# Urban County Council Meeting - October 27, 2011 > Auto-transcribed civic record · October 27, 2011 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2226 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2226?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2011-10-27 - **Last revised**: October 27, 2011 - **Length**: 33,047 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government Council met on October 27, 2011, at 6:00 P.M. in Lexington, Kentucky, with Mayor Gray presiding. The Council addressed five agenda items during the meeting, taking four votes and hearing five public comments. The meeting resulted in the approval of three substantive measures: a Health Care Rates Supplement, Budget Amendments, and a Code of Ordinances Amendment. The Council also approved a Redistricting item. An invocation opened the proceedings. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on October 27, 2011: * Mayor Gray * Beard * Blues * Crosbie * Ellinger * Farmer * Ford * Gorton * Henson * Kay * Lane * Lawless * Martin * McChord * Myers * Stinnett No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions **Resolution 28** [timestamp: 2:40:53] Resolution 28 to commit up to an extra $1.9 million toward health care rates for all employees and retirees passed by roll call vote with 14 ayes and 0 nays. The motion was made by Kay and seconded by Gorton. Voting in favor were Blues, Crosbie, Ellinger, Farmer, Ford, Gorton, Henson, Kay, Lane, Lawless, Martin, Myers, and Stinnett. **Ordinance 129-2011** [timestamp: 6:00:00] Ordinance 129-2011, amending certain budgets of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, passed by roll call vote with 12 ayes and 0 nays. The motion was made by Blues and seconded by Henson. Voting in favor were Blues, Crosbie, Ellinger, Farmer, Ford, Gorton, Henson, Kay, Lane, Lawless, McChord, and Myers. **Ordinance 130-2011** [timestamp: 6:00:00] Ordinance 130-2011, redistricting the districts of the members of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council, passed by roll call vote with 12 ayes and 0 nays. The motion was made by Blues and seconded by Henson. Voting in favor were Blues, Crosbie, Ellinger, Farmer, Ford, Gorton, Henson, Kay, Lane, Lawless, McChord, and Myers. **Ordinance 131-2011** [timestamp: 6:00:00] Ordinance 131-2011, amending Section 22-5(2) of the Code of Ordinances, passed by roll call vote with 11 ayes and 1 nay. The motion was made by Blues and seconded by Henson. Voting in favor were Blues, Crosbie, Ellinger, Farmer, Gorton, Henson, Kay, Lane, Lawless, McChord, and Myers. Ford voted against the ordinance. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting approved four financial actions totaling $553,175: **Old Frankfort Pike Corridor Management Plan** [Resolution 5] A grant of $52,000 was awarded to Lexington-Frankfort Scenic Corridor, Inc. for development of the Old Frankfort Pike Corridor Management Plan. **Street Sales Drug Enforcement Project** [Resolution 6] A contract valued at $56,200 was awarded to the Fayette County Commonwealth Attorney's Office to fund a Fast Track prosecutor position for the Street Sales Drug Enforcement Project. **AM Alert Station** [Resolution 7] A contract of $44,975 was awarded to Information Station Specialists, Inc. for an AM Alert Station. **Domestic Violence Accountability Project** [Resolution 8] A grant of $400,000 was approved from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women to continue a project designed to hold offenders of domestic violence accountable. ## Public Comment Five speakers addressed the meeting during public comment, with all but one focusing on employee and retiree health insurance concerns. **Employee Health Insurance** Debbie Tester [timestamp: 1:43:51] expressed concerns about the affordability of health insurance for non-sworn personnel and advocated for unionization to have a stronger voice in addressing these issues. Pam Brandenburg [timestamp: 1:46:32] criticized the proposed health insurance changes, stating they would not be sufficient and could lead to financial hardship for employees. Kelly Stidham [timestamp: 1:55:52] argued that the proposed health insurance plans are not feasible for employees with dependents and suggested alternative solutions. Sandy Witt [timestamp: 2:04:19] presented a detailed analysis of the financial impact of the proposed health insurance plans on her family, highlighting significant out-of-pocket costs. **Retiree Health Insurance** William Pinkston [timestamp: 2:16:16] expressed concerns about the impact of health insurance changes on retirees, especially those on fixed incomes. ## Appointments Tamara McMullen was appointed to the position of Program Coordinator in the Division of Family Services. ## Contested Items **Employee Health Insurance Changes** The proposed changes to employee health insurance plans generated heated discussion during the meeting. Employees and retirees expressed significant opposition to the proposed modifications, citing concerns about affordability and coverage under the new plan structure. The disagreement centered on the impact these changes would have on current and former employees' access to healthcare and their out-of-pocket costs. The contested nature of this item reflects the substantial concerns raised by those who would be directly affected by the modifications to their health insurance benefits. ## Invocation Rabbi Marc Kline from Temple Adath Israel delivered the invocation for the meeting [timestamp: 00:01:27]. The invocation emphasized themes of faith and community service. ## Health Care Rates Supplement [timestamp: 2:40:53] The council discussed and approved Resolution 28, which committed up to an additional $1.9 million toward health care rates for all employees and retirees. Key speakers on this agenda item included Kay, Gorton, and Stinnett. The resolution was approved by the council. ## Budget Amendments Ordinance 129-2011 proposed amendments to certain budgets of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government to reflect current requirements for municipal expenditures. [timestamp: 6:00:00] The ordinance was discussed by Blues and Henson. The ordinance was approved. ## Redistricting Ordinance 130-2011 addressed the redistricting of districts for members of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council. [timestamp: 6:00:00] The discussion on this matter involved key speakers Blues and Henson. The ordinance was presented for consideration and deliberation by the council. The ordinance was approved. ## Code of Ordinances Amendment **Ordinance 131-2011** proposed an amendment to Section 22-5(2) of the Code of Ordinances that would abolish one position of Citizens' Advocate and create a part-time position in its place. The discussion on this item involved Blues and Henson as key speakers [timestamp: 6:00:00]. The ordinance was approved. --- ## Decisions - **Resolution 28** — passed (14-0): Commit up to an extra $1.9 million toward health care rates for all employees and retirees - **Ordinance 129-2011** — passed (12-0): Amending certain budgets of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government - **Ordinance 130-2011** — passed (12-0): Redistricting the districts of the members of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council - **Ordinance 131-2011** — passed (11-1): Amending Section 22-5(2) of the Code of Ordinances --- ## Full transcript Good evening, good evening everyone, greetings. Thank you all for coming. I'll call the meeting to order. This is a meeting of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council. And first on our agenda tonight is the roll call by our clerk, Susan Lamb. Susan, would you call the roll, please? Yes, sir. Mr. Beard? Present. Mr. Blues? Here. Ms. Crosby? Here. Mr. Ellinger? Here. Mr. Farmer? Yes, ma'am. Mr. Ford? Here. Ms. Gorton? Here. Ms. Henson? Here. Mr. Kay? Here. Mr. Lane? Here. Ms. Lawless? Here. Mr. Martin? Here. Mr. McCord? Here. Mr. Myers? Here. And Mr. Sinnott? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Next on our agenda is the invocation, and it is being offered tonight by Rabbi Mark Klein of Temple Adath Israel. and I also want to take this time to thank Rabbi Klein for helping us arrange for each council meeting our members of the clergy who offer invocations at each council meeting. Rabbi Klein, thank you, sir. Will you all stand, please? Miracles do not interrupt life. They affirm that life matters and that blessings are available for each one of us. And we were born to create miracles. And faith is the stuff that makes us know that we can do just that. As we walk through this world, as we remember, as we have to remember that this truth transcends all politics and all debates, where we look at each other with this light and in recognizing each other's dignity. We understand that there are real trials that face us as we care for our families and care for our government. And in a variety of capacities, many of us wear both hats at the same time. But faith also tells us that there's no problem that we cannot solve, and not in a compromise that diminishes our needs to a lowest common denominator, rather with a synergy that gives full credence to all of our needs and all of our challenges and our desire to serve and take care of each other. This commonwealth was founded on the principles of brotherhood, and this city has accepted this legacy and its challenge to create an ever more engaging, nurturing, and welcoming environment for all who live or travel throughout the bluegrass. This is the oath our civil servants take, and in electing them, we have placed trust that they will, in their daily world, gain intimate understanding about what opportunities and obstacles exist in taking care of our needs. And we have to trust that they will use their judgment and their faith to make good decisions. Life is short. this week I buried two very dear friends. Their opportunities for making miracles are over. We still have that opportunity and the obligation that comes with it to create miracles for each other. And I have to, we have to have enough faith to believe that we want to do this together. that despite the challenges that seem to divide us, there's something more holy and more sacred that unites us. And we invoke all that is holy and dear in our hearts and in our lives and in this community to help us engage in conversation and problem-solving with each other in a way that affirms our birthright and our obligation to be miracles in each other's lives. I hope we can affirm and say amen. Thank you. Thank you, Rabbi Klein. A special meaning for us tonight, as you always bring. All right. Next on our agenda, minutes of previous meetings, and I will ask for a motion to approve three sets of minutes from the August 18 and 25 meetings and the September 5, 20 and 29 meetings. Motion by Council Member Ellinger, second by Council Member Crosby. