News release from the Tim Smith for Mayor campaign:
Mayoral candidate Tim Smith: The City Should have changed health insurance 10 years ago
“Why did it take the City of Fort Wayne so long to make a small but substantial change that could’ve been made 10 years ago and saved us $45 million by now?”
(September 19, 2018) – Mayoral Candidate Tim Smith today released the following statement regarding this week’s notification to city employees that their health insurance would change to one major local healthcare provider rather than two, saving $4.5 million per year.
“I’d like to congratulate the Mayor on bringing Fort Wayne into standard business practices that the private sector has been doing for a decade. Given that most successful private businesses were doing the same thing 10+ years ago, my question is why did it take the City of Fort Wayne so long to make a small but substantial change that could’ve been made 10 years ago and saved us $45 million by now?”
We need to expect more out of our city officials. Rather than patting them on the back for this change – we should be asking them – what took so long?
For the last year and a half, I’ve been discussing this specific idea as a way to cut spending. As a conservative, it’s surprising to me that it took the city this long to make such a simple change. $45 million would go a long way towards paying down our growing debt, improving public safety or strengthening our infrastructure. Just last year, the Mayor and City Council increased income taxes. Why wasn’t this change made prior to the tax increase to avoid some or all of the increase? Maybe the Mayor should return this savings to taxpayers, given it’s the taxpayer’s money in the first place?
And this is the tip of the iceberg – just one example of career politicians failing to manage out of control budgets. Fort Wayne deserves a conservative Mayor with experience managing budgets in the tens of millions of dollars. As Mayor of Fort Wayne, I can assure you that I will find many millions more tax dollars that can be freed up and redeployed more effectively. This type of oversight will not be allowed in my administration.”
You can learn more about Tim Smith and his campaign for Mayor of Fort Wayne by visiting www.TimSmithforMayor.com or his
