We are told that they work for the benefits
And I do try to take people at their word when they tell me something....and when necessary, read / listen between the words.
Multiple times as I sat in the BudComm meetings discussing healthcare costs, I heard that these folks (re: support staff) are working for the benefits. OK, I'm trying to believe that, and exactly that! Doesn't that mean then, that the salary is mostly immaterial if benefits are foremost?
Yet, as soon as we did that, asking that they help pay part of the skyrocketing cost of their healthcare, and wishing to make things fairer for the taxpayer that has to not only pay for their own healthcare but also for the SAU employees, we were excoriated! By golly, we were not looking out for the employees!
Let's review the numbers - after all, didn't the School Board make them public by distributing them to the BudComm? The previous plan that the SAU had cost the district / taxpayers (round numbers for a family) was about $7K, or about $134/week. The employee paid the rest (up to a total of $18K for a family indemnity policy). Expensive? Yes!
And the School Board wanted to do the right thing. It's all good so far. The SAU wanted to get a cheaper plan, and did so, if you just looked at the price tag. And ignored how it was implemented
One small problem: in getting the employees to move to this newer policy, the School Board decided that they would subsidize the entire amount.
$129/week for a single plan
$349/week for a family plan
Check that - let me state that another way - the School Board decided that you, the taxpayers, would subsidize the entire amount of the new insurance policy. And this is when BudComm members started having problems.
Do the math - at $349/week for a family policy, that is over $18K / year.
The School Board essentially increased the cost to the taxpayers by 257% ($7K to $18K).
All I heard was that these are the lowest paid people in the SAU....yet not one mention from the School Board of the impact on the individual taxpayer.
Yes, we want to treat the Town's employees well and I want them to have similar benefits to those of us in the private sector....but not treated as a special class of citizen with much higher benefits just because of the old conventional wisdom "public employees get better bennies because of lower pay".
Well, just look here and tell me if salaries are low.
And if the School Board wishes to prove their part of the old "conventional wisdom", put their publicly funded salary & beneifit cost list out there in the public domain....they have a web site.....
Leaving aside the 12% SS taxes, income taxes, other insurance fees, et al, consider this:
If a salary is $18K/yr, the taxpayer cost is $36K/yr (salary + health insurance)
The purpose of the BudComm is to analyze expenses on behalf of the taxpayers' best interest. We are not advocates for a particular department. We are not advocates for a particular special interest or some other sub-group.
The special interest group on Thursday concentrated on the fact that these are good people (I'll accept that), that they do good work (I'll accept that too), and that they earn every dollar they make.
Well, who doesn't? I work hard, and most of the folks that I know that are not retired or disabled work hard too.
I concentrate on the overall cost to the taxpayer.
If you review the law, we are supposed to look out for the taxpayer. Period. Not intentions, not feelings, not emotional appeals, but simply the story that the budget numbers tell (even though some people coming before the BudComm have said otherwise have told me to do otherwise).
Multiplied over the sheer number of people, the above numbers add up to not small numbers that must be paid by taxpayers.
All the BudComm was saying is that this was an expense not best borne entirely by the taxpayer. In this day and age, very few companies absorb the entire cost of employee healthcare - I truly wish I could name one of any size, but I cannot. And even if I could, I DO know that they are a very small minority of companies.
Why should public employees be treated differently than those of us in the in the private sector? Listen to Charlie Arlinghouse of the Josiah Bartlett Center talking about healthcare funding (here, other Meet The New Press podcasts here including him talking about Education Funding here in NH), you will find out that NH state employees have a healthcare policy that costs $22K / year. OUCH!
To make sure that the School Board understood that this was not empty rhetoric, a deduction of about $34K was deducted from the overall School Board budget - calculated by using figures of:
$5 / week for a single plan
$10 / week for a family plan
Consider the bottom line of what the BudComm has done to create the furor:
- Town Budget - slowed its growth rate by $55K out of a budget of $10M (other changes were done to the Town Budget during the process but not directly attributable to the BudComm)
- School Budget - slowed its growth rate by $122K out of a budget of $22M
Those numbers translate to: 0.55% each (really, a coincidence!). All that grief for those small amounts?
Ask yourself as a taxpayer: at those small percentages, has the BudComm gone too far, or not far enough in protecting the taxpayers?
Thursday night, special interests said howled to get the cuts recinded. The Town Budget will be this Tuesdaynig ht (6:30pm at the High School auditorium - be there!)
On the other hand, if you believe that the answer is not far enough, start comparing the proposed budgets to their default budgets. Come to the deliberative session. I can assure you that there will be people willing to put more money into the budgets.
And make sure that you count the cost of all of the warrant articles - add those all in to compute the overall budget - they too will add to the number that you will see when you open that next tax bill envelope.
It is your decision to make - become educated about the budgets. All I ask is that you make the best decision you can for the overall interest of the Town and the taxpayers.
Note: Teachers covered under the current contract do pay some towards their healthcare