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda, we have three presentations tonight. The first two, I will help with these. The first is for the Apostles of Hope, and we will be recognizing the Apostles of Hope, and then the Senior Internship Program, and then we will talk about health insurance rates. So if those of you who are here for different pieces of this, that's going to be the order of our presentation tonight. The first two we should be able to achieve without compromising the value of these first two because they're very important. We should be able to achieve them pretty quickly. All right, if you all allow me, I'm going to go around to the podium here. And Hillary, you're going to help me, right? Okay. All right. Thank you, guys. Thank you all. You know exactly what the program is already. What you all see in the audience are the Apostles of Hope who are going to be presented tonight with recognitions. The Apostles of Hope is a group from the Catholic Action Center who collected donations and delivered them to the victims of the Joplin, Missouri tornado. This group... We all remember the devastating tornado that hit Joplin back in May, nearly wiping out an entire town. People lost their possessions, their homes, their lives. And while many of us watched the devastation, a group from the Catholic Action Center here in Lexington were lending a hand to those who needed it, people they didn't even know. The Apostles of Hope collected donations, filled a semi-truck full and delivered them to Joplin where they stayed four days to help the victims of the storm. Testaments to the human spirit that you don't have to have your own truck full of possessions to help out. You just need a full heart. So, let me recognize each of you all and Hillary has a proclamation. Rudy Alicorn. Rudy? Rudy? Okay. Rudy's not here, so you're going to pass it on to Rudy. Bill Barkley. Bill? Let's give him a hand as we get the award. Carrie Burand. Carrie? Thank you. Ellis Boatley Thanks, Ellis. Sherry Beresh Christian Appalachian Project Thank you, Sherry. Thomas Caudill Thomas, thank you. Christina Carl Is Christina not here tonight? We're still going to give her a hand. Bill Day Is it Bill? Jay Day. All right, Jay. Helen Day. Kelly Duffy. Thanks, Kelly. Mary Duffy. All right. David Hosey. All right, David. And poor David. Tim Smith and Mary June Smith. All right. Thank you. I see Jenny Ramsey with a big smile over here. So, Jenny, thank you, too. Yes, ma'am. Going to get a picture. Where's Dottie? Okay, Dottie, get a picture. real quick there. All right, jump up in there. Right in front. You're better getting there next to Elton. Okay. Thank you. Oh, thank you, sir. I really need, I really need, there he comes. Councilman Ellinger. Chuck? Why don't you do it? You want me to read it? Okay. I get to read this even though this is Chuck's project. The senior intern program is a project that Chuck has been involved in for so long, and Krista Stambaugh as well. The City of Lexington Senior Intern Program was awarded the 2011 Enterprise Cities Award from the Kentucky League of Cities. It gives citizens over the age of 50 a week-long educational course on the workings of local government. Each day, this week-long program is filled with educational sessions on the aspects of our government. Department, division, section representatives provide education and informational overviews of their various specialties. The Kentucky League of Cities made a $1,000 donation to the program, and a committee made up of senior intern graduates and Lexington staff creates the agenda for the week-long event. Some of these committee members have served for more than four years, while others enjoyed the program so much in 2010 they volunteered their time on the planning committee. So, now, Christy, help me up here. Where'd Christy go? I'm right here. All right, thank you. You want me to tell you who's here? I want you to do that. I'll do it. That would be great. All right. Very good. We are so thankful for our committee, and a lot of them came, and we had a little reception, and I'd like to recognize them and ask them to come to the front. And so we have Nan Potter, Ann Green, who incidentally is the longest-running committee member she served for six years. This is Ms. Ann Green. Fannie Covington. Russ Schneider-Smith and Ron Schneider-Smith Maria Chabucco Shannon Settlers is a staff person and one of our sponsors is here and for the first time AARP joined in pretty good sponsorship and she let us know she's going to do it again and that's Patrice Blanchard with AARP Come on up here. I would be a terrible person if I didn't invite my boss. Beth Mills, the Commissioner of Social Services, we're very thankful for her support. I'm going to take a real quick picture, and then Council Member Ellinger is going to come back with a couple of words. All right. I'll keep this brief, Mayor. Okay, I'll keep this brief, but I think I need to say a few words about the program and thank some people. I want to thank Kentucky League of Cities and also Collins for this award, plus the monetary $1,000 that will go towards the program. We actually, I think the program spent government funds only $1,200, and the rest of it came from the private sector. So we're able to do this week-long program, which is an intensive study, to learn about the inner workings of government. And when my father was involved back in 1985, he, along with Bob Babbage, and Bob Babbage started the program in 85. It's been going on for 27 years now. He said, if you can get involved in any program, get involved with the senior intern program because it's a win-win. You learn as much from the citizens as they learn from you. And he was right. Listen to your parents. They do know best. And I did learn from my dad by listening and being a part of this, and I'm thankful we did. I need to thank all the people in the government, all the employees who come out and teach the seniors, the council members who give up their time to come here and educate the seniors, the committee members who are here and those that aren't here, and also the sponsors. It is a public-private partnership. National City, who's been with us from day one, M&M Sanitation, and now ARP, who's been along with us. We have set a template that can be used through all the state of Kentucky. The cities can use it. I understand that Bowling Green now wants to go and try to follow this program, and we'd be happy to, and I will, if anybody would like to learn more about it, be willing to educate them about the program. And the program happens in June. We'll be taking nominations for those who want to be part of the program. So please contact myself or Christy and get on there because this program sells out really fast. But once again, I want to thank the government for its participation in this. And it's a program that I'm proud to be a part of, and Lexington should be proud of this program. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger. I'm going to ask Council Member Farmer to introduce a guest for comments related to redistricting now. We'll just insert this in our agenda for about three minutes. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, members of the Council. As you know, over the last four meetings, we've tried to insert time for folks to come give us direct public input on the proposed redistricting. I have a constituent from the 5th District, Mr. Josh Douglas, who is here, who teaches at the University of Kentucky and spends at least three weeks with his students about redistricting, and he wants to give us three minutes worth of his interest in this subject. I appreciate you all giving him that time. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Farmer, and thank you to the council for letting me come to speak. As Councilmember Farmer said, my name is Josh Douglas, and I teach at the U.K. College of Law, and I teach a course on election law. And as part of that, we do spend about three to four weeks on redistricting, specifically in the law involving redistricting. So I thought it might be prudent. I'd heard that there had not been many public comments on redistricting, and I thought it might be prudent to just come and offer a few words about the law of redistricting as you finalize your consideration of the redistricting plan. First, as any good lawyer, I have to give a disclaimer that I'm not here, obviously, to provide legal advice or legal representation, but just as a professor of election law to offer a few words about what the law of redistricting is as it relates to this plan. As you all know, that any time you redistrict every 10 years, you need to have equal numbers of people in each district. That's the classic one-person, one-vote concern. And the Supreme Court has said that exact equality is often not attainable because it's just so hard, so that there can be some deviations. And the court has set a 10% threshold for permissible deviations. But the court has said that even if you're under 10%, you need to justify the reasons you're deviating from the precise equality, the precise one-person, one-vote rationale or one-person, one-vote goal. And so even deviations that are below 10% need to be justified typically by one of the three classic redistricting criteria, and those are compactness, so compact districts, contiguity or having district lines that are contiguous with each other, and maintaining political subdivisions or communities of interest. And so what the courts have said when they've looked at one-person, one-vote challenges, including local redistricting plans, is that any deviation, even if it's under 10%, needs to have some of those justifications for why you're deviating. The other thing to keep in mind is that strangely shaped districts also need those sorts of justifications. And so when crafting a districting plan that has a district that doesn't look compact, the courts have said that you need some sort of justification. And again, it's typically the classic justifications of compactness, contiguity, and maintenance of subdivision lines or communities of interest are things that help plans pass court muster. so those are the basic i only had three minutes i just wanted to give a quick overview unless there's any questions specifically that i can answer about the law of redistricting i thought i would just come and talk about the one person one vote principle and the need uh the courts have said that you need justifications when you deviate from one person one vote so unless there are questions if i might yes when the first redistricting plan came out and it was going to be above 10% in its deviation is when we first got very well acquainted. And after we had made the change that we did that brought that down, our conversation changed, I just wanted to know, did you have any specific comments about the redistricting as we have slated it for passage this evening? Well, as I said sort of in my disclaimer, I can't really give legal advice on whether the plan would pass a challenge or not. Step back and be one man, one vote for a minute. What I would say is that now that you've had the deviation below 10%, you're within that de minimis threshold that the court has said is typically allowed for a deviation. The court said typically 10% and you're okay, but the courts have said even if you're under 10%, you still need the justifications for the deviations. I hope that answers your question without being too okay. I appreciate you. He came down also on Tuesday and was not able to make it in. so I'm glad you came tonight. We're glad to have you. You're welcome. Thanks again, sir. Thank you, Mayor. If there are any other questions, but thank you. Thank