Wage, insurance increases detailed for Holton employees

Health and life insurance premi­ums are going up for Holton city employees in 2016 — and so are their wages.

During the Holton City Commis­sion’s meeting on Tuesday, com­missioners approved insurance contracts with Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Kansas for fiscal year 2016, noting that the overall price of premiums will increase by 7.57 percent, as Holton City Manager Bret Bauer noted.

Commissioners also approved a 3-percent across the board wage and salary increase for all city em­ployees, with that increase to be split accordingly for full-time and part-time employees. The wage and salary increase, commissioners noted, was similar to an increase approved last year.

Bauer told commissioners the in­surance premium increase, “across the different categories of insurance available,” would reflect no changes in the city’s insurance policies because the city has “the ability and the option to stay grandfathered in” with the policies. That means that under the terms of the Affordable Care Act, the city could keep an existing policy in effect from previous years.

The city wasn’t aware a year ago whether it would be able to keep its current policies, he said, due to is­sues with ACA. This year, he said, BC/BS officials informed Bauer that the city “could, if we so choose to,” keep its insurance policy in place, even though it has been re­ported that the posssibility of “grandfathering” health insurance policies in 2017 is questionable.

The in­surance premium bill for the city came in at approximately $517,399, up $35,990 from last year. At that time, insurance premiums cost the city $481,409, with commissioners noting a 5.56-percent increase in premium costs.

Holton City Clerk Teresa Riley also noted that as in previ­ous years, the city will pay 85 per­cent of health insurance premium costs, with each city employee responsible for the remaining 15 percent.

“If we maintain those percent­ages, both sides will pay more,” Riley said. “And you have to maintain the same percentage pay­ment — otherwise, if we change it, we can’t be grandfathered in.”

Life insurance premiums for city employees are paid by the employees, and Bauer noted that monthly cost will go from $5 per employee in FY 2015 to $5.60 in FY 2016.

On the wage side, commission­ers approved an overall wage in­crease that would represent an across-the-board cost of living ad­justment (COLA) of 3 percent. Bauer said the amount equates to an hourly wage increase of 65 cents for permanent full-time employees, 20 cents per hour for permanent part-time employees and a 5-per­cent flat increase for the city com­mis­sioners, city attorney, city treasurer, fire chief, animal control officer and municipal judge.

The wage increase for permanent full-time city employees to­tals an additional $67,152 cost to the city, Bauer said, while the increases for the part-time positions and the other positions specified above would total $4,960 more for the year. Tuesday’s action marked the second year in a row that a 65-cents-per hour wage increase for full-time workers was approved by the commission.

Riley later said that for fiscal year 2016, personnel expenses are budgeted to be $3,218,017, or 25 percent of the total city budget of $12,818,518.

In fiscal year 2015, personnel expenses amounted to $3,062,484 of the total budget of $12,260,281 — again, 25 percent. The difference in personnel expenses from 2015 to 2016 is an increase of $155,533.

Those amounts for personnel expenses include all liability expenses related to payroll, including unemployment insurance, social security, KPERS payments and health insurance, Riley said.

Commissioner Tim Morris voiced his approval of the hourly wage increase for full-time em­ployees, noting that in the past, the COLA increase was given through a percentage of each employee’s salary, creating a widening dispar­ity between those at either end of the wage scale.

Commissioner Erich Campbell added that he had talked to several city employees about the previously-used percent­age increase, and “not one of them responded well to it.”

Campbell also told Bauer that he wanted to know what city employ­ees thought about the hourly wage increase, and Commissioner Dan Brenner, agreeing with Campbell, asked Bauer to get feedback from city employees over the next year to get an idea of how to handle pay raises in FY 2017.