The City of Dauphin's insurance policy is going up by 12 per cent.
That might seem like a lot, but that's after premiums were negotiated down from 50 per cent.
The insurance underwriters wanted increases because they saw greater chances of municipalities needing to file claims.
“They noted that we are at a greater risk and one of the bigger reasons is climate change. Larger climate events that are happening and we own a lot of infrastructure and they wanted to increase our premiums to be able to cover that risk,” said City Manager Sharla Griffiths.
The AMM agreed to contribute more money to the loss pool as a way they were able to lessen the increase.
In the city manager report Griffiths explains how the system works.
“It is a unique program that combines a traditional insurance policy concept with a “loss pool” concept. Basically, from the premiums invoiced to municipalities, some money is deposited into the loss pool (administered by Western Financial Group) and some money contributes to the traditional insurance policy. A set amount of money in the loss pool is dedicated to be used for claims each year; if there are more claims than funds available then the traditional insurance policy is utilized, but if there are less claims than funds available then the participating municipalities get rebates.”
The insurance premium runs around 350 thousand dollars for the city. Griffiths says over the entire budget that's a comparatively small amount.
“So a 12 per cent increase in that amount did not have to result in a tax increase to cover that.”
Griffiths says that 12 per cent is still a big number considering that most of their increases are one to two per cent.
The city's insurance policy covers everything they own. That includes city hall, the shop, the water treatment plant. It also includes anything run through the rec services like parks or the rec centre.