you, Mr. Farmer. Are there any other members of the audience who wish to speak to redistricting tonight? All right. It appears not. All right, then. Thank you so much. Next on our agenda, under presentations, is the matter of health insurance rates. Let me provide a quick comment just for context. Once again, I appreciate all of you all coming out tonight. It represents, in the world of a government, it represents the way that it works. And we understand that and respect it and thank you. Correcting problems that have been a long time in the making, you all know, isn't easy. You know that from your own families. You know it from your professional life or from your business life. That avoiding work isn't healthy and bad news, as Vice Mayor Gordon has said, just doesn't get better over time. Working through the big losses in our health care plan isn't easy on you, isn't easy on anybody, and especially employees who have experienced the anxiety of change and the tension and adjustment of potential financial impacts. The last several days, beginning over the weekend, Tuesday's council work session, where a resolution was passed. We've worked hard, collaboratively, as a council should, as a mayor and administration should, to help find ways to ease that burden. It will represent additional costs to the city, but appropriate ones. Now the job of the council and the administration is to find ways for us to fund these costs, to cut our budget where we can. What I'd next like to do is introduce Vice Mayor Linda Gordon. The Vice Mayor has worked along with me and with Council Members at Large, Chuck Ellinger and Steve Kay. I especially want to thank Council Member Kevin Stennett for his technical knowledge of these issues. I especially want to thank them and those in our administration, too, and members from our employees who have been sharing their thoughts about this. So now I'd like to turn the microphone over to our Vice Mayor, Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. I just simply wanted to say for those of you who were here on Tuesday or who watched, which I've found out is a whole lot of people who watched, because they were concerned. I think that what happened on Tuesday was that we came to an agreement that we could all work together to come out with something better for our employees. It's probably not perfect. Nothing is perfect, but it is better. and we all recognized together that our employees could not absorb what was being presented in terms of health care and the cost to the employees. So with that said, I want to thank the group that the mayor mentioned. We've met twice since Tuesday, and we've had quite a frank discussion. We've batted a lot of things around the table and discussed a lot of things. And Benji Mars from the Benefits Management Group is going to make a presentation which looks different than what we saw on Tuesday. So, Benji. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I think what they're getting ready to put on the screen is page one of what hopefully you all have received at the Council. Okay. Okay. This spreadsheet represents, first of all, each of the five divisions of non-bargaining employees, employees, fire, corrections, police and fire majors, and then retirees. Directly under each division, you'll see the amount of benefit pool allocated on a monthly basis towards benefits. As you work down under each division, you'll see the amount of supplement that was decided upon and given to us to apply back to the benefits. The supplement that we'll talk about will be applicable to health insurance only. So once you select your health plan, first the monthly supplement will be applied and then your benefit pool will be applied with the balance. If there's a balance, it will be applicable to other benefits that you have access to. So working down through non-bargaining employees, they'll receive a $75 monthly supplement. It's a 12-month supplement beginning January 1. Employee spouse and employee child will receive a $100 monthly supplement, and family will receive $200. Working to fire, the employee spouse and employee child will receive a $100 supplement monthly, and family will receive $200. Corrections, as well as police and fire majors, will also receive a $100 supplement per month for employee spouse and employee child, and $200 for full family. And then retiree class will receive a $75 monthly supplement for single coverage. If you'll go to the next slide, we'll take a look at the impact to what that does to the fly-off plan choices. This, of course, makes the assumption that 100% of your monthly benefit pool, in addition to the new supplement, will be applied to health insurance. That's what we're looking at on this chart. As you'll see, every single employee, regardless of division, has the opportunity to purchase three of the five plans at zero monthly cost, PPOC, HSA-1, and HSA-2. The supplement is applicable regardless of the health plan selected, so it can be applied to any of the five health plan options. Is that it, Benjamin? That's it. All right. All right. then the floor is available for comments by council members. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. Thank you. On Tuesday, I was asking about the HSAs 1 and 2 and the way it looked in the booklet to me, that the employee was going to pay, there was going to be the $355 plus $10 for HSA-2. and then because that's the way it reads across the line, that's where I was getting the figures that I was getting. But I know that there is a, depending on your age, there's a tax cap on how much you can put into an HSA. So my question is, how is the $75 supplement and the benefit pool for the HSA-1 and HSA-2 going to work if there's, in fact, a tax cap? Anybody that's Medicare eligible is eligible to receive a health savings account deposit. That's IRS guidelines. That's not an LFUCG parameter. So the LFUCG will deposit $500 into an HSA, $250 in the beginning of the year, 250 in the middle of the year for any single employee that signs up for health savings account option that is eligible to receive a contribution anybody other than single will receive a thousand dollars 500 at the beginning of the year 500 halfway through the year so the supplement first will apply to the premium cost and then you'll have remaining benefit pool that you could allocate to to other sources. Okay. I guess my question is, for some people, old people like me can do a catch-up. Yes. But for some people, will that put them out of the federal tax cap? No. The cap is based on the amount of money that actually goes into the health savings account. Since only $500 or $1,000 will go in from the employer, that's well under the tax cap allotted by the IRS. Okay. So, and I don't mean to be dense, but what I'm seeing here is that people will get their benefit pool of $355 plus a supplement of $75 to purchase to put toward any of these benefits. Correct. So does that mean that a single employee will have $355 plus $75 a month that they can put into an HSA? No, ma'am. that is applicable to the premium that it costs to participate in that plan. The supplement will first apply towards the single premium. The single gross premium on HSA-2, for instance, is $365. First, for a non-collective bargaining employee, they would apply their $75 supplement against that monthly premium, reducing it by $75. And then they could apply the $355 to the remaining balance with money left over that they could apply towards other benefits, such as dental, life insurance, et cetera. So that will be part of they will be putting that into the health savings account. No. The only thing that goes into the health savings account is the $500 employer contribution. Okay. This is the gross premium cost to participate in the plan. the $365.82 is the single cost to participate, of which an employee would apply their $75 supplement against that cost and then apply the remainder of their benefit pool to pay the balance of that premium. That's to participate in the plan and to the insurance element of the plan. Yeah, Benji, I think you would. Okay, I'll let somebody else talk. Excuse me, Council Member Lawless, yeah. I think Benji, as the Vice Mayor was just saying, that this essentially lowers the premium. Okay, say that in simple language. It's very hard for people to see that really tiny print up there. So we are trying to get it redone, all right, so it can be expanded, zoomed out, all right. But simplify the headline, please. Certainly. As we're referring to HSA 2 option, the gross premium is $365, of which the $75 supplement that was just determined will be applied to that premium and reduced by $75, of which the employee has a $355 benefit pool that will take that premium down to zero with money left over that they can apply to other benefits. All right. Is that supposed to have been expanded? I'm sorry. Hold on. Council Member Crosby. Mayor, I believe they're making some copies to try and spread out for members of the audience so they can see them. Okay, we're going to make some copies and spread them out. Mayor? Council Member Martin, yeah. Thank you, Mayor. As a suggestion, we might blow it up, and you just don't have to look at all of it at once, but if you blow it up so that it fills up from top to bottom. There we go. All right. That helps a little bit. Thank you, Mayor. And this is the supplement page that shows the actual supplement. You may want to go to page two, which shows the net result. Tell them to take it to two. And if you'll pull it down and focus maybe in on non-collective bargaining. There we go, non-bargaining employees. So applying your benefit supplement, depending upon the tier that you elect, whether it's single, which you get a $75, and if it's employee spouse or employee child, you receive a $100 supplement. Where is that? Or if it's full family. Where is that? That's on the page we just looked at. This is taking the gross premium and then subtracting the benefit pool and subtracting the supplement. And this is assuming that 100% of that cost or that allocation reduces premium, and then this is the net pay or the net cost of someone to participate based on their division and based on the plan they choose. All right, we know we're going to be coming back to this. We're going to go through the council members who have signed on to speak. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. My comments more general is just being a part of the committee. If we want more technical, we can go ahead and ask those questions now. But I just wanted to make a few statements here. But we all understand this is not a perfect plan. When we were meeting with the committee, we understood we had the original plan. was too large a hardship on our employees, but we have to balance the employees with our taxpayers and the services that we provide to our citizens. When we looked at this supplement, we thought this was the right approach, but in doing so, we also have to look at options to pay for it, and we're in the process of going to have to make some reductions to pay for this. Health care takes in about 12.2 percent of this budget. It's a large percentage of our budget. We talked about in the committee that we're going to have to have performance reviews quarterly to look and see how this is going. This is just a one-year supplement that we're looking at right now. But I want to thank my colleagues and the members of the committee who came up with this because I think this is a much better plan than when that was presented originally. It's not a perfect plan, but it does mitigate the negative impact on our employees. I think it's a framework that we are going to have to live within, and I want to thank my colleagues for coming up with this plan. I think it was something that was presented on Tuesday that needed to be looked at, and I have to thank Mr. Stennett for coming up with this idea. It is something that, although not perfect, I think we can live with. