said.

LeJeune asked that if and when the company responded that the ordinance be sent back to committee for further review and revision.

The council agreed to the proposal.