{"id":17345,"date":"2024-06-21T07:16:24","date_gmt":"2024-06-21T11:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=17345"},"modified":"2024-06-21T07:16:25","modified_gmt":"2024-06-21T11:16:25","slug":"insurance-hike-looms-over-new-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/21\/insurance-hike-looms-over-new-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Insurance hike looms over new budget"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By BOB SHRALUKA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WZBD.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year isn’t half over but talks already are underway among Decatur officials on a 2025 budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what looks to be a big sticking point is an expected large hike in insurance rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Dan Rickord informed city council at its meeting Tuesday night that an insurance increase \u201cis coming.\u201d Later during a discussion, he remarked: \u201cInsurance is going to be a bigger hit than we’ve seen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two biggest items in a city budget are employee pay and insurance costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clerk-treasurer Kevin Hackman sparked the discussion by asking council for a tentative number for city employee raises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
HACKMAN<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would like to get your thoughts so I can begin plugging in some (budget) numbers,\u201d Hackman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

City workers got a 3% pay hike for this year and were given a dollar amount (rather than a percentage) the previous year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rickord noted that the city has absorbed insurance increases for years, rather than pass them on to city workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProbably every meeting between now and October there will be some discussions on the budget,\u201d Hackman added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Department heads are already getting together their numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although no decision was made, Councilman Matt Dyer reminded his colleagues that talks have been going on for a year or more about the need for a new building, mainly to house vehicles and store various items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city sold its building on Grant St. to Adams County will over a year ago. With permission from the county, however, a number of city items remain in the building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the discussion wound down, Councilman Tyler Fullenkamp called for doing budget planning with a 3% employee raise in mind. That number can be altered later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By BOB SHRALUKA WZBD.com The year isn’t half over but talks already are underway among Decatur officials on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,15,21],"class_list":["post-17345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-decatur","tag-featured","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}