BELCHERTOWN — Residents at next Monday’s special Town Meeting will discuss the financial transfers and various cuts needed to cover a $911,000 midyear increase in health insurance premiums, which will ensure that municipal employees retain coverage for the rest of the current fiscal year.
At the beginning of August, the 73 units of the Hampshire County Group Insurance Trust approved a 20% hike in premiums for fiscal 2026 to avoid bankruptcy. The trust faced an 80% rise in pharmaceutical claims, draining the trust’s reserves of $20 million to $5 million within six months. The popularity of weight loss drugs — GLP-1 drugs alone cost $1,500 a month for 400 covered individuals — and an increase in oncology prescriptions drove the increased financial pressure.
At a tri-board meeting in September, the Finance Committee, Select Board and School Committee formulated a plan to fund the insurance increase. The Oct. 27 meeting, which beings at 6:30 p.m. in Belchertown High School auditorium, will ask residents to approve putting that plan into action.
“The work that you [Town Manager Steve Williams] and your colleagues have done, especially around the finances and the help that we received from our friends at the school committee really helped save the day,” Select Board Chair Lesa Pearson said during an Oct. 6 Select Board meeting. “We were faced with the unthinkable and we all came together and were able to develop a workable solution.”
Residents will vote to take $325,000 from the stabilization fund, and pay it back over three years. A separate vote will allocate $100,000 from the overlay surplus account. The School Committee, meanwhile, is expected to forego $83,000 technology upgrades and building maintenance, and found other savings in wages and unemployment for a total of $244,348. The Finance Committee offered $50,000 from the reserve fund.
That leaves the town to cover roughly $178,100. Williams realized $110,000 in savings from general insurance, but still needed to cut $68,100 from department budgets.
“We did spread this out the best we could so we wouldn’t impact one department more than any others,” Williams said.
Williams did not indicate the cuts in wages would result in lost jobs, but departments will need to stretch their personnel thinner. The Police Department front desk will be reduced by eight hours, the Fire Department will have less on-call firefighter wages, the Department of Public Works will lose a portion of external services and the senior center will forego unused stipends.
Other items up for discussion include the transfer of the Tadgell School property from the school department to the town’s authority, a fire protection and life safety reporting bylaw and the acquisition of a 2.2-acre parcel of land on Hulmes-Warner Mini Fenway.