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. All right. Any other council members wish to speak? Council Member Stennett? Thank you, Mayor. I think one of the biggest pieces to all of this will be the educational piece. So can anyone speak? I don't know if Benji can speak to this, but what is the educational opportunity? Can we go over that or maybe tonight or send out? Because I think, as Councilman Lawless explored some of the questions, there are going to be a lot of those. And so I think we need to be clear on when employees can get some help on understanding this, because we don't want them to take two seconds to make their benefit choices like they have passed. but we want them to be able to sit down and map it out so they can understand what their out-of-pocket costs will be, not just what their rates are now, but long-term. So is there anyone that can go through that with us when everything will start? Melissa, did you hear the question? Benji, I think you can. I can give you a general understanding. Get up close to the microphone, please. Sure. The meetings have actually started, but those will continue tomorrow through next week. They're divisional meetings. You'll have opportunities for a presentation for someone to explain the plans to you, someone to help you understand what your net cost will be. I believe we're going to be sending out the new supplements based on the 26 pay periods. Hopefully those will go out later this evening or in the morning. So those have been prepared. But tomorrow and then all through next week, there will be divisional meetings, opportunities to ask questions. Those will go throughout the day and into the evening. And enrollment will stay the same November 7th through 27th. If the supplement passes and is approved, IT still has to add this into their system. And depending on the time they need to do that, and I do know that we'll need time to integrate this into that system, and depending on that, open enrollment is possible to continue as scheduled without being pushed back. That is a possibility. That's the plan. I can't guarantee it. That's the plan, the education plan, right, Melissa? Right. All right, I hate to put you on the spot, but you're working overtime anyway on putting this education system together. So do you have anything to add to that? I know there are some divisions that we had meetings scheduled yesterday and today, and we're going to get those rescheduled, so the directors are listening. I'll be getting back in touch, and we'll reschedule the meetings. We wanted to wait until after the council meeting tonight. And we'll resume at 730 in the morning with our first meeting. So we've got them going. Okay. All right. Okay. Very good on that, Mayor. But on a couple other things. Yes, sir. I was just going to add, you know, the intent of Tuesday was for all of us, not just myself, for the mayor to come together to try to figure out a solution to lessen this burden on our employees. I think we've done that here. I think by working together, we've softened it. It's not going to be perfect. as Councilmember Ellinger said, but it's a step in the right direction. And over the next year, it's going to take us all to continue to work on our health care costs, not just individually but collectively, and monitor this plan. In years past, we set it and forget it, and that's what happens when you do something like that. When you don't manage it, it gets out of control, and that's what we're facing this year. So by no means is this perfect, and I realize it's still going to be a burden and hardship on a lot of you out there. So whatever we can do going forward to lessen that hardship, please don't hesitate to stop contacting us and keeping us involved, too, because the educational opportunities are there for you to take a look at your plan benefits and to try to determine which plan is best for you. Three of the five plans, our original goal was at least two plans. Now three of the five are very similar right at, and some are less than the platinum rates last year on three of the five. So hopefully that will help several of you be able to pick a plan that meets your family's needs and we can move forward. But, Mayor, thank you for your cooperation on working with this. And we know that we have trials and tribulations ahead even greater than this. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Stennett. Council Member Forward. Thank you, Mayor. I have two questions. The first question I'll pose to our consultant, and the second question I'll pose to the caucus of Council Members that has worked very hard over the last two days. in very basic and general terms, help me compare and simulate the current health care options for employees and those that are proposed right now. I'm looking at right now, calendar year 11, employees have the options of a platinum, gold, or silver plan. Proposed for calendar year 12, there are three PPOs, A, B, and C, and then a health savings account. One and two. Just real quick in lay terms, how would we interpret or translate those? What are comparable to what? For example, if we were to have open enrollment right now and I had to make a decision right now. Certainly. PPOA is, for all intents and purposes, the old platinum plan. The changes, and the change that took place across all plans is bariatric surgery was removed from all plans. So that's no longer covered by any of the five. Aside from that, the medical structure of PPOA is the Platinum Plan. The change on the Platinum Plan is the prescription drugs. Those copays have gone to $10, $30, $60 for retail pharmacy, and then when the on-site pharmacy opens, those will be cut in half to $5, $15, $30. So the $5, $15, $30 is actually lower than the copay structure for prescription drugs under the current Platinum Plan. Okay, so the platinum plan is equivalent to the PPOA. That's correct. Okay, let's proceed on. Okay. The silver plan, which is the HSA option that's currently in place, that is most similar to HSA 1. Okay. The gold option, as it existed, has gone away. In terms of deductibles, maximum exposure, that's most similar to PPOB. It's easier to draw a parallel or a closer comparison between PPOA and the Platinum and HSA-1 and the Silver Plant. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Major. Gives me a start. I'd also like to ask, and again, thank the council members. I spoke with Vice Mayor Gordon yesterday and understand you guys have been working. It would be beneficial for me to understand just an abbreviated synopsis of the discussion that led to the proposed supplement. And if it is just a one-year fix, that would be helpful for me, having just received this information this evening. I know time has been stressed on everybody. But if I could relay that question to perhaps Councilmember Stenning and the other Councilmembers that worked hard in the last two days. Yeah, and Councilmember Ford, I'll defer to Councilmembers, to Vice Mayor Gorton and Stenning and Kay and Ellinger for comments, too. But I think what's important, what's so valuable to recognize in the context of this is that we are dealing at 30,000 feet with a number, if we can remember, 33 million that we didn't know was that high. So that was revealed to us last November, and we then began working on figuring out how we could have been over our budget by $35 million over three years, $12 million last year. And that led to trying to find benchmarks, other cities, which had managed their claims and managed their costs. That led us to some of the best examples, including Chattanooga, where with roughly the same employee population covered and retirees, they're spending today $22 million. So I'm only providing that for context because what has occurred is that, you know, in order to try to reduce our costs from the $33 million or at least hold them from going spiraling on at the same pace, we knew we had to change some things. That led to the wellness center model that Chattanooga uses and has been successful with that we know people are still skeptical about, and we've got to prove it, but we know it's worked. That was part of the conversation. Now, so, you know, putting all of that together is what led to the plan numbers. now benji do you want to our council members i think council member ford you asked for council members to comment on it so yes sir thanks mayor thanks mayor gorton thank you uh just very briefly the motion on tuesday which council member stennett made uh said that we would put in one point up to 1.9 million per six months. You know, we're on a, our fiscal year budget is different from our health care year, the health care year being calendar year. So 1.9 through June, 1.9 from July through December. So that's up to 3.8 million to supplement what we saw on Tuesday. And so the basic goal was to lower the premiums so that our employees didn't have so much out-of-pocket cost. And so our discussions revolved a lot around exactly how to do that in a fair way. And so I would ask my colleagues to comment. And customer, I would add, you know, my 1.9 number was based on at least getting two plans to the point of similar rates to last year of the platinum. Or in this case, some of them are lower than last year's rates. So in working and discussing it, we decided to leave flexibility in this so that if an employee has to stay on the platinum or the old platinum scenario, that they have the flexibility to do that and lower their rate because the most expensive plan on the page is $775 for a family per month. and that plan doesn't exist in the private sector anymore. And that rate for that type of plan is very, very, very competitive out there. Not saying that it's the same as what we've paid in the past, but there are three plans that are lower at where we've been paying in the past and give some flexibility to use that benefit pool. So I think it was important as the group expanded on ideas to be able to be flexible for all employees because if we just focused on two plans, then obviously if they're the cheapest, is most employees would go there, and we didn't want to isolate those two plans in particular. The other thing that's going to be interesting to see over the course of a year is what our claims are this time next year. When we say this is for one year, all these plans are designed keeping our claims level. We didn't show an increase in claims because we feel with the changes, claims will go down over the year. So we don't know what that will be, and that's why it's important to monitor this quarterly where we haven't been and to see where our claims are at. And next year, we'll sit here and do the same analysis and address the situation then. But right now, for at least one year, these are going to be the rates that were shown on page two for the employees. All right. Mayor, if I could just ask one last question. And thank you, Council Member, standing. And forgive me, Council Members. This is a very big topic that we're discussing. and I'm just trying to get my hands around this issue that has an impact on so many folks and want to make an informed decision. What's their discussion? So the supplement basically defines the one-year purpose because if not for the supplement, we could have basically just increased the benefit pool. but increasing the benefit pool is something totally different than the supplement. And that discussion was had and debated, I guess. The supplement applies only to health insurance. A benefit pool can be used for anything, so that's the difference. