The Kanawha County Commission is worrying about their budget.
Looking at a $600,000 deficit in the budget, the commission approved the first phase of an attempt to reduce the amount they spend on health insurance for county employees.
The new policy will affect all county employees, which is about 400 people. Those in the lowest salary bracket will see their insurance payments increase by $2.80 a month with the new policy.
Once all of the rates go up, the county will save about $30,000 a year, but this is only the first step the commission is taking.
"This is just the beginning," Commission President Kent Carper said. "I've got about five more coming."
Taxpayers currently pay $4.8 million for the county employees health insurance.
The insurance increase was passed 2-1, with Commissioner Henry Shores in opposition.
While the county is struggling to find money in their budget, commissioners approved a plan that would add vacation days for longtime county employees.
"This is a way to reward them when we're not able to reward them through payment," said County Manager Jennifer Sayre.
The plan would also reduce the number of vacation days that employees can carry over into the next year, which would she said would help save the county money in buyouts.
But the proposal met opposition from Commissioner Dave Hardy.
"This is a very bad time to do this," Hardy said. "It's easy to spend money that doesn't belong to us. I don't know of anyone who is expanding holidays."
The commission passed the policy 2-1 with Hardy in opposition, but afterwards agreed to Hardy's idea to look into a paid time off policy.
Despite contentious discussion in previous meetings, the commission passed a resolution to support federal assistance for coalfield communities.
Ted Boettner, of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, rewrote the resolution so that it didn't include references to President Barack Obama's POWER Plus Plan, a program opposed by the United Mine Workers of America.
"Rather than just say this is an epitaph for the coal industry and we're going to try to retrain everybody," Hardy said. "It recognized that perhaps to some level, there might be a chance for the coal industry to come back."
The resolution calls upon members of the West Virginia congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., to take action on the federal policy.
"Our congressional delegation ought to take a stand on this," Carper said. "And if this is poorly written or not good public policy, they should say so. Because we're the ones sitting here right now, seeing just how bad it is in this state."
The commission also approved funds for two different projects.
The first was a new roof for the town hall in Chesapeake. The project was initially only supposed to cost $50,000, but with extra expenses the roof now will cost more than $80,000.
Commissioners also agreed to give the town of Handley funds for a new disaster siren. The siren will cost $27,000 but Handley officials are hoping to get a grant to cover $5,000 of that expense.
Later in the meeting, the commission announced that the county would be receiving money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reimburse them for money spent during the landslide at Yeager Airport.
The county has to distribute $251,000, which is 75 percent of the total, to various county departments. The county will keep $172,000 and put it in the account that pays for catastrophes.
Reach Daniel Desrochers at dan.desrochers@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow @drdesrochers on Twitter.