Music Order, please. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. This is a meeting of the Council for Work Session. and first on the agenda is public comment for issues on the agenda. Does anyone wish to speak to issues on the agenda? Mayor. I don't have anyone signed up. Council Member McCord. Yes, sir. Thank you. Vice Mayor and I have met with the constituents who's here and only has a brief time that wanted to speak on something that is not on the agenda, and obviously we're going to have a fairly lengthy discussion, and I wanted to see if the Council would grant just a little bit of latitude. She just wants to bring a petition to our attention. So if I could make a motion that we do this out of order and allow Diane to speak, I'd make a motion. All right, there's a motion and a second to allow. Oh, there we are. Hello, hello. Yes, ma'am. All right. Unless there's any objection, we'll go ahead. All right. Diane. Yes, ma'am. My name is Diane Cahill. I live at 534 Grantchester Street over in Elkhorn Park off North Broadway. This has been a passionate subject of mine, a phone in my side. When I see people walking at the railroad bridge between Legends Park and Hardee's right there on North Broadway, almost to the New Circle, of course there's a low clearance. We're all familiar with trucks getting stuck and traffic backs up because the trucks can't go anywhere. But most concerning is the narrow clearance on either side. I mean, there's maybe two inches, which requires a pedestrian or a bicyclist or a person in a wheelchair even to be out into the lane of traffic, which causes that driver to get over into the inside lane of traffic. So then you've got two cars and a pedestrian, and there's just not enough room for any of that to go on. So what the petition is, basically, it says, The low and narrow clearance at the bridge underpass present a danger to pedestrians and motorists, a major inconvenience to semi-trailers and law enforcement, as well as a major eyesore to visitors entering our city. We, the undersigned, are concerned citizens who urge our leaders to act now to assess the area and require that property owners make appropriate corrections and improvements. So I have approximately 80-plus signatures. Kevin and I have been communicating by email, and I appreciate your checking into all the background. It's complicated. I know there's nothing, it's not city property, but we're tying up resources when police have to go out there and shut the street down when there's major flooding. Anytime it rains heavily, the road floods. So that requires police officers to be on scene with their vehicles and reroute traffic. And then also when the trucks get stuck, too. So it is impacting our city. Again, it's complicated. The road, I guess, is owned by the state. Kevin just informed me that the bridge itself is R.J. Corman. The property, I guess the easement or whatever, belongs to CRX rail. So I've been fighting this for two years, and I can't get anywhere. So hopefully this will bring, you know, if we can kind of put a bug in somebody's ear, I don't know what the best, I don't know what other, how other to go about this. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. We'll open the floor to comments from Councilmembers. Vice Mayor Gordon. Yes. Councilmember McCord, thank you for bringing this to my attention, too. This underpass has been a problem for many, many years, and I think that's why you have your petition, which probably we will want to at least keep the petitioner a copy of it. And I would like for us to, it is a complicated situation because of the railroad and the state road, But still, we need to move forward on some sort of plan to start talks with either the railroad or the state or someone. And I don't know if that would be through engineering. I know that that might be a logical place to start, streets and roads. Mayor, I think that the administration could probably take that ball and run with it and at least see if we can't get some sort of relief for the folks who want to use that, who would like to walk under it, who, you know, it floods out whenever we have a heavy rain. And if you can, I'm not sure who you'd like to assign that to, but I appreciate it. All right, Don, great. Who's looking into it? Myself. I've already talked to R.J. Corman, and we'll be meeting with them and the state and trying to get CSX there because they're the landowners. And, of course, the mayor and I can go together and see what we can do. We know how tough the railroads are. I think you need to take him with you. But the state's aware of it, and we just figured out the ownership. As Ms. Cahill said, the ownership is a complicated piece. But that can be done, and I'll be happy to work with Commissioner Taylor, mayor, and get everyone in the room together. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Stennett. I was just going to add just that, that the ownership is the complicated piece, and working with the railroads is never easy, as well as making sure the state is included. But this was supposed to be replaced back in, if it was on Council in 2005, part of the New Circle Road widening plan. That bridge at North Broadway as well as New Circle Road there in front of the old Kmart were supposed to be replaced. And obviously that plan didn't ever happen because there was no money to widen New Circle Road around that stretch. So that's where it stopped. And then I guess the conversation stopped too. So maybe we can relive those, Mayor, and push forward. Thank you, sir. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. I would suggest to Council Member Stennett and to you as well, Mayor, that one of the things we learned from Atlanta in dealing with their trails group was whenever you're dealing with the railroads, They can be somewhat obstinate about offering up fixes and solves, but if there are certain areas in our town that the railroad needs our help, that you might want to take a look at if we have any of those lists and using that as a piece of leverage for them, that comes in very handy in these types of discussions. I don't know if there's any opportunities there, but you might want to take a look and see if the railroads are contacting us about any places that they need city help, and we could maybe entertain an idea of helping them out. Good idea. Thank you, Mr. McCord. Thank you, sir. Councilman Wallace. I'd just like to say that I had two railroad tracks that were in need of great repair, and I called corpsmen's and CMX, and they were extremely helpful and had them repaired in a matter of days. and they had been in ill repair for years. So they can be very helpful. All right. Anyone else wish to comment on this subject? Okay. Hearing none, then we can move on. Next on our agenda is docket approval. Is there a motion? There is none today. Right. so we don't need it. Okay. Thanks. Nevertheless, thanks, Council Member Beard. Summary is a motion to approve by Council Member Ellinger. Is there a second? Second by Council Member Beard. Vice Mayor Gordon. Yes. I had changes which I've been working with Jeanette on, and they are on the iDrive, but they're not actually in the summary. just simply to add into the council report the piece about the Lafayette Band and their honor of going to the Tournament of Roses and my request that we invite the director, the assistant director, and the principal down, maybe some of the field commanders, to honor them with a proclamation. at a council meeting so she has added that in on the i drive but it's not here yeah thank you right okay so zoom further discussion all right hearing done we can take a vote then all in favor please say aye all opposed no motion carries uh item row number four budget amendments there are none today um new business is next on the agenda second motion back council member blues second by Vice Mayor Gordon to approve new business items. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Continuing business, we've got a report. I'm showing a report by Social Services and Community Development Committee. Council Member Myers? Thank you, Mayor. The Social Services and Community Development Committee met on September 27th to continue discussions on partner agency funding. During this meeting, we discussed a motion that would recommend to the full Council that the government issue an RFP for comprehensive needs assessment. A motion was passed to support the Commissioner in adding a basic human needs category to the Department of Social Services' priority funding categories. and then I would also like to announce that tomorrow there will be a mandatory meeting for all agencies that would like to apply for FY 2013 funding from LCCG's Department of Social Services that meeting will take place tomorrow Wednesday, October 19th at 4 o'clock to 5.30 p.m. at 469 Parkway Drive at the Bickinone Golf Course Clubhouse if there are any questions regarding this meeting please direct those to the Office of Commissioner Beth Mills, Department of Social Services Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Next is a report by Council Member Farmer, Chairman of Planning and Public Works Committee. Thank you, Mayor. The packet reflects our meeting on pages 24 through 36. I would love to make that report to you, but my packet ends at page 23. So I would say that we met on that day, and we had several lively discussions. and specifically we looked at the issue of updating. This is so kind of you. Thank you. We talked for an hour and a half about the repaving program and renegotiating and expanding paving warranties. Since there was no work session that day, we did not feel the alarm clock go off as we neared 3 o'clock, so we talked on. This is a very long summary that is a great background information teacher about how asphalt is laid down and under what circumstances and how it is rated and paid for, and I would encourage you all to take a read of it because the meeting was very interesting. But the discussion at that time led to no motions. We did have a motion to allow additional time for questions, which we passed without dissent. Then we entered into another discussion about salting services and working with county public schools, and we have kind of a beginning and an ongoing conversation with them, kind of a new leadership there and a new opportunity for us to all partner together better to make sure that on days when it's snowy and we may or may not have school, we have it at the best possible situation. Item four was sidewalk specifications and regulations, and this yielded our only set of motions. And this has to do with the idea that we're trying to, I won't say soften the regulations, but change them so that certain kinds of cracks and points of possible misstep can be redefined and kind of patched in a different way and change the defining structure and kind of lowered it rather than making it more expensive for those who are already having to bear the expense of changing their sidewalks based on them being out of line. So that discussion yielded a motion by Council Member Lawless to approve and adopt the draft ordinance to Council for approval seconded by the vice mayor in the past without dissent, and I would so move on behalf of the committee. Second. It's a motion by Council Member Farmer, seconded by Vice Mayor Gordon. Is there any discussion? Okay. Hearing none, can take a vote then. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carried. We had an update about Todd's Road widening as well as the Alder-Lewis Way project and a brief conversation about our items referred to committee, and we adjourned at 3.16 p.m. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. Thank you. I'm showing on my agenda next is the economic development meeting. I believe Council Member Beard, you want to give us a report on it? Yes. All righty. Do you want that back? No rush. Seriously, seriously. I meant that seriously. No rush, no rush. I'm sorry, I thought, okay, here we go. Good shake. Which page is it on? 37. Curing page 37. 37. 37. Here you go. On October 11, 2011, at 1.05 p.m., I called a meeting to order of the committee, the whole Economic Development Committee. We had a long discussion. We're going to go into all the details because it was so long. but the subject of affordable housing trust fund for Lexington and Fayette County. Council Member Henson has been chairing an affordable housing trust fund task force, and we had several members of the task force that were present and spoke. Councilmember Ford was probably the lead speaker amongst the council members present. There were several concerns about forming a trust fund until we got to the point where we knew exactly how it was going to be managed. and there was a concern also about levying any type of tax, especially during this period of the economy being what it is and what it probably will be for some period of time in the future. The task force is going to reconvene and discuss some of these issues. maybe take a different direction and definitely put together a form of structure that the trust fund would operate under beyond that Vice Mayor Gordon asked that the law department prepare information on how a referendum for a tax increase on insurance premiums for an affordable housing trust fund is done. She wanted to know if this could be done by a vote of counsel or if it was needed to be by a petition of citizens. She requested this be in the packet for the next Cal Economic Development Committee meeting scheduled for January 2012. Then we had Stan Harvey, who has been involved with the Rupp Arena Arts and Entertainment District, and he gave us an update on their activities. There are 45 people in the task force. They are looking at more than just Rupp Arena. It involves involvement of the distillery district. There's 46 acres that the city owns, and that may be the good news, bad news. It's the good news that we have it, and we don't have to, if we're going to do anything with this property down there, we don't have to assemble parcels and packages of land. It's already there for us, which would be a large dollar savings. But again, the environment right now, a lot of people are concerned about doing anything in this environment. And beyond that, I won't comment. I adjourned a meeting at 2.55, and it seemed like the thing went on for three hours and only went on for 50 minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Beard. All right, sir. Next on our agenda is a presentation by Mr. Maloney, Staffing Levels for Government Communications and Information Technology. Good afternoon. We have a brief presentation for you requested by Council Member Stennett. The presentation is to update the staffing level of the Division of Government Communication and Information Technology. My staff, Sheila Hupp, will speak on the government communication part, and then also Melissa Luker will speak on the information technology. And as always, I'll be here to answer any questions. Thank you. First of all, I would just like to let you know that the Division of Government Communications has the three different areas, LexCol, PIO, and GTV3. And for the majority of the information that I have today, it mainly focuses on PIO and GTV3. Those were the two areas that were impacted by staffing level changes. Right now, the