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for allowing me to question. Thank you. Councilman Ford. Councilman Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to first thank you and your staff and my colleagues for the work that you did on this very, very much. And it achieves one of the goals that I was after was to be able to look here and see some zeros as you go across here. Because that was what I think we had to achieve to get to some equilibrium on all of this. I just wonder, no matter what plan you pick, will everybody have the ability to use the Wellness Center? Or is that not, that's an across-the-board usage? I just want to make sure. Benji, do you understand the question? No matter what plan you use, you can still use the Wellness Center. Correct. The wellness center is applicable to all five plans. All right. That's very good. And then moving back legislatively, tonight what will we be asked to do in terms of our docket? Anything? There's nothing required. There's no action required by the council. But we just leave knowing that people— The resolution itself, we are within the resolution parameters. from Tuesday. So does that resolution need two readings tonight then? I'm sorry? Will that resolution need two readings tonight then? We don't need two readings tonight. I just want to, as I said on Tuesday, I just want to make sure we get to the place we're going. Mr. Horne? You have another meeting next Thursday, so it really shouldn't make a difference whether you give two readings. Good question. Thank you, sir. But we've got to get done. Right. To get open enrollment. Timing. Yes, sir. Good question. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. And, Benji, I just want to make sure, because I think that what this has done, maybe to many folks, has opened our eyes to, you know, where we are, where we need to be. We have to not be frivolous with taxpayer dollars. And, you know, although it was an outrageous increase for employers, I mean for employees, that I think they're all aware of the critical position that we're in. And, you know, I want to thank the mayor and the administration for, you know, maybe the way it was brought forward, you know, you could agree or disagree with it. But the fact that we all take our employees very seriously and their needs. I think a lot of times folks do not have a good understanding of the HSA accounts. and they're afraid of high deductibles, but I just want to make sure that that would be included in the education components in the presentations. Yes, the main target of the presentation is to explain the differences, the pros and the cons of the HSA versus the PPO plan so that people go into it with a full understanding of how the plan works and how it compares to what they have today. And I guess the HSAs, if you're young, our average employee uses about what we said $500 a year. Sixty-five percent of your population use less than $1,000 of health care. Yeah. So it would certainly be worth a while to go with the lower cost insurance with the higher deductible. A higher deductible is obviously great for those who don't have any claims, but it works really well for just the opposite, those who have a lot of claims, because it gives a true maximum exposure that the PPOs continue to have co-pays. Correct. But if you go to the wellness center, you have an HSA, and you only get sick once a year, it's really not going to cost you anything other than your premium. Correct. Which is low. Correct. And then you'll have potentially money that's deposited into your HSA banked and rolling to the next year. Well, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of practical questions. First, if a three-year-old in a covered family has a prescription that's prescribed by their doctor, can they get that filled at the RX in the clinic for free? That's a great question. Anybody, regardless of age, can use the pharmacy portion of the clinic when that opens. That's available to anybody with a prescription written by an authorized physician or nurse practitioner. The cost is, under the HSA, it's the actual cost of the prescription minus humanist discount. Under the PPO plans, it's on a three-tiered copay system, just like it is today, but it's reduced. Those copays are reduced. They will be $5 for Tier 1 drugs, $15 for Tier 2, and $30 for Tier 3 prescriptions, which is less than they are today on the Platinum plan. Okay. Is there any preventative care that's covered for children under 6? Another great question. Yes, health care reform allows for, on any five plans, for wellness visits, including immunizations, to be covered at 100% at their pediatrician or their physician. Okay. Okay. Is the pharmacy in the clinic going to be staffed by a pharmacist? The clinic part will be staffed by physicians and nurses and those type of clinicians. The pharmacy will be staffed with pharmacy and pharm techs. Okay. and then the other side of this whole piece and the other piece of the savings is the wellness program so can are you able or prepared to talk at least a little bit tonight about when the education for that process starts you know we've got the health risk assessments and all those other things because normally it seems the literature seems to suggest that that piece is done first and that as you build in these new plans and everybody's enrolling for the first time, that there's incentives built in for them to do the HRA, and then the individual, there's three different tests that we do. So when is that part going to take place? The health risk assessment? Yes. An employee, when the clinic opens, has the capability of going in and starting that themselves. When we actually roll out the CHIPS Rewards Program, which we talked about a little bit the other night, that is still in design phase. So we don't have the time at this point that that will be rolled out to incent those behaviors. But anybody that wants to start that process on their own can start the day the wellness center opens. Okay. Okay. Do we, most often organizations like ourselves would also set up a wellness committee of employees that look to manage that process, and then they go and look at key employees in each department or division to become cheerleaders and to help educate and promote the programs throughout government. When is that process going to take place, or is that just something that the consultants are going to do completely? No, we would encourage that, that committees form to help promote those programs and to gleam ideas from those people within their divisions as to what programs they might be interested in. So that will be a part of the planning process of putting that in motion once we get through this open enrollment. But that is something we would highly encourage you to do. So is that something that maybe the vice mayor could go ahead and put together, that committee, and then that committee would begin to look at how it filters this thing throughout government? That's some of the stuff that we talked about two years ago in our link when we talked about smoker rates and different things like that. We were talking about, and we essentially had a committee formed that was starting to look at who the key people would be across government to start to implement and roll this thing out. So how do you suggest we proceed? Is that something we can go ahead and start now, or is that something that the consultants have got that in their timeline? We'd probably prefer to come back and discuss that so that we're all moving in the same direction, but that's something certainly to start discussing amongst yourselves. But as those programs are being formulated and developed at this phase, I think it might be a little premature at this time, but something within the near future that we start to look at. Final question. If we're going to get buy-in from our employees, who's going to be, when you said the programs, who's going to be designing those? Because normally that committee is set up in the very beginning, and the employees are the ones that we get input from on what things they want to have as incentives and what kind of promotions they want to have. So how do we do that? One of the advantages of Marathon is that they have the ability to implement exterior programs, programs you may be aware of that already exist that you want to incorporate into your wellness programs. They also have programs that exist within their own, within the wellness program, just that they'll deliver, smoking cessation, diabetes management, things like that. So there'll be a give and take, one bringing in external programs or ideas that people come up with that already exist, and there'll be programs that are already built within wellness structure, or marathon structure, excuse me. Okay, so we can look forward to you guys bringing that piece back. Absolutely. At what point? How soon? Do you have that in your timeline? The full rollout would probably be in the first quarter, beginning of the year. Okay, thank you. Councilman, stand it. I just was going to follow up and binge on a couple things that I've been asked, and just to get it out there. One is, do we know how many doctors or nurses the wellness cleaner will have staffed? That concern was brought up Tuesday. Is that set or is that something we're? Clinical staff of about seven. It is a physician, nurse practitioner. Then there will be mid-level nurses as well as medical office system. So everybody is trained within the hours of the clinic. We don't have those established. And then also I think that there's a point that's been made about flex spending accounts. In HSAs, if an employee already participates in a flex spending account, can you explain to them whether or not they can participate in the HSA? That's a great question. As I mentioned earlier, that Medicare is a disqualifier for HSA, the banking account, being eligible under a flexible spending and not necessarily dependent care reimbursement, flexible spending that you're using for medical expenses. There is what's called a limited purpose FSA, which we're looking at amending the plan document to put in place here so that you can still have dependent care and participate in the HSA option. When you say dependent care, you're talking daycare. Daycare, correct, yes. But if you are a qualified beneficiary under a flexible spending account, for instance, if your spouse works somewhere else and they put money into an FSA there, even though they may only intend to use that for themselves, you are a qualified beneficiary under that FSA and are not eligible for the health savings account. So that is a part of the education campaign as well. to make people aware of those. But if you use LFUCG's flex spending for daycare, you're still eligible for the HSA accounts. Correct. That's the big question a lot of people are asking. Thank you for clearing that up. