Clear Lake council approves early retirement incentive program

CLEAR LAKE — Clear Lake’s City Council last night approved establishing an early retirement incentive program that would assist eligible city employees who wish to retire but cannot do so because of medical insurance coverage concerns.

City Administrator Scott Flory says such programs have been offered throughout his tenure.  “Every three or four years we have interest expressed by employees in an early retirement incentive offering. I think in the time that I’ve been here we’ve offered four or five different programs, all of them the same, identical.”

To be eligible, participants would have to be current full-time or full-time equivalent employees who are age 56 or older and have not less than 25 years of continuous employment with the city. Flory says those who would participate in the program at age 60 would remain up to five years or when they become Medicare eligible on the city’s group health insurance plan under a single policy.  “We’ve had this in the past where eligible employees wish to continue on under a family plan. They’re able to do so, but that would be at their added cost. This would only be for a single policy. An employee that retires prior to the age of 60 can utilize post-retirement accumulated paid leave conversion credit program. We had that in one previous policy. Essentially what that allows is an employee can utilize their banked, accrued time, including sick time, vacation, personal, and comp time. That would convert to a dollar value and they could utilize that to pay insurance premiums.”

Flory says there are a handful of employees that have already expressed interest in taking advantage of the retirement program.  “I think we’ve got probably three employees that would be covered under this. I think there is definitely good interest in it. I would expect one or more to be very interested.”

Eligible employees must retire from city employment between August 1st and September 30th of this year, with notice of intent to retire having to be filed prior to July 17th.