The City of Fishers expects to pay $1 million more in 2017 for employee health care, resulting in the mayor asking his department heads to submit mostly flat budget proposals, with no other increased spending from 2016 to 2017.

“The biggest challenge this year for us is health care,” City Controller Oscar Gutierrez said. “The health care for employees continues to rise.  As we have an aging population of employees, the cost of health care continues to rise.”

Mayor Scott Fadness does not intend to lower the level of health services provided by the city to its workers, according to Gutierrez.  The mayor also does not plan to increase employee contributions toward their health coverage.

Gutierrez says the city is planning on the one million dollar health care increase in 2017.

“That is a significant amount when you are budgeting for future years,” said Controller Gutierrez .  “I can say the mayor does plan on increasing our health care budget by $1 million next year to keep (health care services) even, so that takes away from other things that we can do.”

$1 million dollars would pay for 2 or 3 additional police officers, or could finance more firefighters and additional public safety vehicles, according to Gutierrez.

One way to control costs would allow city workers to become better health care customers.

Gutierrez provided an example of a city employee in need of an MRI.  “Rather than going to get an MRI anywhere, is it more efficient to look at the cheapest place to get an MRI?” he asked.  “If you have 3 or 4 different hospital providers and one of them is the cheapest, the MRI will be a professionally-done MRI no matter where you go.”

More details of the mayor’s proposed 2017 city budget is expected to be revealed at a special meeting of the City Council Finance Committee August 17th.

Gutierrez’ quoted remarks in this story are taken from a LarryInFishers Podcast recorded and uploaded August 11th.   You can access the entire podcast at this link