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. I want to reiterate my thanks to Council Member Stennett for, on Tuesday, bringing forward a motion that got us here. And I appreciate all the work that everybody's done to get us here. And as I said on Tuesday, I look at this through two lenses. One is my council lens and what can we do and what are we doing for our city and our employees. And the other is being an employee as well. And I think that one of the things that I guess concerns me on the wellness side, Benji, and as Council Member Myers alluded to, so much of this wellness stuff is designed to be carrots. And a lot of that is supposed to be done up front where we educate. and here's why, and I'll give you a for instance. I mentioned Logan Aluminum the other day. It has the best worksite wellness in the country, and their health insurance rates have actually gone down every year because their employees have gotten so healthy. But Council Member Myers mentioned the health screening as a baseline, and what they did there was they asked employees on a voluntary basis to do the health screening, get this baseline, and they found that they had about 60% response on that. as they moved forward, they started to tie their rewards programs, which in their case was cash money to the individual and cash money to the teams that they worked with. But you couldn't be eligible for those rewards unless you took that health screening. And then the next year, you couldn't be eligible unless you and your spouse took it. And they kept moving because the educational process was done so well, people understood why this was a good thing. What I sense in here tonight, and it's just my sense sitting up here, is a great deal of I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at. I'm not exactly sure. It sounds like this is better than it was Tuesday, but how does that apply to me? And so many of us have been on that platinum plan. I think there's a lot of confusion with what do I move to and so forth. So, one, I want to just express that I think the educational piece is kind of backwards, and I think that we need to play a massive game of Keshe. We asked the other night, Griggs, I know I asked, we asked, could open enrollment be pushed back a week or two weeks or whatever? Can you give me a date, if we can push it back, I think every single day that we give these employees an opportunity to understand what their options are, what's best for their families, is a good day. And so what is a backdrop date? Can we push it back a week, two weeks, whatever? because I know the plan is to keep going ahead and forward, but I guess the consternation that I've got right now sitting here is we talk about the wellness center, but we don't know where it is. We can't tell you necessarily who's there and so forth like that. And that being behind a veil is very difficult for these folks and for me as an employee sitting here going, I mean, I want to like this, but I'm not exactly sure what that is. So can we push that date back at all or a week or anything like that? I can tell you that I believe we can push it back, but there's so many components to doing that with IT, with the carrier, with – sorry, excuse me. I think the reason I intervened is that the Wellness Center is well on its way. We're in the final negotiations on the space, trying to get a good price for a nice place. You know, not over the top, but a nice place and a good location. The only reason we can't talk about it is because those negotiations, I think most folks will understand that until you've got a contract for a space, you know, you can't declare exactly where it is, but we're real close. And I can tell you personally that what I said was, we don't want this in the back of a garage. We want this to be a place where people want to go, that they're going to be comfortable going. And that's what we're going to commit to, and that we will be ready to go. The original schedule was January 27th. We're going to be, before then, right after the holidays, open. And I appreciate that. Again, I'm sold on it. You don't sell me. Yeah, we are. But these folks, the comfort level is where the heck is it? And if you listen to the Charlotte presentation, they started in a motorhome. So the nice facility piece was not necessarily the key piece. It was I know the motorhome is where I go at the beginning, and we expanded out. And so anything that we can do from a time standpoint and an educational piece for these employees is really critical to me. And what we've done is we've created a flexible opportunity, and I appreciate that. I think it's much better than what we had even on Tuesday. But at the end of the day, I think that's the piece that's missing, and that's the sense that I get of the crowd, and I may be totally wrong. We know that you're, Councilman McCord, I would agree that illustrating that we understand that there's anxiety and skepticism and even suspicion about things is to be expected. And you all are here because you are asking those questions, because you are worried about it. And if we have any brain at all, we're listening, and we're working on it, double time over time, to make sure that we not only meet the schedule and do our best to meet expectations. I appreciate it. You're asking that question is fully the right thing to do because that's what folks are thinking. You're right. I sense that we're thinking this. You're right. Thanks for validating me. Yes, sir. I appreciate that. Council Member Myers, is it okay if Council Member Beard goes since you've already spoken on the... All right, Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. Benji, back to the Wellness Center again and the staffing. What would the IRS be? Marathon Health is committed to 48 hours. Working with LFUCG and your population, we're going to talk about what would be appropriate hours that would hit the LFUCG logistics. So we've got 48 hours. We're talking about maybe a Tuesday, Thursday night open, a possible Saturday. but we're analyzing when people are at work, when they're not at work, what are going to be the convenient hours. But it's a 48-hour-a-week clinic that is being open, and those hours will be adjusted to hit the target. Okay, so you're taking that into consideration in the normal 8 to 5 situation? No, it's going to be customized for LFDCG's population, and we've got 48 hours to move around with. That's great to hear. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Council Member Beard. I'm a Council Member Myers. Did you have Council Member Myers? Thank you, Mayor. I said one other question. The wellness piece and the wellness program, how is it going to be funded? First of all, I think that we maybe need some clarifying terms on the term wellness. From a consulting perspective, we're talking about employees that aren't necessarily filing claims, but they either have some type of a lifestyle risk factor or they have a medical risk factor. Lifestyle might be sedentary lifestyle. That's a risk factor. Elevated blood pressure, and they don't know it. The strategy is going to be to do an X-ray of LFUCG's employee population and identify how many risk factors we have in the entire population. Between lifestyle and medical, there's probably 14 risk factors. And we know statistically probably 40-some-odd percent of your employees have over five risk factors. So the strategy is first to do an X-ray of the entire LFUCG population. that's done through health risk assessment, biometric testing, self-reporting, claims data, etc. Once we figure out what the x-ray looks like and what the risk factors are, we'll develop a strategy to impact those and negate them. What we would hope to do over a period of a year is drive down the risk factors somewhere between 15% and 20%. But how is it going to be funded? The funding of it. I guess the incentives is really what I'm talking about. Right. The incentives, the potential partner that we're talking about, Chip Rewards, wants to work with us very strategically to talk about what are some of the incentives that LFUCG has already in their population that would drive somebody into a wellness activity, i.e. pool, golf course. so we will work strategically to think through, one, what wellness activities do we want employees to participate in, and two, what is the value of the reward that would have somebody engage in that activity, and it's probably not water bottles. Right. Okay? So that's the 30,000-foot level-down view. And also I'll say this, wellness is a marathon. It's not a sprint. We'll catch some high-risk individuals that are getting ready to have experienced a huge claim, but what we're looking for is downstream ROI by eliminating those risk factors that I just mentioned. Right. And so part of that is the health risk assessments, the health cultural audit, and the employee interest surveys, as well as the other things that you mentioned. Yes, sir. But as Councilman McCord said, companies or governments or whoever provide incentives for getting some of that information. He gave one example. Another example is that you charge a fee by employee. And then as you take the HRA and say you come back with five risk factors, if you get into a program that will help eliminate some of those risk factors, they take off part of that fee. And they continue that until you try to get that fee down to zero. And the people who either don't take the screening that are getting charged that fee or the ones who don't quite get down to the zero base, That money is what funds the incentives. So my question is, what are we doing? Where are we going to get the money to pay for our incentives? We have some incentives, like you talked about, that could be something the government has in its pocket that's not. It's free. But there are other incentives that we know we're going to probably go after that are going to cost money. So where are we getting that funding to provide those incentives? One, there are some incentives, which I tried to go into the other night, that have a direct economic impact. brand drugs versus generic. We'll save money by moving people from brand to generic that are still providing the quality of care. The program that you're mentioning without trying to create too much of a learning curve here, very simply, it's either a results-based or participation-based. You want certain employees to do certain activities and you start out with where the premium should be and then you back it down say $30 or $40 a month. And what you allow employees to do is buy back what you reduced it by, by them doing those activities. So rather than them paying X, you're going to back it down $30 and you'll let them buy it back by participating in those wellness activities. Again, it's got a little bit of carrot to it. It's got a little bit of stick to it. But we really need to slow down, think strategically, think about what assets you have, think about what the risk factors are, et cetera. It's an involved discussion that we're fully prepared to have and fully prepared to leverage. