ISHPEMING — A local city council held a special meeting this morning regarding health care for city workers.

Today the Ishpeming City Council held a special meeting to approve to change the health care provider after receiving news that their now previous provider could no longer provide health insurance beginning December 31st. The city employees and unions had two option to choose from.

Ishpeming Mayor Mike Tonkin says, “We’ve just signed a contract with our employees- the unions and other employees – for the coming years, and we had agreed to certain policies. We gave them two options, and this is the option that they chose, which was a very nice Gold Level option, and everybody seems to be happy with it.”

The city will now offer a plan from Blue Cross – Blue Shield of Michigan that is similar to the health care the city employees already had.

“It’s pretty much the same, I think that’s why everybody agreed so quickly to the change over. It’s going to cost the city some extra money of course, to go with this, but it’s less than two percent, so,” the mayor added, “and of course our budget is tight, but we do have contingencies for this sort of thing so we’re prepared for that.”

The next city council meeting is on December ninth, and City Manager Mark Slown says that the council will have one more special meeting this month before Christmas to discuss budget amendments and possibly other items.