Vincent Lembo wants to make sure the Hooksett Town Council doesn’t lose track of $100,000.

Lembo, a Budget Committee member, amended the budget up by the $100,000 at the floor of the deliberative session of Town Meeting. The reason, he said, is to offset the planned 10 percent increase, effective July 1, of employee contributions to their health insurance.

Now that voters have approved that amended budget, Lembo is urging the council to ensure that $100,000 is getting back to the employees, who were also asked to chip in 10 percent more for health insurance last year.

“The voters said to give these people the money,” said Lembo, at a Wednesday, May 9, council meeting. “Are you going to listen to the voters or not?”

At least 14 town employees – many from the town’s highway and parks departments and the recycling and transfer department – came to the town hall during the meeting, but were largely silent during the proceedings.

Fifty-eight employees – representing nearly all the town’s non-unionized personnel – signed a petition in January asking the council to reconsider its previous decision to again raise employee contributions to health premiums.

Highway and Parks Departments head Dale Hemeon said then that the change would have meant some of his employees would have had more than $200 a month taken from their paycheck within a period of 13 months.

The council – members of which have said the increased employee contributions are a way to battle the ever-increasing cost of health insurance – then decided to delay the newest change in employee contributions to July 1, the first day of the town’s fiscal year.

Councilors told Lembo that it may not be their place to ensure the $100,000 gets back to the employees, since a new council – which will have two new members – will begin oversight of the budget in July.

“I think they’re the ones who should decide how to handle it,” said council Chairman George Longfellow, who was re-elected in March.

Said returning Councilor David Ross, “It would be a very difficult thing to do and I don’t see a real benefit in it.”

But town employees present didn’t necessarily agree. Lee Ann Moynihan, who works in the Family Services Department, said the current council should put its stamp on the 2007-08 budget.

“This budget is this council’s budget,” she said.

The council ultimately decided to hold off the discussion until it can determine the financial breakdown of the July 1 change, and whether $100,000 will be enough money to cover the difference.

The meeting came just a day after the annual election day, during which voters showed town employees some resounding support.

Voters approved the upped town operating budget, raises for the town’s police officers and its other nonunion personnel, and approved all but one of the town’s financial requests. The vote also came as four town hall employees are appealing their recent firings, which the council has steadfastly declined to discuss publicly.

In defense of the town’s employees, Lembo said, “There’s enough stress in these people’s lives already.”