City costs for Obamacare, tree trimming

This city's costs associated with two disparate topics – the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and trimming some 11,000 municipally owned trees – merit attention this week.

Undergoing “analysis” and “refinement” by the city's management staff are potential extra expenses due to provisions of the 2010 Obamacare legislation and subsequent delays of some of the law's mandates, according to oral and written reports presented to the City Council.

Current concern surrounds the health benefits provided the city's eight permanent part-time employees working 30 hours per week, who are labeled full-time by the Affordable Care Act.

The law's “employer mandate” requiring the city to “extend an offer of coverage to employees working 30 hours or more per week” was to begin Jan. 1 this year but has been delayed to Jan. 1, 2015, noted a city staff report.

Based on the employer mandate, “the city must provide a health contribution which is 60 per cent of the lowest single health premium offered in the city's...plan,” the report stated.

Since the city's lowest health premium is now $457.17 per month, the required city contribution would be $274.30, according to city figures. The city's present payment for the part-timers is $150 per month toward the cost of a health plan.

A city staff recommendation to implement the law's employer mandate ahead of next year's Jan. 1 deadline was pulled from a Feb. 4 council agenda by City Manager Mark Pulone “for future analysis and refinement of the fiscal impact to the city.”

The withdrawn plan would have raised the city's payment for permanent part-time employees $125 monthly to reach the $275 level required by Obamacare, which would have assisted the part-timers in meeting the individual insurance mandate deadline of March 31 this year.

If implemented, the amount provided each part-timer would be reduced to the actual prem-ium cost if coverage is less than $275 per month. The total annual cost would be $26,400.

Fortunately, the annual expense to trim the city's approximately 11,000 trees on a three-year cycle is holding steady, with the coming year's task scheduled to be completed by an outside contractor without even an allowable consumer price index increase from previous years.

Anaheim-based West Coast Arborists won the city's tree trimming contract in 2011 with a bid 25 percent lower than the prior pact and is maintaining that year's cost for a third of four possible one-year extensions.

The rate is $46.50 per tree or $140 per tree for service requests outside the normal three-year sequence, for a potential expenditure of $512,953. About 10,000 trees are trimmed through Landscape Maintenance Assessment District funding ($465,053 from 30 benefit zone accounts, ranging from $400 to $80,000) and about 1,000 in parks through Parks and Recreation Department funds ($47,900).