Tuesday, January 18, 2000
Fitness plan to be reconsidered
Middletown wants more incentives
BY JANET C. WETZEL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MIDDLETOWN — City commissioners will discuss a wide variety of issues at today's meeting, ranging from a program to encourage employees to stay healthy, to charging for fingerprinting, to a re zoning request.
The health and wellness program could replace an existing fitness reimbursement plan that gives employees an incentive to participate in physical fitness programs.
About 20 employees participate in that plan, which reimburses employees who pass an annual YMCA fitness test up to $229 for a YMCA membership or membership in another area fitness facility.
But some say that discourages employees who feel they can't achieve the standards of that program.
Replacing that with a monitored wellness plan with incentives for participation should cause up to 100 of the city's roughly 460 employees to get involved and reduce the city's health costs, the ultimate goal, the staff report says.
The staff also is suggesting the city follow the lead of some other communities and charge $5 for each set of employment fingerprints, a service long provided by the city free.
A staff report indicates the city will likely do about 861 fingerprints this year, and the $4,305 generated by the fee should pay a corrections officer overtime to conduct the program.
The commission work session will begin at 5 p.m. During the regular meeting, which begins at 6:30 p.m., a public hearing will be held on a request to rezone 25 acres northeast of Miller Road and North Breiel Boulevard from suburban dwelling to low density dwelling.
Also, commissioners have asked for a report on the feasi bility of having commission packets put on CDs instead of paper printouts and how much staff time would be saved by using that method. But that information will not likely be ready until the Feb. 1 meeting.
During the Jan. 4 meeting, Greg Parsons, information systems manager, told commissioners that using the CDs should simplify the agenda/packet process. The packets are often 100 or more pages.
But some commissioners including Robert “Sonny” Hill and Earl Smith, said they like the convenience of the paper packet.
“I prefer to have the hard copy,” Mr. Smith said. “I'm not very good on the computer and I like to have it on paper so I can read it at my leisure.”
Mr. Hill agreed, and said downloading the packet and printing out select sections can be too time consuming.
But others, including Commission Chairman Fred Sennet, said they like the plan and want to hear more.
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