County employees with dependents will be paying less in health insurance next year. The Commissioners Court voted Tuesday to increase the county’s portion of dependent health insurance coverage for employees.
The county has been covering 40 percent and next year will cover 50 percent of the dependent health care. There are 72 employees that currently have dependent health care through the county with another six employees hired after the policy eliminating dependent health care for county employees was initiated a year ago that could be included if they take the county’s health insurance for their children. The raising of the county’s portion in the coverage will mean between a $64,000 to $84,500 increase in the prospective budget for next year.
The Court voted on a motion by Commissioner Jody Crump to keep the split the same at 60/40 which was defeated 3 to 2, Commissioner Barry Burton joining Crump. Another motion was made by Commissioner John Gothia (right) for the 50/50 split and the members voted in favor of it with County Judge Dean Crooks (left) and Commissioner Johnny Trahan also voting to approve it.
The Commissioners Court voted to retain the current vacation policy. Crump and Burton voted to keep the policy and were outvoted by the other three members. The decision was to ask Human Resources Director Lori Ardoin to write a new vacation policy. Ardoin promised to have the policy prepared for the Court to vote on it at the meeting in two weeks.
Much of the two-hour long meeting was taken up discussing nine reclassification requests. The Commissioners held a workshop previously to discuss the reclassification’s and much of the same discussions from then followed in Tuesday’s meeting. The Court approved six of the nine reclassifications.
The Commissioners Court approved Emergency Management Coordinator Joel Ardoin to submit application for both a Regional Homeland Security Grant and for the Local Emergency Planning Committee Grant through the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Ardoin already submitted the application for the second grant last Friday since that was the deadline for applying.
Another opportunity for citizens to meet with case managers to discuss recovering from Tropical Storm Harvey will be held Thursday, August 9, in Vidor at the Raymond Gould Community Center. The case managers will meet with Harvey survivors between 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM.
County Judge Dean Crooks did announce the county’s preliminary budget for next year has been prepared. He plans to distribute copies of the budget for citizens to review as early as Wednesday morning, August 8.
-Dan Perrine, KOGT-
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