group has come together and they are achieving equivalent results with fewer staff members. Through meeting with the different people that are in this government communications area, we have found that many of them have a variety of skills that are outside of their specific areas, and that includes writing, photography, and graphic design, which has been very beneficial for the team. We are also increasing efficiencies with the existing resources. Like I mentioned earlier, we have utilized the different staff members that are possibly serving as producers to do graphic design, also utilizing the public information officers to take photographs as well as some of our producers, and encourage them to let me know and let Richard know about their different skill sets that they have so that we can use them in a cross-functional format. We're also creating a new graphics capacity, but before I get into that, I'd like to let you know about one of the efficiencies that we've explored recently. you may have received the email that asked for information and feedback on the employee extra. Dottie Bean, who is one of our public information officers, wanted to explore how to improve employee extra for employees who are our audience to make sure that we are working on something each month that is exactly what they want, to make sure that we're giving people and the organization the information that they need and the format that they want, including the link. So she is right now concluding all of their results and looking to make sure we're actually producing what people want. So that is something that we're utilizing right now with our existing resources and making sure that we're producing a service that is what our audience desires. We are going to move forward with creating a new graphics capacity, and by that what we're going to do is create a hybrid. We're going to utilize internal staff members within government communications and throughout the organization to fulfill our graphics needs. We have realized that we have people all throughout the organization who have design experience as well as production. We have nice equipment right now. We have the capability of printing items in-house that are of very high quality. And what we will do in the future is seek the services of a private graphic designer. And what we are going to do is utilize them on an as-needed basis rather than having someone on staff and use them at their hourly rate. In front of you is some information. I've done some research locally on the cost of freelance graphic designers going from an individual who provides these services out of their home to a boutique company that is locally. And they charge between $60 and $75 an hour. In the fiscal year 11, we had two full-time graphic designers, which cost us a little bit more than $100,000. And that's between $23 and $27 an hour, but they were full-time. We estimate based on some information that we received from the two previous graphic designers on their project load that we would have about 400, between 400 and 450 projects per year. And looking at that and the time average that it would take to complete those projects, we estimate that we would spend between $38,000 and $47,500 on graphic design, and that depends on which services we go with and how long those projects take, which would give us an estimated savings of about $16,000 a year if we went that route. So that's the way we're going to move forward with graphics. Again, this team has come together to make sure that all of the services are continued to be provided to the organization and to some of the outside groups that we help with, different public information needs as well as graphics, and they have done an excellent job. Now Melissa Luker is going to go over the information technology piece and the staffing levels, and I'm here for any questions that you may have. Good afternoon. I'm here to talk about the computer services division, We currently have 34 employees working in that division. We lost five since the beginning of the fiscal year due to the supplemental pay study issue. We are working with HANA Resource Group. We have entered into a contract with them. They've been researching our classifications, job classifications, salaries. They've got an enormous database. We provided them with information on what our IT personnel do, on the requirements for the software and programs that we operate so that they can do a full study and make it as complete as they can for us. And that study will be done at the end of this month, and then we can move forward with that. We're still working on major projects. The Xcelo project and water quality, that is still moving along. That is going very well. We've had success with that. We've also re-engineered the routing project at Waste Management, so we're moving forward with that. Those were two top priorities that we are focusing on right now. We're also focusing on infrastructure with our servers, our networking and support. Now, there are some projects that we've had to prioritize and have been deferred until we get the appropriate staff to complete the project so we have enough on our team to do that. But we're working on cross-training the employees so we're not left in a bind. And the more people you have that know how to do things, the better off you'll be. So that's something we're focusing on is training employees to be able to do more than just one specific job task. Richard has been communicating with the IT personnel on the supplemental pay, sending out email updates to them every three or four weeks, letting them know how it's going. There's some great feedback from that, and everybody has stepped up and, you know, pulled extra duty to get things done, and we're just awaiting that study to be completed. So, like Sheila said, if anybody has any questions, we'll be happy to answer them. Thanks, Melissa. All right, there are several council members who have signed up for comments or questions. I'd like for you to direct them first to me, and then I'll call on whoever else needs to be asked. All right, Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Mine is something that Melissa mentioned. You mentioned in the IT area that several projects have been put on hold. Can you tell us what those are? I can't tell you all of the projects right now, but I can get back with you on that. Okay. Do you know a few off the top of your head or not? It's okay. If you want to just email the council. That would probably be best because I don't want to say something wrong. I think the choice of words may have been, you know, I don't know whether these are, I think we would know if these were top urgent. Yeah, these aren't the top projects. These are smaller day-to-day. One of the things that Chad has been working on really intentionally and deliberately is creating a system where we would examine before folks in the government come to IT for a project and say we've got to have this, we've got to have this, and it's going to cost $100,000. We're actually going through a cost-benefit analysis, And I really appreciate them stepping up to the plate and suggesting a system which we have not had, which would be a vetting process which we have not had for the investment in projects just like she's talking about right now, which would be a big benefit for us when we're trying to save money and be efficient. Thank you. I'll look for your e-mail. Mr. Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. I called for this presentation on a couple reasons, and there's a couple things out there that are troubling me particularly. One, we've lost five individuals in IT. Are we planning on hiring anyone to fill those vacancies? Because I do know two of them specifically were environmental quality in our stormwater and water quality management fee areas, the Accela Project. And have those been compromised because we've lost those two individuals? And who has replaced those duties on a daily basis out in water quality? and on our sanitary sewers. Okay. We'll get back with you on that question. It seems like you probably know more information on that than maybe I do at this point in time, and I'd be happy to hear it and I'd be happy to talk to you about it, Council Member. Well, again, my concern is staffing levels have changed since the budget, and who is currently fulfilling those duties in those areas? We're not here to get at a granular level of in the weeds on these questions. I know exactly what kind of questions that's going for, and as representing the administration, what I'm trying to say, as clearly as I can say it is, that we're here to examine the strategic issue of how this service is being provided. And that's the question. And we are making changes to try to create efficiencies in our government. Right here is a story in the USA Today, today's story. Headline, budget cuts hit county and city jobs. Three percent across the country in cities and counties. That would represent our government 90 jobs. We're trying to preserve jobs, and we're trying to continue to provide the services. So if we don't have that particular answer today, we'll sure try to get it. How's that? Well, we should know, Mayor, and you should know who is currently doing those functions if we have lost individuals, because those are key projects to this government, this water management fee, collection of that, as well as the Accela. But I'll move on to my second question, and that deals with GTV3 and the PIO. Who is currently doing the graphics? If we have someone in parks, for instance, for an activity. Okay, I'm going to answer that as well. I grew up in the business. My first job was graphics. I was involved in this decision, and I've been involved in the decision to try to save $50,000 in the scope of services offered by this government. What we did was an examination, just like I did in my company. If we can outsource these services to people in the private sector who really need jobs today, and we can do it and we can get equal results for perhaps half the money, then that's what we ought to do. Now, I could be wrong, and you can know more about this than I do. And I understand that. And I'm willing and ready to be informed. But that examination that Sheila just presented was a bona fide examination of the issue. They worked hard on it. They didn't just make it up. Okay? Mayor, I appreciate your commentary, but that's not the question I asked. And I wasn't doubting those numbers. What I'm asking is if Parks and Rec or if this council or anyone in government needs graphic services, what are we going to do? What is the protocol? Do we call the CAO? Okay, sir. We have a graphics done? I mean, how are we going to handle that? If we're outsourcing it, what companies do? This is what ordinarily companies in the private sector are doing routinely. I'd like to finish, if I may. Because this is a significant issue that is going to continue to affect this government as we are trying to deal with declining or flat revenues. And that is trying to figure out how we're going to do more with less money. And I applaud you, Mayor, for doing that. But that wasn't my comment. No, the real question is, and why I asked for this presentation, is what communication are we going to get from the CAO who is in charge of these folks when we need something done? Who do we call? Who is we? The council, the government, employees. Who are we going to call? What's going to be the changing protocol? That's the questions today. Who do we call for services? Now, I'm chairing this committee. I'm chairing this meeting. I'm chairing this meeting. We will ask Sheila for that answer, okay? And I would like to ask you to please allow me to respond as the chair to a question that relates to the administration's work. That's what I'm doing. The person who is over graphics right now is Stacy Diamond, and that group is the PIO office, and they will manage the contract with the graphic designer in the future. So all requests will still continue to go through there, and that will help eliminate duplication in the future as well to make sure that we're not putting more and more requests on an outside graphic designer that we've already asked for. So we're going to make sure that that contract is managed through that venue as well. And Stacy and there's two people still left in PIO? There are two PIOs, yes, Stacy and Dottie. Excellent. Thank you for answering that question. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you. Appreciate any question, and we try to put context to it. These are very difficult times. These are very demanding times, and sometimes we have to be very clear in how we are trying to manage through these difficult times. Are there any other questions? Mr. Farmer. Yes, Mayor. Thank you. Yes, sir. In directing questions to you about this, I guess with respect to the IT part of this, it was represented that HANA Resource Management is doing a study for us. I just wonder what timeline is on that? Melissa? We should have a report by the end of this month. The study should be completed. Very good. Thank you. You're welcome. Mayor, I would just suggest maybe that at that time, once we have that report in hand, maybe we might revisit this subject then with a little bit more clarity than today. Because I share the concerns that the Vice Mayor raised about what, and I love the idea of a vetting process that works for resource management, but I just think there's, you know, this is a big group, and there's always a whisper campaign about something. And there's some things that... This is government. Yes, sir. They may have fallen by the way solder gotten pushed down, that we may want to elevate in one way or another. I just think we need to continue the discussion. One of the good things about, one of the wonderful things about transparency and one of the wonderful things about the efficiency of our government is that we have many routes through which we seek information and we get information. Okay. Thank you, sir. Mr. Lane. My question is not related to graphic design, but more with regard to programming. And the concern that I have is that I don't think we, as a government, should have a policy that we would write special programs for the operational departments or whatever. But that's my position on it, because once you start writing separate programs, that if that person leaves or wrote the program, you really don't know how to upgrade it or modify it. Also, it's difficult when you're using standardized programming that we're buying from vendors. If we can get updates from them, they'll flow into the software that we currently have, but if we're writing original software, that creates a problem. Who is the person that would be able to address that policy and maybe bring something back to council about writing programs from scratch versus using standardized programs? Well, I think that would be in Mr. Cottle's area. Yeah, I think Chad is looking at that. That's the routine examination that I think that they make. But what he's trying to do is to create a system and educate our employees on a management system where these requests, for example, would be vetted procedurally in a systematic way. Well, would it be possible when you bring back the other information, maybe to have whoever is in charge of programming to address that? And I'd just like to say in addition, I'm a strong advocate of outsourcing and because I do think it saves money, it gives you more flexibility to increase or diminish the amount of staff you have working when you have a demand for product or services that is very variable. So I'm certainly not opposed to that, and I like the idea of outsourcing. You're in the publishing business. Do you outsource? We outsource as much as possible. I wonder why. Because it's cost effective. Wow. Gee whiz. That's extraordinary. Mr. Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Ms. Hupp, the fund guide, and I may be asking the wrong person, I'm not sure, but do we have plans to do a fund guide this year? That is something that came up in the budget process, and right now, to answer your question, I don't know. There were many recommendations that came from the council regarding the fund guide, whether it needs to be in a digital format or a printed format or a hybrid, and that's something that we would need to get the direction from the mayor and the administration and the council as well. But that is another example of something that if it is to be designed and will go out either electronically or in paper format, that an outside graphic designer could help us with that as well. Okay. You spoke about Stacy Diamond doing some graphic work. So what's her credentials in terms of graphics, graphic arts? She has some experience with it. She doesn't have any professional training in that, but she has been able to hold down the requests that have been coming in. But that is to bridge a gap, and it is not to be a permanent fix. Okay. The Latino Festival, normally, and I might be asking the wrong person, so if anyone else wants to answer, that's fine. Normally it has kids' activities involved in it. This year I think we didn't have any. Is that the case? That is not in my area, but I'm sure we can find out information for you regarding the Latina Festival. Okay. Could you find out for me on that? And one of the things, my office at least is getting some calls, and there are concerns being raised that the people that are being asked to do this graphic work don't have the experience or the knowledge or skill set to do that work. And so they're calling previous employees of the government almost daily, asking them how to do things. And so I know you talked about some efficiencies and we've got a new capacity. Could you talk a little bit about the new capacity that we have in terms of graphics, arts? Yes, that will be in the future when we contract with an outside person. We would have to go through the RFP process in order to get someone on retainer. So it would be through either an individual or a boutique. It just depends on how the RFP process turns out. Okay, so that's in the future. We don't have that yet. Correct. Okay. One of the things that Parks and Rec does when they have events like the Latino Festival, So one of the ways that they raised the money to offset the cost, saying it was $40,000 or $50,000 to do that event, is the signings that they used to advertise and promote the donors or the contributors. And so one of the concerns that I'm hearing is that because we're outsourcing so much of this work now, that the monies that we gain from the sponsorships is being lost because we're having to pay outside in order to have the signs and things done. and we used to do some really nice packets and things so that we could promote those businesses that were underwriting the different events. What I'm understanding now is that some of those packets aren't being done, so those companies aren't being promoted the same way, and that we're also having to outsource some of those things. And so the value of the sponsorships are being decreased. Can you speak to that a little bit? To my knowledge, we haven't turned any work away, and Parks is actually one of the groups that we work with on Graphics Help. We have a lot of people over in parks that have graphics experience, including printing signs and materials. So to my knowledge, we haven't turned anything away in our group. Okay. Let me ask you this. If we had employees that said that they're being asked to do things that they don't know how to do, how would you address that? because I guess what I'm trying to say politely is that we heard one thing here today, but we're getting calls to the contrary. I haven't received any of those calls. Yeah, I just, you know, I mean, there's all kinds of rumors. This is government. How many times we have to say that? The bottom line is that people are going to have to do some things in a different way than they have done it before. And if they have to go to pieces over something as simple as this, then we're in for some really hard times. I mean, this is not rocket science. And this stuff can be done. I know. I've done it. And I'm sorry to be direct about this. Maybe that's offensive, but it shouldn't be. I've done this all my life. What I was saying to Mr. Lane was, what I was saying to Mr. Lane was, he's been in the publishing business. He knows about this as well. I was not trying to be cavalier. I'm just trying to say, folks, we have got to do it differently. And this is symptomatic of issues that we must address and we are addressing. Are you done? I don't want to interrupt. For the moment. Okay. And I applaud you for addressing issues, and I applaud you for wanting to think outside the box and do things differently because I don't think anybody wants to do the same things we used to do the way we used to do it with lack of funding. I guess you talked about, Mayor, rumors and different things like that. I guess that's one reason why we bring things up is because the best way to get to the bottom of that is to ask questions. So I guess what would you like to do? Just tell us what it is. I mean, it's like, what is it? Who is saying what? What is their problem? Tell them to call me. Call me. Okay. Call me. That's the answer. Whoever's got the problem. Okay. Mr. Beard? I'm not quite done yet. Okay. Okay. Sure. I was going to say that's the answer to my question, which is going to be, if we have concerns, where do you want us to direct those concerns? Right now, if it's this grave, then just give me a ring. 258-3112. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. Mr. Beard? Lord, I'm afraid to even start asking this question. Rock and roll. But I think maybe Melissa or someone can answer it for me. How many people did we have in IT that were getting supplemental pay? And how many do we have of those that left? Were they all supplemental pay people? Yes, all five that left were receiving the supplemental pay. Okay, do we have any presently that are receiving supplemental pay? Yes, we still have 34 employees that are receiving supplemental pay left. 34? Mm-hmm. Wow. And this is what Lyle Hanna will vet for us and I guess find out whether the scales in Lexington for programming skills or where we should be, I guess. Yes, sir. Okay, that's all I needed. Is that okay? I could ask you, Mayor, but she was able to do this just fine. Yeah, okay. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Mayor. I was trying to think of something to irritate you with, but couldn't come up with anything. The question I have is, shortly before or after I came on to Council, we had a contract, a pretty longstanding contract, with a local minority-owned business to provide our computers and repair our computers at a substantially less cost than Dell was providing. That contract was canceled, and we went with Dell, which, of course, is out of state. But what I was told by then the commissioner was that one of the reasons was Dale was going to do all this training of our IT folks to repair our computers and all this. But I'm not really sure that ever happened. So what I'd like to do is just request some kind of report on that. Did it happen? And have we looked at what that contract is? Because that's just a throwing out there. Should I send an email? Should I call 258-3112? It'll work. We can get the answer for you on that. Thank you so much. You asked the report back. All right. Yes, ma'am. Mr. Stenet. I just want to end. I don't see anybody else speaking. The point of this presentation is all about communication and transparency and getting the message out so that we don't have to hear the rumors, we don't have to get the phone calls, and allowing people to understand how we're trying to change government for the better. And, again, I applaud you for that, Mayor. We're not against cost-saving measures. We're not against outsourcing. We just want to know who it is and who we can direct people to to get these functions completed and make sure no function in government is in jeopardy, whether it be in-house or to the citizens. And that's what this presentation was all about. Unfortunately, it got sidetracked a little bit. But bringing us back home, CAO, Melissa, Sheila, thank you for the presentation. And these are two very critical departments. Obviously, both of them have to do with our communication with the public. Speaking of communication, as well as IT is very critical. We can't even turn on our lights a lot of times without some type of computer system being involved. So that's a very critical area as we move for ways to become more efficient. I would just ask that you keep the council informed and let us know ways we are saving money, because that's a good thing, Mayor. And that's what we all are looking to do in this tight budget time. So thank you, and I appreciate your all's time. Appreciate it. I appreciate you recognizing, Council Member Stanton, that battleships don't make right-hand turns. You know, sometimes they'll turn, they just kind of steadily move. And then sometimes, yep, we are reminded that in this environment, I have often said that a government, unlike a private business, is as transparent as any institution I've ever been in. That's what this represents, and we have a balance of authority, and that's what this represents, and I'm happy to always get the questions, and I'm also happy to try to do my best to respond. All right. Thank you. Mr. Lane. Just another thought about outsourcing. I believe it's really important if you outsource services that you have a long-term relationship with the firm because as you work with them over a period of time, any little kinks or problems that come up, you can refine the relationship, and it becomes more and more efficient. So I think if we are going to go into outsourcing more, that we ought to be thinking about it in a long-term relationship with a company that would win the bid for that service and not look at it as some kind of a short-term fix. and another benefit of outsourcing is that that helps our local entrepreneurial businesses have another source of revenue. They can create more jobs. The more jobs they create, you know, instead of the government job, it's a private industry job, and it's creating revenue, tax revenues for the city to help operate the government. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lane. Mr. Martin. Thank you, Mayor. I, too, wanted to applaud the mayor's efforts about outsourcing. And I think the transparency is a different issue in our sort of the Democratic need to ask questions and sort of kick the tires. But as far as outsourcing goes, I also echo what Council Member Lane said. And there was an interesting article, and I was unable to pull it up fast enough, but it was about Chicago's new mayor. and essentially doing more with less. And I think that's really what we're looking at. We all have the idea that we're going to get through this in a couple of years, and I'm not sure that's correct. And so I think we have to really think strongly about outsourcing and substantially cutting what we do inside government. We have to think about what is it actually necessary to do inside government. And I'm not typically someone who is sort of a hawk about privatizing, but I think that we are going to have to look for every effort to reduce our services and preserve what capital we have in the years to come. I think this is a paradigm shift, and so I do applaud the administration's efforts to privatize. I look forward to asking questions and kicking tires as we do that. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Martin. And I would say just parenthetically as a footnote, I don't think anybody in the administration, including myself, of course, that none of us expect praise. I appreciate it whenever we get it, of course, but we don't work to gain praise. We work and we do what we do, believing that it is the responsible thing to do. And whenever we receive a bit of encouragement for doing something well, we certainly appreciate it. And whenever we are called out for doing something that is viewed as not responsible, then we'll appreciate that also when it is in fact not responsible. And if we need to defend ourselves, we've got to do that too. So I appreciate y'all's understanding of that. Thanks very much. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. Having some element of experience with outsourcing, especially in the IT arena, 1978 for a security bank opted to outsource its data processing efforts. where one of the problems with outsourcing rear-ed is ugly head, and that is that in an IT arena, generally to get the quality you want, you've got to go out of state. There isn't, especially on mainframe types of environments, environments there isn't much in Lexington type of help you want to have to do the job you need to have done. We selected four vendors and I had the opportunity to sit in Ross Perot's office, EDS being one of them. And that in itself was worth the price of an airplane ticket to Dallas. sadly enough we fired them in two years and brought it back in house and but with a different different view and there's a different attitude because i think all the players involved knew that we weren't afraid to outsource and it might happen again so any help i might be able to give i'd be glad to do so thank you well it's a good conversation As Council Member Martin suggested, in times like this, difficult and challenging times like this and demanding times like this, we really have to stretch, as you just said, Council Member Beard, and have to examine, as Council Member Stenet said, and Council Member Myers did as well, thinking beyond the city limits and beyond the box borders. And that's what some of these tough challenges represent. And having the kind of conversation that we're having today, even though it may get a little bit testy, you know, it's a good conversation to have. And I respect that. All right. Anybody else? Anybody else on this subject? Okay. Then we can move on, it looks like. Our next presentation is on another issue that is not going to be without challenge. is not going to be without distress and anxiety, and we have known it for coming up almost on a year. So, Mr. Emmons, are you going to introduce it? I am, I am. I think everyone around behind this horseshoe understands our financial situation very well. The presentation you're about to see is a result of almost a year's work from the time that the mayor and I walked in this building together for the very first time. I believe it was November the 8th, we came in and we were presented with the facts of our health insurance situation. And from that moment forward, we called in help from the personnel cabinet at the state level. And with your help, we were able to hire Benefits Insurance Marketing to help us get through the storm. And the presentation today will result in employees paying a little bit more for their health insurance premiums, but it will also present some new options for the on-site wellness center as well as the pharmacy. So with that, I'd like to bring up Riggs Cochran, who will give you the presentation. Thank you, Mayor Gray. Council members, I really, that's probably the third point I want to talk about. What I do want to talk about are three subjects. I want to talk about two. Excuse me, Greg, you're saying that the slide up here is the third. It's fine to leave that on there. It was really only two slides. Well, it could be a little bit confusing. If you're talking about something else, don't put that slide down. Yeah, you can take the slide down, please. All right. Thank you. Now, you're going to have to forgive me because I may interrupt you to try to clarify if something isn't clear. We have employees who are watching this on the screens, I'm sure. We have encouraged that today, so Briggs, if I interrupt you or if a council member wishes to offer a suggestion or something or a question during the time, if you'll just give me a signal on your monitor, we can also do it that way. Okay, thank you. My comments are very brief, so I think it will be a very fluid question and answer conversation. I want to talk about three things. I want to talk about 2011, where we are. I want to talk about 2012, where we're going. And I want to talk about the employee communication campaign that's going to take place over the next four to five weeks to talk about 2012. In your council packets, and I don't know if you still have them up there, you should have received last week an overview of the 2011 benefit structure. Do you all have that with you right now? Everybody does. Good. Why don't we work from that particular document? I could put it up on the screen if you want me to do that. Does everybody? Go ahead and put it up on. Can we get it on the screen? Just bear in mind, Briggs, that we've got other people watching the presentation. Got it. Beyond this council chamber. So we need to be speaking. Any documents would be best. Well, it's going to be hard for anybody to read that. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty busy. Whoever's got it, maybe you can share with each other up there, and we'll just kind of talk through this. Yeah, if that's on the screen right now, that's just going to be confusing to the TV audience, so I prefer you need to take that down and speak to the issue. We're glad to. We're glad to. First of all, you have in front of you the 2011 benefit overview. LFUCG employees have the choice of three different plans. The platinum plan, the gold plan, and the silver plan. And right now we have 89% of the total population enrolled in the platinum plan, 8% enrolled in the gold and 3% enrolled in the silver plan which you have there in front of you. Underneath the high level overview of the benefit structure there you have the budgeted monthly premiums to carry the liability for the 2011 plan year. The budgeted liability for single employees enrolling in the platinum plan was $356 and family coverage was budgeted at $745. Going over maybe on the far right there, single coverage $270, family coverage $540. Is everybody with me what we're looking at there? Okay. If you take the number of employees enrolled with single coverage, which is 1,376 employees, and if you take the number of employees enrolled in employee spouse coverage, which is 463 employees, you take the number of employees enrolled in employee child coverage, which is 284, and then finally family 836, we've got 2,959 employees and or retirees enrolled in these three benefit options, of which 89% of them are in the Platinum Plan. Here's the important point I want to make, and I hope you all hear this very clearly. If you take the budgeted premiums that we've got here and you multiply out the number of employees in each option, the budgeted liability is $19 million. The assumptions on this page fund $19 million worth of health care. That's the assumption. In reality, we are currently spending $33 million in health care. We're on track to spend $33 million in health care in a period of 12 months. And the premiums that were used to budget for the current year totaled $19 million. So the reality, the sobering reality of that is that we're $14 million underfunded. Okay? So that's what the 2011 situation is. Just for purpose of discussion, if we had the correct premiums in there, If we had built premiums that would actually hit the liability of $33 million, here's what they would be. And I'll just call out a couple of them just as a frame of reference. Right now we've got budgeted $356 for single coverage for the platinum. Everybody see that? The actual premium that that should be is not $356. It should be $633 to fund to the $33 million liability. For family coverage under platinum, we have budgeted $745. The actual premium that should have been reflected in the budget should have been $1,329. So stated differently, we're $14 million underfunded. And expressing that at the granular level, the premium level that we base employee payroll deductions on, family coverage for platinum should have been based on a $1,329 premium, but it's currently being based on a $745 premium. So I'm going to just hit the pause button. I don't have a whole lot of comments about that. Does everybody understand what I've just said? Is there any clarifying questions? It's a good way of doing that. Thank you. Okay. Now you should also have your 2012 benefit structure in front of you. And this is what we're proposing in 2012. One, we're proposing to offer five different benefit plans as opposed to three. We're proposing three PPO plans. One of them being the current platinum plan with very little modification. In other words, the plan where 89% of your employees are currently enrolled, we're going to leave in place. Employees, if they want to buy that with their payroll deductions, are going to have to pay the true cost of services, though. But on this plan, we're going to be offering five plans. Three of them will be the traditional PPO type of benefit plan. and two of them will be high deductible health care plans with health savings accounts associated with them is what we're proposing. If you look at the gross premiums down there, you can see what the platinum or what we're now going to be calling PPOA is going to cost on a gross basis in 2012. with some of the things that we've done with a new prescription benefit manager coming online, the wellness center, a few of these other things, we are projecting if nobody changed their benefit structure, if 89% of your people enrolled in PPO Option A and a few others enrolled in those other two options, we're projecting, if everybody stays just like they are, that you will spend $33 million in 2012 gross top line health care consumption. Cost of services will be $33 million if nobody makes changes. But what's going to happen from our perspective is that people will decide to modify their benefit structure and perhaps select PPOB or PPOC or HSA-1 or HSA-2, which is going to take that $33 million top line down. It's going to take it down. For example, and I'll just throw this out just to illustrate this point and then I'll pause and let questions be asked. If 100% of your employees enrolled in PPOC, you see the premium structure there for PPOC, single coverage, 423, employee spouse, 763, employee children 733, family 890. If 100% of your employees enrolled in PPOC, those premiums on the granular level, on an employee level, times your total enrollment will generate $22,600,000 worth of health care consumption. So let me say it again. I'm going to stop because I don't want to get this too confusing. If we take the current 2012 benefit structure that we're laying out here and people enroll in the plans that they currently have, we're going to spend about $33 million. However, what we think is going to happen, you're going to hit a tipping point. One, people will start recognizing the value of the wellness center. They'll recognize that they can get high-quality care with very little out-of-pocket expense. and that might make them think about modified benefit structure, but if everybody in this organization enrolled in PPOC, you're going to spend about $22,600,000. That's the gross cost. One other fact I'll put in here is LFUCG's contribution. Your contribution is defined. It's a defined contribution plan is what we would call in our industry. For everybody that's non-collective bargaining, You know, you've defined a contribution of $355. If we take $355 times all those number of employees, we know what that total expenditure is going to be. Police, fire, correction, we know what all those different benefit pools are going to be. But if you take the benefit pools and you take the number of employees that enrolled in each of those categories, police, fire, corrections, non-collective bargaining, LFUCG's total contribution for plan year 2012 is going to be about $16 million. Your defined contribution, based on having 2,959 employees with those various benefit pools, approximates about $16 million. So if the employees gravitate, for example, to PPOC, and you have a $22 million liability there, then that means they'll be paying payroll deductions of about $6 million or the difference between your $16 million contribution and what they decide to purchase, which is going to cost them about $6 million. So regardless of what LFUCG employees decide to purchase, as an employer, as an entity, you're going to expend about $16 million. And what we're going to do is we're going to allow employees to choose the health care plan that best fits their needs, and then they will, in turn, have a payroll deduction that reflects that accordingly. What questions do you have? Okay, if you all just sign up on the monitor. Customer Myers first. Customer Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Could you repeat that last statement again? About the $6 million contribution that the city is going to have. Right, right. For purpose of discussion, if all the employees enrolled in PPOC, the total health care consumed, if everybody's in Plan C, is going to be about $22 million. You don't have that aggregate number. I have that aggregate number. If I take 2,959 employees and multiply it times those premium, multiply it times 12, it will total $22 million. When I go back and I look at your benefit pools and I multiply the number of employees in each category times your benefit pool, LFUCG's contribution is going to be about $16 million. So just for purpose of discussion, if people gravitate away from PPOA and move on down, for example, into PPOC, they'll have about a $6 million payroll deduction. Let me throw one other fact out there for you. Right now, employees are having payroll deducted, even though you're $14 million underfunded. Right now, employee payroll deductions are $5 million. Okay. So I have a question that I'm going to ask you to look at from a different perspective. Yeah, and I'm also, my vocabulary is in a calendar year. I'm not in your fiscal year. Okay. Thank you. I'm a calendar year guy. Okay. So your modeling, in order to come up with these premiums for this next year, you've got modeling that said if we're going to spend the next number of dollars, then how do we get premiums to match that or as close to that? Exactly. Exactly. Correct. So based on two different things, what does your modeling say that the percentage of employees in each one of these different options will be just based on the employees seeing these numbers? Yeah, kind of a predictive modeling of where they're going to go if they enroll. Just based on them seeing these numbers. And then I'm going to ask you to look at it from another. You know, I haven't given that a lot of detailed thought. I will answer your question this way. I know that regardless of where they enroll, that those gross premiums for those options will be sufficient to cover the liability. In terms of where they go, Councilman Myers, I've not studied that or given a personal example or opinion of that. You mean you hypothesized on it? You speculated, or is that what you're saying? Yes. Yeah, come on up, Benji. Is that what you're asking? Yes. Some scenarios? I don't know whether that's a question or not. 85% would be in PPOC or HHS. Yeah. The best thinking is that we think a lot of employees, especially. I'm sorry, Bruce. Restate. Why don't you state the question as you're answering. Okay. When we think about 89% of the employees being enrolled in the Platinum Plan and we offer five different benefit plans in 2012, where do we think the enrollment will gravitate to? And some of the modeling that we've done, we've modeled maybe as many as 80% of them going into PPOC, but we're also thinking about the wellness center being a huge aspect of that. And then we also think there's value in all the plans, but just in terms of a price point, HSA 2 would be an excellent plan. Okay, so now if you take that same question and look at it from after you guys get through with all of your educational programs to try to get the employees to understand all the benefits of the center and the new prescription drug, all the things that we have to offer, how do you see those numbers moving? It's indeterminable right now. You know, part of the employee education piece will be talking to employees about the probability of health care consumption, how much did they physically consume in the last year. An interesting fact within LFUCG is approximately 65% of your employees consume less than $1,000 a year in health care. Yet probably when people come into open enrollment, they'll be thinking about what is the worst possible thing that can happen to me. but the reality that we want them to start embracing is what is the probability of how much health care I can consume, what's the worst thing, best thing, and most likely thing. And if we get that educational process across, we think employees will start evaluating payroll deduction savings versus the amount of risk that they're being exposed to. I don't know if I'm answering your question. That helps. So my final question is, you know, we talked before that the key to this is going to be that educational piece and getting the employees to see the value and using the opportunities that come before them. So it seems like you're modeling, you would look at baseline, the sticker shock of seeing these numbers, where people are going to start to enroll. And then secondly, if we do a real robust and a successful education campaign, where those numbers end up. because that to me would be how you determine whether or not the educational program is successful. Yes, sir. So that's why I asked for those two different ways of looking at it. So my time's about up, but if you – I like all of this. My concern is that we've got to do a successful education campaign so that people take full advantage of what's here. Right, and our last slide will go into that and we'll deep dive into the employee communication campaign, and they're certainly open for constructive comments to help us do that. But you've got a slide. We're going to go into that, right? Yes, sir. That's what was promised. Okay. Okay, I'd ask one follow-up. Yeah. Can you talk at some point, maybe use that slide, how you guys are going to evaluate and at what intervals how successful you are so you may come back and say we've got to do something different because this isn't working the way we thought it would? We're going to be keeping data on a monthly basis, and our plan was to report it to you on a quarterly basis. Gotcha. There's going to be a lot of other excellent data that's going to come through the wellness center that is really going to be very rich and actionable. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. So just so we know where we're going, Briggs, with the presentation, you're coming after the questions related to the cost information, the rates. you're going to next part of the presentation is going to be the communications plan yes and that's going to involve others too right yes sir all right your whole team and okay all right council member stennett thank you mayor briggs i just want to go back to to a number important point you made i don't think i think it went over a few of the heads out there watching is 16 million dollars no matter which plan you choose is our baseline expense from the city standpoint right and the prices, the way we got to these new prices, is the employees are going to pay the difference from that benefit level and our $16 million. You just shouldn't come up with these rates just because you want to charge more, but that covers our cost 100% of what we've used in the past. If we want to continue working for you, I'm here to the side of conservatism. Right. We don't want to overspend. And so I guess my question is, Mr. Barrow or Ms. Driscoll, I think she left, is $16 million what we had budgeted this year to cover this cost? You're talking fiscal year and calendar year, too, now. I know. That's why it's difficult to compare apples to apples. But I assume the 16 minutes is what we had budgeted, assuming it's probably a little larger because of the prescription, that sort of thing. One issue that I do want to heavily stress, they're talking calendar years, we're talking budget years. Right. The urban county government has budgeted roughly the benefit pools at a certain level and through January, the urban county government is also picking up the bill of about $8 million subsidy. There is some additional subsidy from January 1 through the end of the budget year. So again, the only money that's in place is six months of this calendar year cycle. But this saves us money, correct? This still saves us money in terms of how we price the program. We're not going to be in addition to what we've budgeted. It should be funding this liability. This is a cost-of-service model, so yes, it saves us money through the cost-of-service model. Okay, if you have time after this, can you give us what we budgeted, kind of take the calendar year and fiscal year and make it what it is? I think you have it maybe even. Yeah, and as we're going through that, you know. Just so everyone's. Yeah, no, I agree with you, Kevin, and Councilman Verstendant. We've got really, and we need to be mindful that we've got two audiences that we're really addressing. We've got the council that we're addressing, and we've got employees that we're addressing. The council is interested, as Council Member Stenet is asking appropriately, is what impact and what is the reliability of this new system in meeting our budgeted projections? Is that a fair way of casting it? Yeah, I just want the employees to understand when these races just didn't appear, that we have a baseline of 16 million we've got to pay out of our budget. And when you use words, Ryan, like subsidy, you know, let's use simple words like loss. We're losing that much effectively the city is today. When you say subsidizing, we're really losing money on this project today, the health insurance system today. Is that shaking your head? But I'm trying to make it something. I mean, Jane is shaking. Well, that's the chart I was looking for. That's perfect. I mean, that explains it. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that clearly explains it. So, Briggs, how many employees do we have and how many participants total did you all base the models on? You said 2,000? Yeah, 2,959. Approximately 575 of those are retirees. Okay. And how many total participants are in our plan? $6,000 area? Yeah, $6,400 when you count mom and dad and kids. And so I think it's clear, too, you said retirees. These rates are the same for all retirees as well, right? These are the composite gross rates will fund the liability for 100% of your population. And we keep the subsidies the same for retirees as well. Is that correct, Jane? Because some retirees have some questions. They have a defined benefit pool as well. Right now it's very similar. It's a $355,000, $74,000. Right. So, again, back to the point of the $16 million, we already have that budgeted. So regardless of which plan. That's inclusive in that number that I gave you. And regardless of which plan an employee chooses, it's not going to save us more money necessarily versus another plan because they're paying for it out of their pocket. The only way we would save money would be if we took the gross health care spending underneath $16 million. Right. Exactly. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Stenet. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. So next you're going to the communications plan. So with that in mind, I have a couple technical questions. On the 2011 sheet and then on the 2012 sheet, the non-bargaining benefit pool is $355.74 per individual employee per month. Then why is there a difference in the pay periods? One is 24 pay periods and one is 26. The allocation through working with your team is going to be a 26-week allocation. So rather than crediting $355 over 24 pay periods, $355 is going to be credited over 26 pay periods. Okay. So how was it that we did 24 pay periods when there are 26 pay periods? I've been on the edges of this discussion. I have a horse in the race. Go ahead, Dung. Yeah. Going to 26 pay periods is to allow the employees to spread that cost across more paychecks. Previously, their payroll deduction was based on 24 pay periods, and the allocation was based on 24 pay periods. It's just an administrative function. It doesn't change cost. It doesn't change employee cost. It doesn't change employer cost. It's just a way to spread that out across more paychecks. The employee allocation per pay period goes down, correct? Relative to the 24. Yes. Because you're taking it against 20. Now, can you talk a little bit about the two high deductible choices, who can choose them, what they mean for our employees, and just a little bit about that? First of all, I think a key characteristic is the LFUCG contribution to the actual health savings account. You all are allocating $500 for single employees, $1,000 for family, and that's paid in semi-annual cycles, January and July. And that is designed to offset the expenses associated with the high deductible. The first high deductible plan there, the HSA, is a $2,500 deductible. So somebody that has single coverage with a $500 health savings account allocation, if they consumed a lot of health care and they applied their health savings account to their expenses, then they would have a net cost of $2,000 maximum out of pocket. One other feature of that is they also have a prescription drug copayment plan after that $2,500 deductible is met. So let me say it differently and more concise. Assuming that the health savings account allocation is used to offset cost, somebody that consumes $500,000 worth of health care under that plan would have a maximum exposure in the calendar year of $2,000, plus their co-payments for Rx, which we're demonstrating here at $10, $30, $60. And then the proposed plans that we're looking at for the on-site pharmacy would have co-pays of $5, $15, $30. Okay. And then on the three PPO plans, just for clarity, if you take the monthly benefit pool to an employee, $355.74, And then you look at the monthly premiums. The lowest cost premium, the benefit pool is $355.74, and the premium is $423.97. So the employee would need to pay extra beyond the pool of about, what is that, $68.20? And that's the lowest cost of the PPOs. Well, of the PPOs, HSA would be $10.08. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. I have several questions about this. One is, why are we using Bluegrass Family Health and Humana for the... Right. Currently, you use Humana for your health care finance, and through our analysis, we think that they provide a great value, and we discussed that previously. We also put out an RFP for your prescription drug manager, which is currently in 2011, Caremark. And when we compared the amount of reimbursement that Caremark was paying retail pharmacies for your drug consumption, it was about $8 million. The gross expenditures are about $11 million. Through employee co-pays, they pay about $3 million of that. And then LFUCG hits the balance of about $8 million. One of the encouraging things that will be coming before you all for first and second reading is the prescription benefit manager piece through Express Scripts. And through Express Scripts, we've done an analysis that says that that $8 million will go down to about $6.5 million in 2012. So through Ural's critical mass, negotiating power, I would like to think our RFP process, we've been able to drive additional value. Stated differently, if they had an express card in their hands in 2011, we would have been reimbursing drugs about a million and a half dollars less. Yeah, I'm very familiar with express scripts. I was just wondering why the change. the health saving accounts are something that are becoming more and more popular and can be of great benefit to employees who aren't high users and they can carry that money over, et cetera, for when they get old like me and have a lot. So the other question I had is when the wellness center package was presented, One of the things they said was that their in-house pharmacy, that by buying bulk and et cetera, that some of the prescriptions were as low as $0.32 for a month's worth. would that savings be passed on to our employees, or would they still have the 10, 30, 60? They're going to pay. I mean, I would imagine there would have to be some kind of markup to pay for the pharmacist, et cetera. If the cost of the drug is less than the copay, they're going to pay the cost of the drug that LFUCG can purchase it for. minus the cost of the operation. It's nominal, but we're factoring that into our numbers here. And also, so the 5-15-30 for proposed on-site pharmacy co-pays could, in fact, be quite a bit less if... Yes, if the cost of the drug is less. Which I think is real important for our employees to understand. Well, we also think that's a great value even for your health savings account people Absolutely. It's a good deal for everybody. Express Scripts also generally has programs where you can buy three months' worth through the mail for two months' worth of co-pays. Would that be a benefit? We'll find two in a lot of them. Pharmacy. Okay. It's embedded. The other really big deal I see here is that vision care is covered under this, which is not covered under most health insurance plans. I don't believe it's covered under the state. And so they are getting added services with these plans. Nobody wants to raise the fees that our employees are paying. But at the same time, I think everybody realizes we were on a sinking ship and something had to be done. I've been trying to, I'm not covered by the Fayette County health plan, which probably saved you all a lot of money. And so I'm meant to try to dig out what my plan offers and how it compares. But these are still, when you look at private sector, Cadillac plans, even the PPOC. So I think a lot of communication and education with our employees is going to be very, very important. You know, the state does not give contributions to family, spouse, children. So these are benefits that pretty much nobody else does. and I think that's important. Well, certainly the wellness center is going to be a big-time differentiator. And the wellness center. Absolutely. I mean, when you look at somebody who just has to take off work every week to go get an allergy shot, they're missing work, they're paying for an office visit, they're going to save money and save work time. So there are so many benefits. It's one of the questions I had in the emergency room, you know, copay of $75. That's really cheap on the PPOA. Again, we're replicating the platinum plan. We're not pulling the platinum plan away. Right. But I think people need to understand that that is, like I say, these are Cadillac plans by any standard. Right. What about, am I out of time? Okay. I expired. I'll ask more later. Council Member Crosby. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Mayor. My question relates to women's care at the wellness center and for annual preventative women's care. is that covered and will there be i mean because it's it was our understanding that there wouldn't be um a specialist at the center who typically yeah i want to answer that question somewhat holistically uh and and not saying i'm a subject matter expert in women's health care But the wellness center is going to put a great emphasis on prevention in that we're going to be mining a lot of different data to identify gender-appropriate, age-appropriate prevention measures and understanding where people have gaps in care, where men aren't getting a PSA, perhaps where women aren't getting a mammogram. Obviously, we're not going to have mammography equipment at the wellness center. But there will be a lot of interaction with the wellness center in terms of raising awareness of what prevention best practices are and evidence-based medicine supports. And so we'll be pivoting off that, leveraging off that. I don't know if I'm answering your question. Not really. I'll just throw it out. The question was, who will be handling or will it be covered at the wellness center, pelvic exams and pap smears for women for their preventative care? There will be as much women's care or men's care at the wellness center as much as a primary care physician can provide. Anything beyond that that a specialist would typically provide, obstetrician, gynecologist, would still be available through the retail network. So will that be a focus? I know that we're in the process of hiring. I think I overheard the mayor saying that we're in the process of trying to hire for these positions, will that be something that's taken into consideration? I mean, that may be a difference between an employee and what service they choose as to what services are offered or what kind of primary care doctor and their specialties are. I don't know if you can comment on that or not. Yeah, I think what you're saying is anything beyond a primary care protocol would not be provided. That's what we need to say. We don't need to raise false expectations. No. So that, I mean. Some primary care doctors do provide this service, and what I was asking the question is, is that going to be something that we are going to look at providing at this center or not? Right. Yeah. I'm talking about our answers don't need to. And we can provide that answer back to you. Interview process is going on now between Marathon and physicians, but as much prevention as possible is the general scope of it. Let's get the answer from Marathon as to what is provided through their system. I think that's an important question to ask because that may determine as we're starting enrollment what kind of plans an employee is going to enroll in as to what type of services will be provided by the primary care physicians on staff. So I think that that's something that we need to know. I'm anxious to hear about the communication as I look through this. I guess my question is how are we going to communicate to employees the best option or encourager? How are you going to be trying to encourage? Because when you look at it, you're still keeping the PPOA as the platinum option, but the costs are quite a bit higher for them to stay in that, which we all understand why, because of the situation we're in, but what is going to be their next best option to keep it? Because if you look in other areas, there's also increases in cost or maybe fees that they haven't been paying if they were in the platinum option currently, but they go to a lower option. They're still paying the same amount, relatively the same amount, maybe a little bit more actually for the health savings accounts, but yet they're now having a deductible money. Let me augment the answer with not just the wellness center, but with all five plans outside the wellness center. The plans are becoming compliant with health care reform, which states that 100% prevention care is covered across all plans, not just at the wellness center, but at primary care specialists, physicians throughout the network. So if the wellness center is not able to provide pap smears and testing like that, they will be able to steer employees to those places to have those services done at no cost. Okay. That answers my question. That's 100% coverage. All right. You guys thought of that while we were standing here. It was a great question. Yeah. Thank you. Another benefit of this process. So thank you, Council Member Crosby. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. Since we're on some of the little nuances of the plan, I was going to follow up with Councilman Crosby. Preventive care for both male and female are covered. That's correct. So colonoscopies, mammograms, things like that are all considered preventive care. I think employees need to understand that those things are covered at no cost, regardless of if the wellness cleaner can do it there or not. You can go to your normal people and have that done. A couple of other things. Where would someone go and find out, because some of these plans depend on what drugs you take, medications, Where would you go find the cost of those medications so you can determine which plan would? The best place, to give you the best indicator. So employees watching. Go to Humana.com. Okay. Register. You can look at the prescription drugs that you're taking based on your claims, but you can also look at Humana's contracted discount for those drugs. So that might be applicable if you want to choose an HSI option where you're going to pay that full cost versus a PPO where you're going to have the co-pays. So they wouldn't go to Express Scripts, they'd go to Humana's site? Humanis is the best place to start because those claims are already loaded. Okay. And then the HSA logistics, LFUCG pays a portion of the HSA upfront costs, either $500 for individual, $1,000 for family. When will LFUCG pay that and where will that money be paid to? Would that be in their paycheck or would that be in a debit card? We've worked that out because employees want to know day one, will they get a debit card or do they have to go set something up? I think those logistics, if you don't have the answer now, I'm just saying those are questions we're getting asked. The money is direct deposited into the HSA account, so it doesn't go to the employee who then deposits. It's put into an HSA account for them to start using. And will they get a debit card on that account? We do. Okay, I just want to make sure, because in the private sector, you can go to a lot of different banks and do your own, but we'll do that for them so they don't have to worry about that. And can they payroll deduct money into their HSA? Absolutely, up to the IRS limits, including what the employer puts in. They can put money on a pre-tax basis so it lowers their taxable income. and they can put money of their own in those accounts, and it rolls over year, over year, over year. It doesn't go away like the FSA. It's not a use it or lose it. And the last thing, you said go to Humana.com to check the drug benefits or the cost if you want to go the HSA route. What about the other procedures that we will cover? Are there any changes from what we've been covering, like bariatric surgeries, infertility? Are we looking at changing any of those? How do we research those two for employees? That's a great question. The only benefit that is being eliminated from the plan, all five plans, is bariatric procedures. Going forward as of January 1st, those will be a non-covered service. Now, there are people that have already had those procedures done under existing plans, and there will be some continuance of care for those people. And that will be one-on-one with those individuals, and Mary Lauer, Human Resources, is who they should talk to about that continuance of care. But that's the only benefit that's being removed. What about any being added? the wellness center, on-site RX, 100% preventative care across all five plans, according to health care reforms. That's mammogram, pap smear, PSA testing, those type of services. Very good. Thank you for your indulgence in getting some of those little questions we get asked answered. Thank you, Mayor. Let me intervene for just a second. I think it might be useful to at least give us some headlines on the communication plan, because as we're talking about these rates, employees are thinking, when do I get and what do I get? So you need to tell us what and when employees are going to receive. Right. Well, augmenting some of the information that's been sent out of the mayor's office to employees, starting tomorrow we're wanting to send out an employee memo that will talk to them in as much detail as we can give. about what they're going to experience over the next four to five weeks. It'll start, one, that'll be a high-level overview of the three steps of the process. Starting on Thursday, Friday, depending on production of videos and employee benefit overviews, which I'll describe, we're going to release a video that is consistent, everybody can listen to, they can take it home, they can show it to their spouse. They can repeat it, rewind it, stop it, start it. That will go comprehensively into all the different benefits, all five options, all the details on them. On meaning that, we're going to give them what we call an employee benefit overview, which is a paper document that's going to have about 12 pages in it that will support the video with information that they don't hear, but now they can read. And that information, Mayor Gray, will be released on Thursday, Friday, probably more towards Friday. Again, we're in production on video and printing right now. Starting next Monday from October 24th through Friday, November 4th, over a period of two weeks working with human resources, we're going to go out to the divisional departments and working with LFUCG staff that we've helped train and educate, we're going to be communicating those benefits once again with the spoken word. And that will go for about two weeks. Finally, once that process is complete, that could roll into the third week, but what we would hope to happen would be on Monday, November 7th, the PeopleSoft online enrollment system would open up and people could enroll. Again, in the employee benefit overview that we're building, we've actually got screenshots of the enrollment screens. So we're trying to help people all the way from what's their first impression of the benefits, and we're giving them very detailed and rich collateral and educational material, all the way to the end goal, which is the online enrollment. One of the things that is not on this sheet that will be coming out, there will be a separate track for the wellness center. Marathon Health just completed a communication audit last week. We will touch on that in the employee benefit overview as well as the video. And we've got some information about the wellness center and how it works so they can get a basic understanding. But there will be a significant amount of rich information that employees will ramp up on the wellness center. So it's really wellness center track and then this track, which is covering the core health and welfare plans, these five plans we've been talking about. Okay. All right, let's go back to then the council comments. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of comments, not really questions, but Briggs, again, I want to thank you and your team and all those inside government that have been working on this for a year. Today is a lot like going to the doctor and getting bad news, and finding out that there's really no way around, but you need a lifestyle change. And so I think that it's something that I said the other night that I think begs repeating, which is we are very focused right now on sick care. I mean, this is what sick care looks like for us. When you're sick, this is what it costs us to take care of that, or it costs us as individuals, as a government, and that's what we're talking about. but we've made a substantial investment into wellness care. And so one of the things that as employees see this, there's a couple ways to process this. There's a fear factor of, oh, my goodness, and a great deal of anxiety and so forth, and that's a very natural reaction. Or we can also take a look at this and say this is kind of a line in the sand where maybe we start making decisions in our personal lives and collectively that make us healthier and have a much better life than we've even gotten out. And so what I see is someone who's processed that through a fear lens themselves, individually for my family, and said, you know, maybe this is the opportunity that we need to go in this direction. 100% of preventative wellness care is really, really critical that we are actually incentivizing employees to do these things and not bear any cost in that. And so, again, as employees process this and look at it in their own situation, what I would encourage them to do along with all of us is to say, you know, this is kind of the line in the sand and this is where we focus on being well and being active and being alive versus being sick and just taking care of those things that are not necessarily positive with our health. So again, it's a huge effort, and it's just a very different time. It's a fork in the road, and it's very much equivalent also to what we faced environmentally a few years ago where we had to make a choice. We couldn't keep going down the same path, and we had to start putting money into changing the way that our water is. These are these huge issues, and it would be wonderful from a political standpoint to duck it. It would be wonderful to not have to do this and bear this pain personally and with other employees, but these choices can't be put off any longer. So here we are. And, again, thank you for being with us as a government and walking with us. Thank you, Council Member McCord. Council Member Lawless, I see. Council Member Lawless, have you spoken on this issue already? You want to let Council Member Beard go first? Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Lawless. A couple of questions. The benefit pool is paid to all employees, whether they're in a medical... You know, it goes beyond just funding health care. The benefit pool is allocated to dental, life, insurance, health care. I don't know if HR wants to augment my comments here. I'm going to be on it. There are some people that receive benefit pool that don't have any insurance with the city. Are the benefit pools to be paid? Beyond our scope of work. There was some whispering campaign going along. The Wellness Center, Mike Briggs. How are the people hired? And on what basis are they hired? What are the criteria? What are the levels? and most importantly, criteria for physicians. Is it going to be a retired physician who might be a, or is it going to be a primary care type physician just out of school? How does this work, and how do we get the best quality individual we need? All right. I'm not going to do this question justice. I'll try a little bit. I do know that Peggy and others on the selection committee that day heard a very robust presentation on the hiring process. We heard comments about hiring a world-class clinical team. And they definitely have a process from not only posting, but also a very rigorous interview process that even gets down to the personality level of the clinician, be it the doctor or the clinician, such as a physician's assistant or nurse practitioner, in regard to maybe a little bit more extroverted, being able to coach, being able to understand people's personalities, their readiness to change. So I'm going to probably hit the pause button here, but part of the value proposition from Marathon Health that impressed everybody on the selection committee was their hiring process, their credentialing process, and I would be glad to augment that with a follow-up email, but it's well vetted. That is the they you referenced? Yes, sir. Thank you. Yes, sir. I think that's all I had. Thank you. Thank you, Bruce. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, sir. Okay. Council Member Lawless and Vice Mayor Gordon. Do we require our employees and retirees to go on Medicare at 65? The HR is shaking their head back there, no. Benji, do you have expertise in this? Do you want to augment my thoughts here? You can, by law, force an active employee or somebody that's eligible for your – Oh, sorry, did you say retirees? Retirees and or active. What about our retirees? No, you've got some that are grandfathered in under your existing. Is that something that we can look into? That's. We provide a medical plan that we have to allow them to participate in it. Also, I just wanted to speak to Council Member Crosby's question about family doctors and pap smears. By state law, if you have a family doctor and you want to see an OBGYN for pap smears, et cetera, you are allowed to do that. So if they want to go to the wellness office but want to go to their own OBGYN for those kind of services, they're allowed to do that. That's correct. Will birth control be offered, paid for under these plans? That would be covered under your prescription drug benefit. Because not all prescription drug benefits cover. No. They cover Viagra, but not health. Viagra's not covered. Okay. Thank you very much. Oh, and one other thing. When the wellness folks came in and they talked about the CHIP program and all that, they also said that people who were not covered under the insurance could use the pharmacy and the employees who maybe were covered somewhere else could use the pharmacy to buy their prescription drugs as well as the other wellness facilities, et cetera. Do you know any more about that? That is not applicable under LFUCG at this time. The initial rollout is for people, retirees, employees, and their dependents who are covered under the health plan, under LFUCG's health plan, are the only people that will have access to the on-site pharmacy and clinic at this time. Okay. