From the Lafayette Journal & Courier:
The two police officers Lafayette planned to hire in 2013? Forget about it.
The two job openings at the Lafayette Street Department? Not going to fill them.
And when three firefighters retire next year, the positions will remain vacant.
“We got our insurance number, and it came in worse than we thought,” said Mike Jones, Lafayette controller. “As a result, we’re not going to hire the two new policemen right at the moment. We’ve got three fire positions, because of retirements, that we’ve taken the funding out for now.
…
Lafayette is in a self-insured cooperative with other cities in the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns, but that wasn’t enough to shield the city from higher premiums.
“Because it has this self-insured nature, you are responsible for your own loss ratio,” Jones said. “It is mitigated because of the group, but you still have that component in there because it wouldn’t be fair for some of the cities that are doing quite well ... to carry us. Or if we were doing well, to carry them.”
Next year’s budget details appropriations for spending $52.6 million, which is a 2.38 percent increase over 2012 spending. While city officials won’t know the tax rate until get the certified assessed values arrive next spring, Jones expects the rate to be close to this year’s rate, which is $1.019 per $100 of assessed value.
