City Council Fails To Act on State Law

Minnesota’s Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) law provides up to 20 weeks of paid leave for personal medical needs or family care with pay from 55-90% of wages, funded by a shared employee/employer payroll tax. The state program says that .44% can be paid by employees and .44% paid by employer to meet the new .88% tax.

At the December 8, 2025 City Council meeting, members learned that the entire .88% PFML tax is going to be paid 100% by Shorewood taxpayers. That total taxpayer burden is estimated at $22,638 annually. At issue: City Council members were never asked to vote on this decision and subsequently learned that a 12 member employee-run benefits committee voted not to tax themselves. Really?

We asked 6 similar size and neighboring cities and found 5 are splitting the cost 50/50 with their employees and 1 chose not to participate in the state program opting for self-insurance. The survey included neighbor cities Excelsior, Victoria, Mound and similar size cities Delano, Orono and Mahtomedi.

With 30% more staff and salaries that vastly exceeds comparable cities, why should taxpayers continue to subsidize these positions with more benefits? You may ask yourself “it’s only $22k”, but that’s just one point. The bigger issue is the City Council was never consulted, never voted and never got to ask questions? What other taxpayer expenses is the administration hiding from council members? If the administration is just going to make self-serving decisions that affect taxpayers then what do we need a city council for? OVERSIGHT! Tell your council members you want more engagement in financial matters no matter how small.