“It shifts the burden of deductibles over from the city paying it over to the employee paying it,” said City Administrator Chris Clark.

The move, which goes into effect Aug. 1, will save the city nearly $8,000.

“This creates a little bit of financial breathing space for us,” Clark said. “I think health insurance is going to be a budget buster.”

But city employees should receive a little help in paying those increased costs. On Monday, the council also approved a new pay plan for city employees that will cost $8,827 to implement.

“The cost to implement is the cost to move them onto the scale,” Clark said.

The plan was suggested by an outside consultant that the city hired to review city pay scale, compared with 14 other comparable and nearby cities. Clark had asked council members to approve the pay plan, effective Aug. 1.

“He also reviewed and analyzed the length of service they have with the city and so it fit in with the approximate step of where they should be,” Clark said. “He reviewed for gender bias, so if there were two people hired at the same time to make sure they were being paid comparably. We did not have that problem.”

Council members said Monday night that since 1999 they had wanted an outside consultant to review the city’s pay scale.

“He didn’t just go to a book and pick out things and regurgitate it to us,” Clark said. “He picked communities where he had job descriptions and did a very good job of comparing apples to apples.”

Increasing salaries should soften the blow, he said, of increased medical costs.

“I’d like to give the employees an opportunity to pay these higher deductibles,” he said.

Clark estimated the change could cost a family from $300 to $500 more a year.