Newburgh City Council members balk at health insurance proposal

NEWBURGH – The proposed 2018 Newburgh City budget includes tradeoffs to keep expenditures as low as possible.
One of the ways that can be accomplished, according to Manager Michael Ciaravino, is to provide new council members with health insurance only after they serve two full terms – eight years.
That met with staunch opposition from current members during Monday night’s session. Torrance Harvey led the opposition.
“Some of us made a request to increase our salary $1,000 because some of us don’t take health insurance because some of us have full-time jobs in addition to this part-time and he just totally ignored that and it didn’t go in his final proposed budget, but now he is going to take away the opportunity for council members that are coming in to have that option of health insurance,” Harvey said.
City Comptroller Katie Mack noted that with three new council members coming in as of January, health insurance at a cost of $25,000 to $30,000 per member, it would hike spending by as much as $100,000, which means something else would have to be cut from the spending plan.           
Lawmakers must adopt the budget by November 27, but they plan on meeting again before then to tweak it some more.