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here and presenting this. This is just kind of a simple clarity question, so everybody knows. All employees will be required to choose one of the five plans and pay the premium, correct? Correct. And then they can choose whether or not to save money on co-pays and deductibles by using the wellness center and the prescription pharmacy. Correct? Correct. But employees that have coverage elsewhere can waive off the plant. Right. But aside from that, anybody who wants to participate in the health plan has to choose one of the five, and then from there they can choose whether to use the wellness center or not. It's at their discretion. Okay, so just thinking about that, if an employee intends to use the wellness center all the time and the pharmacy all the time, except, of course, they would go to specialists, would it be, I know everybody's, you know, it's very individual, but would it be advisable then to choose the lowest cost plan in terms of premiums if they intend to use the free services. Considering everybody's unique and you assume a good health year next year, or even for somebody for very high utilizers of health care, the HSA can be the best option for those people. So if you're of good health and just the frequent sick visit or physical, that's a very good option for you to keep your cost down low, have an employer contribution, have free service at the health center, as well as lower-cost in prescription drugs there. And in your communication plan when you're going by division to talk with employees, will an employee be able to get somewhat personalized advice if they know they're a high user or if they know they're a low user, will the folks educating them be able to tell them what might benefit them in terms of their choice? That opportunity will exist, and nobody wants to come across as selling them on one plan or another other than helping them make the best decision. So from experience and coming down to it, it's very difficult to tell somebody which plan to go into. but based on their situation, we can tell them the pros and cons of a particular plan that might be of their best interest. I think that's good because particularly with the increases in the premiums and the fact that our employees will be paying more, I think the more knowledge they can have about what will be to their specific benefit will be good. So thank you. You're welcome. Okay. I think it would be worthwhile to clarify, too, that the updated rates and that summary will be being sent to employees by e-mail later this afternoon around 530. It's my understanding. Is that correct? That's correct. That's not a full line. No, they're going to change it. Okay, I'm sorry. Yes, they're working on that now. Okay. So today. And for those who don't have email, then call HR, drop by HR. We're going to be distributing that on Friday, a lot of that information, the booklets. The booklets will go out on Friday. What about the, and any information, my understanding is there's some today. Rate information going out via email today. Right. And then on Friday, the booklets that we'll drill into more detail realize that's when you need to start asking questions. That's the way to try to address the anxiety and the questions is to start asking questions. Okay. Understand that. Okay. All right. Vice Mayor, you finished. Okay. Council Member Crosby. That was part of kind of what I was going to ask. I know you said that you were training some LFECG employees, plus you had some people who were going to be available to answer questions. Do you know about approximately how many? Because I know as a body up here, we are getting lots of input and questions from our employees about how this affects them. And, yeah, I know you said you can't tell people what to do, But I think right now when they're just looking at the fact that they might be in a premium plan and for them to be able to stay in a comparable premium plan, their costs are doubling in many cases. And, you know, clearly everybody's going to be paying more premiums, but I think they also are looking at it too when they go to maybe one of the lower plans. they still have increased costs based on some of the deductibles and the prescription payments going up somewhat. So my question, I guess, is are you going to have an adequate number of people to be able to address this? Because I just know what we're hearing. And then also to be able to explain based on their needs. Because I think right now, at least from the perception I have when people are calling my office, is that it's looking at just a premium plan versus a premium plan and maybe not understanding the different options and how it affects them more specifically. Benefits Insurance Marketing is developing a PowerPoint presentation for us that goes over the basics of here's what the plans are, the definitions, how they pick a plan, so that there will be consistent information. We will be designating and training approximately 10 employees that will be responsible for if the divisions call and want a presentation, then we will send one of those people to that site to give the presentation to the employee group. Then there will be an additional 50 individuals who are trained on what I'll refer to as the tactical aspects, who know the e-mail addresses of where to refer the employees to to find out their specific claims information from the past year, how to, we'll have a form for them to fill out where they can list all of their claims from the last year, their prescription costs, that will help them figure out which plan is best for them. So in total, there will be approximately 50 to 60 people who will be trained on the specifics of the plan. They will not be trained to answer people's personal medical questions, but to give them specific or general information about the plan design. And then that same presentation will also be sent out via email so that individuals can bring that PowerPoint presentation up at home to share it with their spouse. And then we'll also be having some presentations, four I believe in total, two of them which will be held in the evening hours. So if individuals want to bring a spouse or someone to the presentation with them to help them understand the process better. I probably shouldn't make a personal comment, but I'm going to. While I don't think anybody disagrees with the fact that there needs to be training, it just seems very, I don't know, there are lots of people who are very nervous about this, and basically what I'm hearing is there is a generic plan that 10 people are going to be trained on and that they're going to go out and be talking about something that they're already going to get on e-mail and they're not going to be able to give them any type of personal or customized attention to their, Now, maybe the company can, but the people we have on foot here are not going to be able to really assist them much more than just the PowerPoint presentation. That's what I heard you say. I don't know if that's what you were saying, but the feedback as a body that I know many of us are getting is that people are really, nobody is denying that there has to be something done, but they're very nervous about some of the cost and maybe have more specific questions. And I think what I heard you just say was that you're going to have a generic PowerPoint presentation, and that's what you're going to share with them. The PowerPoint presentation will help people understand words that they've never had to take into consideration. As they presented, approximately 89% of our employees were on a zero-deductible plan, which means they never had to take into consideration what do words like copay, deductible, out-of-pocket, maximum mean. So we're going to educate them on what those words mean. We will then give them some tools and guide them to the area where they can go online and find their claims. What did they spend last year? We will explain to them how they go online and find out what prescription medications. What does that mean when you have the PPO and have to pay for your own medications? What does that mean if you have an SHA and are paying for your medications? When you reach that maximum amount of pocket, what is the difference in those things? then we will help them as much as we can determine what plan would be best for them based on what information they're willing to share with us about their personal medical information. Let me make a point. Thank you. I think Councilman McCrosby's question is a good one. I think you know, Leslie, and Briggs knows and Benji knows and Mary knows that for some time, at least the message from me has been exactly what Councilmember Crosby was describing, that any time there is significant change in any social system, any employee population like is represented here, there's going to be, and I've used this language repeatedly, distress and anxiety. People are going to be disturbed, and that is exactly why we have a plan. I've never yet seen a plan that is in rearview mirror, is perfect. That's why we have after-event reports, and we try to improve. What you have described is a group of employees who are and have been and are being properly, appropriately trained to both in a responsive way and a proactive way engage with our employee population. And we know that we need to dial it up, and that's what this is all about. And the level of we're going to have to be responding, and then through our response in our education, we will manage through this. That is the plan, right? Yes. Right. One of the just last Friday, all directors were in a meeting in preparation for this change, and the entire meeting was dedicated to it. So I just want to say I think that it is to be expected that the council members will have questions, and that's going to be part of this pretty significant change. Okay. Council Member Lane. My question was for Ms. Jarvis. Before I ask the question, I think I'd just like to make a comment, though, The fact that over 80% of our employees picked the Platinum plan would indicate to me that we have some pretty smart employees. They know what was the best deal, and that encourages me as they review the new plans that we'll be able to make a judgment of what is the best deal for them. My question, I'm not enrolled in the plan because I have my own company and we have our own coverage, so I'm not really familiar with what our policy is. But when someone joins the Irvin County government prior to being employed, are they given a physical examination to determine the health conditions of the employee? Can that be a decision-making factor in employing somebody, or do we have a policy on that? That is addressed in the statutes and the ordinance of the procedure we'll take the employee through, through a new hire. All of our employees that come on board are given a drug and alcohol screening. And then whether or not they have a medical or a physical examination depends on the job they're working in. For example, police, fire corrections, some of those employees that are in more strenuous occupations would go through a medical physical where other individuals would not. Well, do you think that it might be appropriate to have a policy that every employee would be examined? because the reason I mention this is I've heard where one employee that has some kind of major illness could run up a million or a million and a half dollar cost. And when you look at that to our total cost, that's a significant amount, and maybe we should reevaluate that. I see our attorney coming up now. I took a medical exam before you make an offer, so we couldn't take into account their information. We went through this in examining with the law department a couple of years ago what positions we would give medical examinations to, because, again, there is a significant cost with that, and that's why we determined to scale it back for only those positions that were physical in nature. The other change that you saw recently on the council docket is we do not bring the candidate or we are making a conditional offer of employment when we bring it to you subject to the physicals, because we cannot offer the physical and then make offering the job contingent upon the results of the physical. So we can't factor that into it when we're making someone a job offer. Right. But if they come before, is the physical exam only for drugs, alcohol, or something like that, or is it for health issues also? The employees who are working in a physical-type position, like police, fire, corrections, some of our equipment operators, theirs is a medical physical. The remaining employees go through just a drug and alcohol screen. All right. Thank you very much. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. That brought up a question for me. Council Member Lane was making reference to if we have an employee that has a very large claim, right? Right. And that's where the coinsurance would come in? The specific reinsurance. Reinsurance? Yes. So if a claim was above? $250,000. Okay. Right now, that's not in place. That will be in place as of January 1 to cap the city's liability at a quarter million dollars on any one individual for a plan year. I know we're talking about the health insurance, but also I wanted to make sure that was where before we had several claims that were 700,000 plus, right? That's correct. I shouldn't say a lot, but a few. We have a couple this year. And also with the physicals we talked about with police fire corrections, the ones that are required to have physicals, lastly, will they be going to the wellness center? At this time, no, because we haven't gotten all those parts and pieces into place, but it would be our goal down the road that the wellness facility would handle all of our occupational wellness, meaning we could do our drug screening through there. But in order for that to happen, there has to be certain things that are in place at the wellness center because there are DOT requirements and everything. But yes, eventually we hope that the wellness will incorporate occupational wellness. That would be a pretty big cost savings rate. It would. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Lane. I have just a follow-up question on the reinsurance. Is the rate for that determined on your experience, or are they just arbitrarily set a rate on it? It's a little of both. They look at your experience to see what kind of claims propensity you have going forward, but they also base it on a pooled mechanism of a rating for life-size clients. And it's going to be provided by Humana, so they're very familiar with where you're at in terms of claims, your claims history, and what the propensity for those claims are likely to be. And they gave you an extremely good rate for that product. All right. Thank you. Okay. Okay, anybody, looks like no one else has signed up to speak. So if there are no more questions, we can, is there more presentation, Briggs? No, we're fine. All right. Okay. We can move to council reports. Oh, George was on first. All right. Mr. Stenis says okay. So go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Council Members, we sent around, I think last Tuesday, actually, some information about a walk-on that I was going to do regarding an intern in my office. And so today I moved to place on a docket for the October 27, 2011 Council meeting, a resolution authorizing the Mayor to execute a clinical education agreement with the University of Kentucky's College of Nursing to provide an intern to form services for the 8th District Council Office. And this has gone through HR and has gone through law and been properly vetted and everything. So moved. Second. Motion by Council Member Myers, second by Council Member McCord. This will be available. The floor is available for discussion on it. For questions, Vice Mayor. Council Member Myers, I just had a couple questions since you made the motion today. I just got through it today. And I know in here it talks, is this sort of a, there's sort of a general syllabus and then a specific one for your intern? Because it talks a lot about clinical time and pharmacological monitoring, which I don't think we're going to be having here, are we? No, we're not. But the School of Nursing has a legal document that they require to be signed as part of this process. But if you look at the other piece that talks about what the intern is actually going to be doing, there's nothing that falls under those other guidelines. But it's something they don't waive. Everybody has to go through the same document. Okay. And then will there be some update on the dates? I think the agreement says it starts September 26th, or has she already been working? I think she is in as a visitor right now, but she hasn't started working because the school will not let her start working until this is signed. Okay, and after the work is done, will we be getting a report, or will she be giving... I know she has to report back to the College of Nursing, but will the council hear a report? Absolutely, and there will be some deliverables as well. Okay. And then my other question, I know you and I had had a brief conversation about this. In several places it says there's no financial obligation. Have you ironed that out, or what's the situation? Will there be a stipend? Originally, there was not going to be a stipend because we interpreted the documents from the School of Nursing to say that we could not provide a stipend. But since then, we've understood that that's not completely correct and that we can provide a stipend. And so right now, we're actually looking, the law department's reviewing whether or not I can use operating funds to provide a stipend. And if we can, then we intend to provide one. If we can't, then unless we can find somebody else where we won't. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Yes, sir. I have a quick question for Mr. Myers. To whom would the intern report, like to the council administrator? Do we have a plan on how that would be structured? Yes. The intern is working in my office, so they will not be reporting to the council administrator. I'm sorry. Say that again? The intern will be working in my office, so no, they will not be reporting to the council administrator. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Lane. So is there any other discussion on the motion? Okay. If not, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. That's it. Okay. Next on, call on Councilmember Stinnett next. Before, Mr. Stennett, you start, I need to get to a public meeting related to the Rupp Arts Entertainment District, if you all will let me, at 5.30 or so. And Vice Mayor Gorton has willingly offered to take over the chair, if that's all right with everybody. Okay, thank you very much. I hear no objections. Council Member Stennett. Council Member Stennett, you're up. No, no, no, I'm ready to go. I was just saying without, if there's no objection, then I'll pass the chair over to Vice Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple things. One, a lot of us got an email through government, but I want to reach a plea out to the city as well, people watching. I know Susan Straub did a great email about Be Fire Smart from Liberty Mutual. They are having a campaign where our own public safety department, our fire folks, can win $10,000. So if everyone in the community, at least 3,000 of us, needs to go to a website called BeFiresmart.com and take a survey. It's a brief survey about Lexington and our fire preparedness. If we get to 3,000 people, we are in the lead. But we only have 1,600 respondents, but we are in the lead of any other city. So if we can get everyone to this website, take the survey. It takes you two minutes about fire preparedness. We have a chance to get our fire folks $10,000. So that's a pretty good chunk of change to get our fire folks. So I'll reach a plea out to everyone watching and our city and our staff here and our employees. Go to BeFireSmart.com and look for the Lexington, Kentucky link, and then you'll be able to help us raise awareness for fire preparedness as well as get us $10,000 to our fire folks. So thank you. The second issue I was going to ask, I know tomorrow is our assistance advocate last day, since we had a potluck today, and Vice Mayor or Ms. Marlon, do you have an update on who will start taking those calls Thursday morning just so we can let the public know? We are between Thursday and the 1st of November. We are going to need to forward the calls, and they're going to be held for the person who's coming on the 1st. So we have someone coming on the 1st, so for those two weeks? We're fairly certain, yes. Okay. This will be a contract person. I assume 311 has been advised of this. We've all had a meeting together with the CAO, and we think this will work fairly smoothly. And our current citizen advocate is doing a lot of work to, she's closed all her cases, but were ongoing. She's followed through and closed them all. And she's marking everything in her office that is applicable to the citizen advocate job. and is leaving it in very good shape for the person coming in. Very good. So if citizens have an issue, just call 311 after tomorrow, and we'll be able to handle that after November 1st. So very good. Thank you for working on that. And then also, Mr. Rolone, do you have an update, or can you just tell us when we can expect an announcement on the parking garage behind us here at the Phoenix Building? Several people are still asking us about it, as well as the citizens who go there every day. Do we have any time frame on when a plan will come out? Yes, we hope to do something pretty soon. We have another consultant looking at it, and hopefully they're going to get back with us. Next month or 30 minutes? Probably. I talked to John Sheehan. He thinks it might. One, we're looking at two, and he's hoping one will be done this couple weeks, and the final one may be the end of November. That's fine. I just want to give up so people can understand it's not going to open again tomorrow. Maybe in November might be the final report. So we'll keep you up on that. Okay. Thank you, sir. And then last but not least, I know Commissioner Taylor, you're in the room. A lot of us have been asked about different state roads in Fayette County, and obviously we have some roads like Manowar and Sir Barton that are large roads that really need to be repaired and fixed. And I don't know if you can answer today or not or maybe get a memo to counsel, but have we appealed to the state? I know the state has more money in their road transportation budget than ever before based on the monies they've received through the gasoline tax. Have we asked them for help on these bigger, larger roads? because obviously we had the discussion through planning committee last week that we can't afford it through our own budgets because it would take up every single dime for resurfacing. But have we made a list and sent it to the state? And you don't have to answer today. If you can maybe give us an update of if we have asked what roads were asked, if we haven't, how do we help you do the ask? Because I know other counties are getting a lot of funds right now, and I think it's a good time, given our need here, that maybe we prepare a list and send it to Frankfort. So thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yes, Council Member McCord. Thank you. Commissioner Taylor, one of the things I would encourage you to do as you're working on that is to go through the MPO and have the MPO write the letter for that request. And obviously the mayor serves on that committee and has do a number of other council members here. But having the MPO do it, they've got the state folks sitting right there. But if you'll make the list and say that we're asking for some discretionary dollars, we're asking for some very specific dollars, that can help carry just a little bit more weight than just us asking. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. In today's Sacramento Bee, which is a sister paper to the Herald-Leader, there's an article discussing the fate of the California State Teachers Retirement Systems. The analysis under the new proposed government accounting standards that are in the works for 2013 is that their shortfall, their pension shortfall, will triple under the new rules from about $50 billion to about $150 billion. And that's for the California State Teachers Retirement System. If that were to happen in Lexington, our $222 million shortfall in the pension and $212 million shortfall in the medical benefits would leave us with an outstanding actual liability of $1.4 billion. I have been making requests for weeks for the Administration to bring to us an estimate based on the new rules about what our liability would be. I think that it is important to look down the road as far as we can and to understand what this new information would be and how we can plan for whatever changes may be coming up with these new accounting standards. The Pension Board and Administration still utilize an 8 percent return rate in the asset portfolio for making their assumptions about what the shortfall in the portfolio is. No one has seen 8 percent. Many folks think 5 percent would be more appropriate, but certainly our own investment portfolio has only seen 1.8% over the last five years and 5.3% over the last ten years. So to continue to report to the public financial conditions based on growth assumptions that we haven't seen in five or ten years, I think is very misleading to the public and it's misleading to the city's investors. And so I would encourage the administration to help us come up with this information as soon as we can. This is very serious. If our shortfall were to triple, everything we've talked about today is in jeopardy. So thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Dr. Blues? Thank you, Vice Mayor. One neighborhood association meeting announcement upcoming on Monday, October 24th, the Oakwood neighborhood will hold their monthly meeting. That's at 7 p.m. in the community center in Oakwood Park. And then looking ahead to Wednesday, November 2nd, the 2nd District will be hosting a neighborhood transition meeting for the neighborhoods in the Russell Cave Corridor, who will be leaving the 2nd District and moving to the 1st, assuming that we move forward with a second reading of the redistricting ordinance. And so I'd just like to ask folks in those neighborhoods to save the date. Wednesday, November 2nd, that's the Green Acres neighborhood, Brookfield Chase folks, Windburn neighborhood, Radcliffe Marlboro, and a section of the Joyland neighborhood. We'll be meeting in the Marlboro Park Community Center at 6.30 p.m. that night. Council Member Ford and his aide, Tiffany Tatum, will be there as well, and we'll be holding the kind of farewell and welcome meeting for those precincts. I'll say a little more about that in due course, but I just wanted to give people a heads up and to suggest if you put that date on the calendar, Wednesday, November 2, 6.30 to 8 p.m., and we'll all get together that evening. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You're welcome. Council Member Henson? Thank you, Vice Mayor. I have a motion regarding the itinerant merchant to move. It's currently in the Public Safety Committee, and I've been asked by Council Member Lawless to— She felt that it wasn't appropriate, and there are so many items in that committee. So I want to make a motion to move it to planning and zoning. Motion by Council Member Henson, second by Council Member Crosby, to move the itinerant merchant issue from public safety to planning. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Lawless? It originally was put in Public Safety, Public Works, because Public Works was part of Public Safety. Any other discussion or comment? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. Thank you. Thank you. And also, just to announce, Cardinal Valley Neighborhood Association is hosting a flight night on Saturday from 4 to 6 at Preston Cave Spring Park on Dunkirk Drive. So all the little ghosts and goblins in the neighborhood will probably have a really good time. And I'll be there to enjoy seeing it. And if you get a chance to stop by, thank you. Thank you. Next is Council Member Beard. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Actually, it's a question. We voted last week about participating in the Kroger flu shot program. And I guess my question is, has that started yet? Has it been implemented? And if not, why not? Melissa has an answer. Mary Lyle has been working on getting that scheduled and set up. She's already got some dates set, and they're working out the logistics right now, but some information should be coming out relatively soon. Okay, so it would be sooner rather than later, in other words. Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. And our attorney, Keith Warren, has something. This is my understanding for what it's worth is that the first round will begin next Tuesday on the 25th. Okay, because we have to do at least 1,000 to be, as I remember, we have to have our employees do at least 1,000 shots for Kroger to give us that break. I think that's right. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Does anyone else have counsel comment? I guess I would ask, do you all know the dates for, I mean, the time for Trick or Treat? I'm presuming it's on October 31st. Do you know the time? Has that been announced yet to the public? We'll get that for you, but it will be Sunday night, I mean Monday night. Okay, all right. I know the public's always interested, so. We'll get something to you next week. Thank you, thank you. If there's no further council report, we have no mayor's report. Is there any public comment about issues not on the agenda? Seeing none, do I hear adjourn? We have a motion and a second to adjourn. All those in favor say aye. Anybody opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you.