WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — After a second straight year of hefty increases in the cost of health insurance under the Berkshire Health Group umbrella, the Williamstown Finance Committee is discussing the need for cost containment for the joint insurance purchase group.

 

"At this point, we could be looking at another substantial increase for next year," Fin Comm member Melissa Cragg said at the panel's July 25 meeting. "Really, I think we're at the point where benefit design has to be the issue on the table.

 

"Two-thirds of our [employee] base is unionized, so there's no reopening the contracts, probably, over this. But it's time for us to challenge Berkshire Health Group to talk to Blue Cross about what is being covered."

 

Cragg noted that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts this spring announced that it was discontinuing coverage for weight-loss drugs, like Ozempic, for subscribers who are not diagnosed with diabetes.

 

At the time, a Blue Cross spokesperson told Boston's WBUR that, "Drug makers' prices for these medications are putting a big burden on our employer customers."

 

Among those customers are the 25 towns and six regional school districts who are members of Berkshire Health Group.

 

What drugs are covered is one example of a plan design that can be tweaked to control the cost to those employers. Another is percentage of health insurance cost borne by the employee; the latter is a topic of collective bargaining between towns and schools and their unionized staff.

 

"I don't have a lot of hope that this little group is going to affect teachers' unions up and down the county or public works or anybody else," Cragg said. "We're not going to change copays, deductibles, the percentage contribution, things like that. But … Blue Cross, indirectly, on behalf of Berkshire Health Group, is controlling the design of what the plans offer."

 

Williamstown employs one member of the 11-person BHG Board of Directors, Dave Fierro Jr., the town's finance director. The town's Finance Committee also interacts regularly with two other members of the board of directors: Northern Berkshire Vocational Regional School District Superintendent James Brosnan and Mount Greylock Regional School District interim Superintendent Joe Bergeron.

 

Suzanne Stinson said it would be a multi-year process to move the needle on costs, and it would require cooperation from the other towns and school districts that govern Berkshire Health Group. But she suggested it is worth that effort.

 

"Our budget is, essentially, labor, and [health care] is a significant percentage of the labor," Stinson said. "So if you were to look for a place where you could have some meaningful impact, this is one of the few places that exists. And it has been steadily growing.

 

"It is not something that is going to be solved in a window that I can even imagine. But if you don't start working on it now, you will never solve it."

 

The health-care discussion came during a part of the meeting when Chair Fred Puddester encouraged Fin Comm members to brainstorm about thoughts they had on the budget season that ended in the spring or things they want to address in the deliberations that commence this winter.

 

Another topic that came up was the town's allocation to non-profits, an area that consumed a lot of the Fin Comm's time last winter when several new non-profit entities came forward seeking fiscal support.

 

Paula Consolini pointed out that "storm clouds" are swirling for those agencies, who are looking for any means of support they can find to support their work. But it is up to the town to prioritize how to allot property tax dollars, if at all, to outside agencies.

 

"The conversation we had around non-profits may be worth formalizing," Stinson said. "We'd be looking only to consider services that fall more naturally to a municipality. That was the idea [behind supporting] the youth center and marketing [through the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce].

 

"I guess it's probably worth re-evaluating, committing, confirming that those are the ones [to receive town support] and be really clear to everyone so they don't waste time and effort on an application that we can't fund."

 

Puddester said since Town Manager Robert Menicocci moved non-profit support "on budget," it's an administrative matter which non-profits end up in the budget, which is reviewed by the Fin Comm like the rest of the town's spending plan each winter. Before FY26, non-profit support was provided through the expenditure of free cash (the unreserved fund balance) and voted as separate articles at town meeting.

 

The main business of the only summer meeting on the Fin Comm's calendar was the approval of a $75,000 transfer from the Finance Committee reserve to help pay for snow and ice removal costs in the winter of 2024-25.

 

State law allows communities to "deficit spend" for winter road maintenance given the unpredictability of costs.

 

That unpredictability is a big reason why May's annual town meeting each year votes a sum to be raised in taxation and devoted to a reserve controlled by the Finance Committee; it avoids calling a special town meeting to raise new funds to pay for the overage and allows a town committee instead to release the money.

 

This year, the overage was about $239,000, Fierro told the Fin Comm last month.

 

To address the cost, he asked the committee to release $75,000 from its reserve and showed it a series of transfers he identified from line items that were underspent in the fiscal year that ended on June 30.

 

Among the areas where he found money to put toward snow and ice were $12,000 from a line item allotted to the Select Board, $22,500 in discretionary funds for the town manager and $9,000 out of $12,000 remaining in the annual budget line for town counsel.

 

A big chunk of unspent tax dollars from last year spoke to the health-care conversation that the Fin Comm would have later in the meeting.

 

Fierro told the panel that he was going to shift $96,000 out of the $102,000 left in the health insurance line from FY25. When asked to explain how so much was unavailable, Fierro's answer spoke to just how much of the town budget goes toward that line.

 

"If you think about it, $96,000 is only three family plans' cost to the town," Fierro said. "We didn't have new hires. The projection was a little over. That's over a $2 million budget line."

 

As for the cause for the overage on snow and ice itself, Fierro pointed to an unusually active winter for the town's road crews. Consolini noted that, in addition, a lot of that activity came around holidays, which increases the overtime cost for road clearing.

 

The Fin Comm ultimately approved Fierro's plan by a vote of 8-0, but not until after he explained why the town does not just increase the snow and ice line item each year in case it's a bad winter.

 

"We could have a winter where there's nothing," he said. "That's why it's good strategy not to go above and beyond what you did for last year. Because then you're locked into that number for years going forward.

 

"If we say, 'We spent $400,000 last year on a budget of $200,000, so let's raise it to $400,000,' now you're locked in at $400,000 forever. You can't go back down. That's state law. That's why we try to stay low and make up for it."