Employees in the City of Williamsport contribute a low amount of their paychecks toward their health insurance coverage compared to the national average, a financial analyst said.

“Your contributions here are really low,” said Gordon Mann, managing director, PFM, Philadelphia, a company with experts in municipal government financial management that was hired to help the city with its five-year strategic management plan.

“Even from a ‘Northeast Pennsylvania is always lower than everyone else’ (perspective), you are low on that list,” he said recently.

Reasons might be what the firm typically hears such as wages are low, so they balance that out with the benefit.

In a municipality, there are three ways to reduce health insurance costs: First, change what type of plan people have (HMOs and PPOs to high deductible plans); second, change the plan design, or co-insurance and deductibles, and lastly, from a more easy-to-calculate perspective, is for employees, through their paycheck — known as a premium contribution — to contribute more.

From a cost-saving measure, there is an opportunity to adjust that from where it is now at 1 to 3%, or $20, to 5%, he explained.

“You have a lot of room; it could come up before it gets close to the national average,” Mann said.

The national average, not just for Williamsport, nor the public sector, is about $53 every two weeks, or 16% of health insurance costs or $242 every two weeks, or 25% of the family coverage.

“Not close,” Mann said.

If the city is looking at reducing personnel costs by $300,000, one chunk of that pie could be changing the employee contribution to 5 %, acknowledging that any potential change must be negotiated and in that sense can’t be done immediately. He noted in a previous part of his report to council that the gap could also be closed through attrition and not filling positions in public safety and public works departments once they are gone through retirement or an employee leaves.

Overall, he added, the city health insurance costs are growing at an “incredibly low rate.” Meaning – the city is doing a good job in managing the costs, Mann said.

The firm has offered recommendations for city officials to take to draw down an expected budget deficit of at least $3 million, which could be as high as $5.1 million should it remain on its current trajectory without corrective action taken.