Palmer mulls budget

PALMER — With an increase in health insurance costs looming, the city of Palmer is working through its 2014 budget with a final vote scheduled for Dec. 10.

“Palmer still has really exceptional health care,” Palmer Mayor DeLena Johnson said.

“We have zero employee contribution, zero deductible and last year we changed it from a 90/10 to 80/20 as far as co-pay.”

City Manager Doug Griffin says in a memo that accompanied the budget he sent to city council that the city’s health care provider has notified him the city’s rates will increase 15 percent to 20 percent.

To counteract that, Griffin proposes retaining the zero employee contribution, but asking for a monthly contribution of $152.80 for an employee who wants to insure his or her spouse, $134.80 for an employee with children and $292.74 for employees who want to insure their families.

“In these economic circumstances, a daunting expense for the city remains the cost of the health insurance benefit it provides to all full-time employees,” Griffin says in the memo.

Other than that, Johnson said, there really aren’t a whole lot of major changes to the budget. Sales tax is up 3 percent this year. The state isn’t increasing its contributions to the city and the Mat-Su Borough decreased $45,000 the funds it used to transfer to Palmer from revenue collected from motor vehicle taxes.

Overall, the city proposes to spend $14,118,392 over the course of 2014, drawn from $14,544.257 in revenues.

The various city departments are all seeing slight decreases or slight increases. One part-time position at the library is proposed to go full-time. Griffin also has budgeted in a part-time superintendent for the city’s airport, something the mayor says she would support.

Other than those small changes, though, the budget’s expenditures and revenues are fairly flat. That could change, however, as the council is still debating the budget. There’s a meeting scheduled for tonight to go over it yet again.

“I would like to see our top level of employees maybe hold the line on their pay increases, but I guess I got voted down on that,” Johnson said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.