Rockland to vote on insurance option

ROCKLAND – If city councilors vote next week to offer health insurance to the domestic partners of city employees, the benefit will be paid for by the affected employees.

At their agenda-setting session Monday night, Councilors Mark Curtis, Tom Molloy and Brian Harden indicated that if they vote in favor of the proposal, they would do so only if the increased coverage does not affect the city’s budget.

Currently, the city pays for 85 percent of the cost of health insurance of employees, and employees’ spouses and children. Employees pick up the remaining 15 percent of the insurance cost.

City Manager Tom Hall proposed extending health insurance to employees with same-sex or opposite-sex household partners who are not legally spouses. Employees requested the change in policy.

To become eligible, an employee would have to sign an affidavit attesting that the employee’s partner shared in the responsibility of the household for at least one year.

“If the employees truly want this, then the employee would bear the cost,” Curtis said, an understanding that Molloy and Harden said they shared.

If the domestic partner provision is approved, employees taking advantage of the municipal employee group insurance benefit would still save money, councilors said, because its cost will be less than the cost of individual insurance.

“I was looking for it to be zero-percent increase to the taxpayers of Rockland,” Curtis said.

Hall said he had hoped the council would approve of extending health insurance to the partners of employees while also picking up the same share of the cost as married employees. But he said he was pleased that domestic partners would be able to buy into the reduced group rate.

Councilor Elizabeth Wotton said the discussion of paying for added beneficiaries to the health insurance group should come when the council develops its next budget, not in mid-year.

Also on the agenda for the Jan. 12 meeting:

. Approving five Rockland parcels to a midcoast regional application for a Pine Tree Zone; the parcels are the former Nautica building at the industrial park, the former Central Distributors building on Holmes Street, the grain silo owned by the Passamaquoddy Nation on Atlantic Avenue, the Bonner Vawter/Restoration Associates building on New County Road and the former Bicknell Manufacturing building on Tillson Avenue;

. Designating Maverick Street as Route 17, a change the city requested from the state Department of Transportation in 1994 to redirect tourist traffic away from the residential areas of North Main Street;

. Changes in harbor fees and fish pier fees.