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Stennett. Are you back? Yeah, I just had one follow-up question. Okay. I think addressing the retiree issue. Now, all plans are available to all retirees, correct, under the current makeup, both HSA and the PPO plans as they stand? I haven't been given clarification on that yet. Last year they were not eligible for the HSA options. That was a LFUCG policy. We've asked for an opinion whether that could be removed so they could be eligible for all five plans, but I don't have a response on that yet. I think that's important, Mayor. I think we would need to get that response to our retirees because I think there are some trepidations about, even with the supplement in there, not being eligible for two of the three plans kind of makes it tougher on them to have to be narrowed down to one plan. So if we can get that answer as soon as possible and make it public by maybe Tuesday and let them know to ease some of that anxiety. All right. Thank you. Yes, sir. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. I kind of want to bring it back to kind of where we are in regards to timing. And I want to kind of dovetail on what Council Member McCord mentioned just a few minutes ago. So much has happened in regards to the rates and in Tuesday discussion and where we are tonight. And my comments are not to be critical of the numbers, but just in regards to the process and where we go forward. I see some value. And if I could kind of take a vision of what the employees may be thinking. I see the value of perhaps allowing some additional time for the open enrollment process to start. And Mayor, I think it would be a help to me, speaking for my role as a council person, to also engage in understanding the difference of the plans. Again, this is not to be critical. This is not to advocate our responsibility to make the tough financial choices, and the fact that we meet again next Thursday night. So the council will spend two more opportunities, work session two, and council meeting on Thursday. But I do also recognize that there are challenges logistically that we have to do. But if I remember from my days in government, we've had open enrollment at dates later than the first week in November. I just offer that for consideration, man. I just wanted to see what my other council members may think. Okay. I think we got the sentiment of the crowd. I understand. We understand. Thank you. Council Member Stenet. I would just point out to you, as of December 31st, our current contract expires. Right. So we have to. I have no health care after December 31st until we finalize the Humana agreement. So the point is, any movement on that, we've got to be very sensitive. What kind of a maybe, what would a week do? What would a week do? Melissa? Benji, can you help us while she's coming up here? One thing to point out is while the open enrollment dates are set, the education process will continue through those dates. It's not educate through next week until open enrollment begins and then stop. That will continue. Just while Melissa's coming up, Drew Short, I don't mean to pick it up. I hope you'll smile when I say this because you said to me the other night, and I've quoted a couple times, hold up your hand, because Drew said when we were out at Charesa and Bobby Crovo's with a bunch of firefighters and their wives, he said, I've learned more in the last two hours than I have about health care in 15 years. And, you know, sometimes in times of adversity we do learn, I'm not advocating for the pain of adversity, But, you know, that's a little bit of what this is about, as we are learning a whole lot right now, perhaps. So Melissa, you all, is internally within the government, Melissa has been managing this assignment or this project. And so she is part of the education team, along with our human resources folks, that is working the project. Yes, she seems young, but she's pretty sharp, and she's working real hard. So give her a little bit of a break. Thank you. It won't be a problem if we push it back a week or two. We can continue the education, make it last over a couple more weeks, and we can continue all the way through open enrollment. Once it starts, we can continue to answer questions and help explain the plans. I've talked with IT during this meeting, and they said technically it wouldn't cause any major problems for us. All right. Okay. We'll do our best then to, from my point of view, since you're running the project and you say that you can accommodate that, and the IT folks do, and that will be helpful for folks to learn better, then we'll do that. Okay. Is that good with the council? Okay. Totally. Council Member Beard? If, in fact, Melissa did say a week or two, and Tuesday I was thinking if we hadn't gotten interrupted by Council Member Stenet's proposition, I guess, that I was going to make a motion that we move it two weeks. Second. Okay. And if it makes no difference, I don't see why not. He's going to tell me why not. No, not necessarily. First of all, the issue is having an ID card in an employee's hand that works as of January 1st when it's presented to a health care provider. That might sound real simple, but when you're linking a lot of technology and eligibility fees to the carriers to make sure they have an ID card so when they go into the pharmacy and present their pharmacy card, it needs to work, there's a high degree of difficulty that I don't want to water down. That's the issue. The other piece of this, the original open enrollment timeline was two weeks of open enrollment and employee benefit overviews and articulate videos and this type of thing. there's no problem from keeping the communication campaign going all the way up to November 27th, which was our original hard stop on turning off open enrollment, bundling up the data that we've got, and making those eligibility fees so that we can produce ID cards. What I would like to do is be sensitive to what's going on, but I'd like to keep, if at all possible, the hard stop of November 27th and commit to, for every day, 24-7, communicating. The other thing I think our communication plan needs to change a little bit, as we hear questions about FSA and HSA, I think we need to have weekly reminders of the benefit highlight. We're getting a lot of questions about this, this is what this is about. We're getting a lot of questions about the wellness center. We've got a document that we're getting ready to release that will start amplifying that, minus what the mayor said about buildings and services and clinicians that we're trying to hire. But if we can keep it November 27th and communicate as hard as we can, that would be my recommendation for the ID card issue primarily. I've been told. Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I appreciate everybody's – we've given everybody a chance to applause when you feel like that's appropriate. But it is not appropriate to speak out from the audience. I recognize as the chair, it's my unpopular duty to keep a little bit of order in the room. So if you need to speak out, then I'll recognize you from the audience to come up to the podium. Okay? But right now, the questions, and this is our protocol for about 150 years in the city council. I'm sorry. I didn't create this world. So the council is now having comments. Then we'll have public comments. Okay? All right. I just wanted to finish my thought that two weeks would not jeopardize, I don't believe, November 27th. That's what I heard them say. I suspect, though, that some may be prepared to begin open enrollment before then. Right. So the opening of it should not necessarily compromise an informed decision-making. It doesn't say you have to do it. So what I'm saying is if we back it off for a week, for example, it doesn't mean that someone has to do the enrollment at that point in time. I'm just saying that if we back it off for a week, ten days, then open it up for those who are prepared to go ahead and make their decisions, to do feel fully adequately prepared and informed to go ahead and make their decisions. okay yeah that's fine okay what we are hearing is that the the that november 27th is an important time right in order to be prepared for the cards and january the first and november is just right here for the next week yep right council member lawless I think that that's a good point. Nobody has to sign up on November 7th. But I also think we need to be sensitive to the fact that there are other governments and other businesses are having their open enrollments and that if we push it and they aren't able to do it at a certain time, they may miss the opportunity to compare this plan with what maybe their spouse has and miss an opportunity to get the right plan for their family. So I think we need to be sensitive to that. If we say you can't enroll until two weeks later, then that might miss an opportunity for someone to look at what's best for their family and looking at what maybe their spouse has, et cetera. Vice Mayor Gordon? Okay. Okay. I just had a couple technical questions. I know that my husband's on the state, and he got his information weeks ago, So a lot of people already have that information. My question is, if our employees decide to wait, say, until November 20th, even though enrollment is open, is there any impact on almost 3,000 jumping in the last week of November? and we can do it from home so we don't have to wait in line like we used to if the information you give employees has been comprehensive. I mean, I would certainly advocate for the hard end date because I've had a conversation with the computer folks and they're already very concerned because they have to do a test on the system before it's ever open. So, you know, I don't mind if we, I mean, if there would be an impact of taking off that week of the 7th and just starting a week later, what would? That would be fine if we started a week later. And people wouldn't, they could use the next two weeks to get informed, get educated, and compare with, like Council Member Lawless said, compare with other plans that their family member might have. And it might give a better sense of comfort, and we could keep our hard end date. Yeah, that would not cause any problems at all. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mary. One question I had, I think Council Member Farmer brought this up earlier before we started getting down into some of the things we've discussed here. But, you know, I fully advocate, like I say, giving these employees every single day, every single minute we can to educate yourself. But as far as our action tonight as a council, what's on the docket is to approve up to $1.9 million. It's just so we can allocate the money so this can be done. And so if we so chose to have two readings tonight, that is actually a good thing because we're moving those resources into play so that we can put some relief for these employees. So I would certainly be in favor of moving that part forward tonight as two readings and giving employees as much time to understand what it is they have the opportunity to do. So is that what we're voting on tonight, Council Member Sten? Okay. I just wanted to make sure that that's all we legislatively were voting on tonight. