Jamestown — City staff told the City Council during a work session that increases in health insurance premiums and retirement contribution rates are the largest drivers of the proposed 2026 budget.

The budget presenter said the health plan cost is “a 14, almost 15% increase,” and that retirement-rate changes for some employee tiers are large: “the 2026 retirement rates for tier 6 are up 51% compared to 2024. They were 21%, and they're now 31%.” The presenter also cautioned that the health-insurance figure in the budget is a consolidated line and not a single plan cost.

Why it matters: higher-than-expected increases for insurance and pension contributions directly raise the city’s personnel costs and create pressure to find offsets in revenue or other spending. Council members pressed staff for detail on where unspent budgeted salary lines from 2025 have gone and how that affects 2026 projections.

Details from the session:
- Sales tax and revenue: the presenter referenced an increase in the sales-tax estimate relative to the 2025 budget (described in the session as about 2% over the 2025 figure) but noted that recent monthly sales-tax receipts will affect updated projections.
- Health insurance: the presenter said the budget shows a roughly 14–15% increase in plan cost in aggregate and emphasized the line “isn't a plan cost” but the total budgeted health-insurance amount, which also nets out reimbursements such as Medicare Advantage and ARPA-funded subsidies.
- Retirement: the presenter gave tier-specific changes and said, “That's percentage points, which then translates to, like, the 5.3% to the 17.3% increase in the rates.” He added the tier-6 jump from about 21% to 31% between 2024 and 2026 as a concrete illustration.
- Property insurance and other fringes: staff listed a composite increase when adding property and other coverages; the presenter noted an overall 6.3% increase once multiple small items are included.

Council members asked for documentation to reconcile budgeted but unspent salary lines in 2024–25, and a request was made to see the 2025 budgeted amounts against actuals for those salary lines.

What staff said next: the presenter said staff had met with a CPA vendor to evaluate proposals and that analysis of vendor proposals is ongoing.

End notes: staff framed several of the line-item increases as contingent on final vendor proposals, monthly revenue updates, and state-level actuarial guidance for pensions. No formal budget vote occurred at the session; council members directed staff to provide line-item comparisons and supporting spreadsheets in a follow-up.