City workers will be offered a number of new insurance products, and some developers and property owners will catch a break on sidewalk costs after votes by the Portage Board of Works.
Portage-based Miller Financial Group, already a third-party provider of a number of financial products to the city, was approved to oversee a new voluntary employee benefit program. Workers will be able to choose from accident and critical illness insurance policies, short-term disability or term life insurance products, provided by Unum, a 160-year-old insurance company, at no cost to the city.
Just after Thanksgiving, Miller representatives will begin meeting one-on-one with city employees interested in enrolling, said Mark Miller. The policies will become effective Jan. 1.
“We’re excited about this,” said Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham. “We wanted to have one source and a menu of options. I think our employees will be very impressed with this offering.”
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The board also softened the city’s stance on property owners, many of them developers, who live in areas that may never be required to install sidewalks.
Under a policy likely devised in the 1990s, property owners could apply for a waiver to avoid installing sidewalks if their properties had physical characteristics making the paths impractical. They had to pay for 80 percent of what the sidewalk would have cost, with the money going into a fund for sidewalks in the area at a later date.
Under the policy passed Sept. 26, the board will determine if an an area is not likely to ever be required to install sidewalks. In those cases, property owners would be spared from sidewalk fees.
Some properties abut streets or areas covered by the state, meaning any sidewalks might be the state’s responsibility, Mayor James Snyder said.
It’s been a problem to get concrete numbers on the cost of sidewalks, Snyder said. The cost if the city does it was usually much higher than when private contractors do the work, meaning the price tags varied wildly, he said.
“We’re going to fix the [sidewalk] fee,” he said. “We have enough sidewalks that go nowhere, so we really need to get that taken care of.”
Michael Gonzalez is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.