Votes are counted at a 2023 Special Town Meeting
Reminder Publishing file photo
SOUTHWICK — While it’s been nearly three months since the Select Board said it might call a Special Town Meeting to have residents decide if the town can pay more than 50% for town employees health insurance, or even publicly discuss the issue at all, Chief Administrative Officer Nicole Parker confirmed to Finance Committee on Nov. 20 that the meeting would be held.
“Is there going to be a Special Town Meeting?” Finance Committee Chair Joseph Deedy asked Parker during the committee meeting. “I’m hearing everything under the sun.”
“There is going to be a Special Town Meeting. Yes, there is,” Parker responded.
“We have to bring this insurance question to the townspeople … we’re looking at mid-January,” she said, adding the Select Board must “formally make the decision,” which it has yet to do or even discuss the subject since a meeting on Sept. 29.
Parker also explained to the committee that she has had to “coordinate” with Moderator Celeste St. Jacques and to make sure Southwick Regional School is available for the meeting.
During a Select Board meeting on Sept. 8, the Fire Department’s Fire Prevention Officer Brian Schneider appeared before the board with a petition signed by 69 town employees and a request to hold a Special Town Meeting for an opportunity to have residents decide if they would contribute more than 50% to covering town employees’ health insurance costs.
There are only a handful of towns throughout the commonwealth that pay the state-mandated minimum of 50% of their employees’ health insurance.
Schneider said at that meeting, it was “no secret” that the town has lost a few employees over the last year, in part, because of the unaffordable health insurance premium, which Deedy spoke to at the committee meeting on Nov. 18.
“I just tell people that as much as you freak out over a dollar or a percentage, you’ve already invested in these … young men and women that work for this town,” he said.
He said whether it is the town paying for the police academy for a potential new police officer, or the fire academy, or licensing for the operators of DPW equipment, “we’re already invested.”
“And we’ve lost some really great people in this town, and I hate to say it, over this healthcare,” Deedy said.
Committee member Karen DeMaio said she recently had a conversation with a young person about their health insurance costs rising.
“They told me how much their insurance bill was going to go up — and it’s ridiculous,” she said.
She said the person told her that because of the increase, they were increasing the number of hours at their part-time job just to make it.
“This person is almost holding down two full-time jobs,” DeMaio said.
At that Sept. 8 meeting, Select Board Chair Diane Gale agreed that the town needed to share more of the burden, which prompted Parker to speak.
“Nobody needs to convince us of this, but I think we need to convince the town because it’s been to one Town Meeting where it failed,” Parker said.
Several years ago, at an Annual Town Meeting, residents voted down a request to increase the town’s contribution to employee health insurance.
Select Board member Douglas Moglin said of the Town Meeting vote that it didn’t fail by much, but there wasn’t a compelling argument made about “how are you going to do this and how are you going to pay for this.”
At that meeting, like the Special Town Meeting in January, the only question that will appear as an article on the warrant is whether they will allow the town to provide more than a 50% contribution or not.
Gale and Parker said at the Sept. 29 meeting they wanted to put a package together to make a presentation at that meeting.
At the Finance Committee meeting on Nov. 17, Parker went into a little detail about that presentation.
“I do have the numbers on the impact of the tax rate and of how much it will cost per percent so people will at least know what it’s going to cost, however many percents we go up,” she said adding that she had already created a small PowerPoint presentation for the meeting and that the Select Board has yet to see it, so it has not been “finalized.”
Before the Finance Committee adjourned, it selected Deedy to remain as chair and elected Robert Horacek as vice chair.
