FARMINGTON – Some town employees who will get inflation adjustment raises in 2007 may end up actually losing money if a town policy on health insurance isn’t changed, Town Manager Richard Davis said Monday.

Davis plans to bring the issue before selectmen at tonight’s meeting. The session starts at 6:30.

Last year, a policy was put into place requiring town employees to pay half of any increase in insurance rates, Davis said. With a pay increase of 1.7 percent in 2007, Davis said, some employees could wind up taking less money home once the added insurance costs are factored in.

“It could eat into their pay increase, and then some,” Davis said. “I propose to find a way to hold the employees harmless, so they at least stay even with what they were making last year.”

That means either paying them more, or taking up more of the additional insurance costs, Davis said.

Many private-sector workers in Maine have been faced with the issue for years, paying more and more on their insurance and getting smaller and smaller raises.

Davis said that trend is not fair where ever it occurs.

“I don’t have any control over those people in the private sector who have run into that issue,” Davis said. “I feel badly about it, but there’s nothing I can do. I feel that’s a larger issue that has to be dealt with by the state and federal governments.”

For Davis, it’s a fairness issue, he said. Selectmen will discuss the pay scale, and 21 other items, at tonight’s meeting.