<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Friday, March 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Council may pay toward benefits

Members would pay same for health care as nonunion staff

By Andrea Damewood
Published: November 1, 2010, 12:00am

What’s good for city staff is good for the Vancouver City Council, Councilor Jack Burkman says, and he’s proposing he and his colleagues start paying for a share of their health care benefits.

Burkman proposed this month that the city council pay 15 percent of their dependents’ health care premiums, bringing them into line with what nonunion employees pay, and what city officials asked — unsuccessfully — the city’s unionized workers to do.

“We’re asking them to take a reduction, and we weren’t doing anything,” Burkman said. “I didn’t think that was equitable.”

The proposal goes before the council tonight. When Burkman brought it up during a meeting on Oct. 18, the rest of the city council members voiced their support of the plan.

Four of the city’s seven council members use the city-provided benefits, including Burkman, whose wife is also on his plan. The savings to the city by having council members chip in should be just more than $3,500 in 2011, Vancouver Human Resources Director Elizabeth Gotelli said.

The city offers two health plans, one through Blue Cross and another through Kaiser Permanente — paying 15 percent of a policy with one dependent will cost $83.63 a month on the former and $62.34 a month on the latter, she said.

Should the council members approve a new benefits package for themselves tonight, they will be in line with all nonrepresented and management employees.

City officials attempted to reopen negotiations with union-represented employees this summer to ask that they pay for 15 percent of their benefits as well, which was expected to save $1.1 million next year, Gotelli said.

Those negotiations did not result in any increased premium payments.

The city’s unionized workers — who represent about 70 percent of payroll — already pay the equivalent of 10 percent of their dependents’ premiums.

Burkman said he realizes the $3,500 the council will contribute isn’t much, but he does hope that it will help lead by example.

“It’s all about asking city employees to participate more fully, and the council’s not participating at all; as a leader, I think that’s inappropriate,” he said. “It comes out of my pocket. I’d prefer it didn’t, but we don’t give staff a choice, so we shouldn’t have it either.”

The council also gave up pay increases on their part-time salaries this year, based on a recommendation of the city’s Salary Review Commission. Mayor Tim Leavitt earns $2,200 a month; Mayor Pro Tempore Larry Smith gets $2,000; and the rest of the council is paid $1,781 for their part-time public service positions.

Loading...