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member McCord. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member McCord's point is kind of right on target. My sentiments to start the conversation to extend the opening of open enrollment was for the benefit primarily of our employees. To the benefit of the council, I think moving in open enrollment would be just as wise. because tonight if that motion does carry to appropriate $1.9 million, I would envision that we would have to make the appropriate, we have to find the money, we'd have to make the appropriate budget amendments to carry forth that action. And what that says to me is that it allows us to continue to get our hands around this issue. So Mayor Gray, I would, if the council would consider, make a motion that we extend the opening of open enrollment one week to Monday, November 14th. So moved. Motion and a second. A motion by Council Member Ford, seconded by Council Member Ellinger to extend open enrollment beginning to November 14th. Yes, and I believe that's one weekend. Is that correct, Melissa? From November 7th to November 14th, exactly one week, Mayor. Right. Thank you. All right. All right. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Mayor. I had a question for Law. It is the understanding of us that up here that you have suggested that we have to get a second reading on the $1.9 million tonight. Is that correct? You don't have to, but ideally, because of the, for example, the IT programming that needs to occur and whatnot, it would probably be best to give it two readings for finality purposes. Okay, and so then my question, I guess, goes to the group of council members. I find myself once again just like a week and a half ago where I'm seeing something for the first time tonight, and while I applaud your efforts and working with what we have, I still have a few questions about some of the plans. And so I'm just wanting to clarify that if we approve the money, we're not necessarily approving what was presented to us tonight. Is that correct? By this resolution, you are committing $1.9 million. You are not appropriating those funds yet through that resolution, up to $1.9 million. but you are committing to do that, which gives the finality to that decision to permit everybody to move forward on it. But we're not committing necessarily to the plan that was presented tonight. Well, yeah, but that is the plan tonight was to illustrate how we are achieving that resolution, how we are meeting that resolution. I understand that, but I think that many of us were not involved in the meetings. And while I appreciate it because everybody doesn't disagree that something had to happen, I still am seeing this for the first time. And clearly there are some questions within the different plans and how they may affect. A quick math on one of them showed me that an employee making $18 an hour was still a 21 percent pay cut. So I was just wanting to crunch the numbers myself and not necessarily endorsing. I just want to make sure that we were just allocating the funds and that there was room within this, or if this is the definitive, once we approve the funds tonight with the budget amendment up to $1.9 million, are we committing to this as well? Technically, you probably are not, but as a practical matter, it sends the message that you are finalizing the plan. Okay, I don't understand. How about legally? Why don't you tell me the legal? I mean, I understand that we're appropriating the funds, but I mean, legally, what's the... Nothing would prevent any of you from coming next week or at a meeting after that to try to change this. But as a practical matter, you're talking about limited time frames for open enrollment and for decisions to be made. And it's not possible for IT and other folk to get everything in place the longer that that time gets extended on it. So as a practical matter, you're going to run into problems getting people enrolled in health insurance. And that's a problem we're faced with because for many of us, this is the first time I've seen it and we're committing to a plan that we've just gotten. All right. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. We talked on Tuesday about providing care in the clinic for kids five and under. Would that just entail having a pediatrician on staff? Yes, we did research that with Marathon. since Tuesday, and that is not, pediatrics is not within the scope of what they typically do. And the reasoning is when you bring a pediatrician on staff, you also need to bring on a pediatric nurse as well as additional equipment. The cost of that becomes very prohibitive, in excess of $500,000 to $600,000 to accomplish that. And in a population the size of LFECG of 6,400 or so, give or take, participants in the plan, it wouldn't justify that type of expense. Considering that pediatrics is such a specialty and there is a huge population of pediatrics within LFECG as well as health care reform allowing for 100% preventative care for pediatrics, immunization, things like that in the marketplace, that's not something that would be well defined within the scope of their business. However, what they have seen is partnership with local pediatric firms that may come in and provide Saturday hours outside of Marathon while operating possibly within the same clinic space, where they may have a dedicated time on Saturdays between 8 and 12, for instance, to do well visits and checkups and things like that for children. So that is something we can explore after the clinic is open of options for pediatrics or things like dermatology, things like that. Okay, and in that situation, what would the parent pay when they went to see that pediatrician on the Saturday? You would design that. Typically, the way that would work is that would fall within the insurance, but if you wanted to design it to sort of mirror the marathon model, LFUCG may waive that copay and may expense that as a claims expense. So in that case, it's just on how you want to design that particular operation. Okay, I know you have a lot on your plate, but as you move forward with getting the doctors in place with Marathon, can you explore what the numbers would be based on our population? The number is four. I guess if you could look at our claims history for our population of kids five and under, what that might look like if the government decided to waive that copay. Sure, we could try and give you some statistics on that. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Council Member McCord. And then Council Member Kay. Thank you. Just, again, I think it boils down to solutions and, you know, a lot of talk and a lot of feeling and so forth. And, again, that's why I was very heavily praising Council Member Stenet for a solution. Since I found out on Tuesday that the under six pediatric situation is not covered, there are other solutions out there. And so what I'd like Benji and Briggs for you to do is, after this meeting's over with, I've spoken with Rachel Smith at the Refuge Medical Clinic in Southland Christian Church, who runs the free medical clinic, expressly telling them that we have a need for pediatrics. And they pull from all these pediatrics around here. I'd like for that to be incorporated in the discussion of the Marathon, because it may be a solve that doesn't cost us anything. We can put it in. It's obviously a need that many, many folks have of great concern. So I want to give you that number tonight. But I think that's what we're talking about here is identifying the problem, seeing where there's a solution, and going ahead and just moving on it. And so that's something that has happened since Tuesday on my end, and I want to make sure that we meet that need. But whether that's a solution or not, I think Council Member Myers articulated it well. That is something that has to be met. It has to be met. There's just too many kids in this room under the age of six on Tuesday and so forth. So I think that's of grave concern. So I just want to make sure that that is on your radar and as we build this that that's built in and there may be some ways to do it that don't cost us anything. Sure. Thank you, Council Member McCord. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Mayor. I want to do a couple of things. First, Keith, I want to go back to the legal opinion. This item right now is scheduled for first read, number 28. Just from a legal perspective, does that resolution bind the administration to present a plan that looks exactly like the one that we have in front of us? No. Thank you. And secondly, I would like to move to suspend the rules and to consider item number 28 tonight after time for public comment, because there are people who have been waiting to speak after they've been allowed to speak. I'd like to make this motion that we suspend the rules and act on item number 28. Second. Motion by Council Member Kaye, second by Vice Mayor Borden to suspend the rules for a second reading on item number 28. Is there any discussion? That would be after public comments related to this issue. Is there any discussion? First and second. Yes. First and second. Is there any discussion related to the motion? Related to the motion, Council Member Lawless? Did that motion mean that the people waiting to speak can go on and speak now so they can get their kids under 6 home to bed? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. All right. Any further discussion? All right. All in favor of the motion as stated, then please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Okay, now we, if there's no objection by the council, I'll ask for a public comment from those who have signed up related to the health insurance issue. And the ones that I have signed up, I've got Debbie, Debbie Tester, Pam Brandenburg, Pat Lurie, Pam Camual, Kelly Stidham, Bernard. Is Bernard here? But you're not about to help. Okay. And Josh Douglas, is your comments related to the? Oh, Josh was already here. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Mr. Farmer. All right. All right. I have some others that have signed up as well related. Thomas Hager, Sandy Witt, Charissa Crovo, William Pinkston, and Frank Harris. Okay. So, Debbie Testers, you're number one. Take the government, number one. There you go. Okay. I just come in front of you all today. Debbie, pull it down. Thanks. I'm sorry. I come in front of you all today to thank you all for trying to straighten this out. And I want to also thank Sergeant Tom Bastin and Firefighter Wade Miracle for including the non-sworn personnel in their speech Tuesday. It really made us feel really special. But I was saying my husband, who also worked for LFGD, and myself both struggle every payday to make ends meet. We have one son at home and are raising two of our grandsons, and it's not easy. I know of single parents working for the LFGD that can't afford a lot of this, and they're going to have to suffer, really. And their children are going to have to suffer if we have these high prices and insurance. The non-sworn hasn't received raises in six years, and hopefully you all will find it next year to hopefully give us a raise of some kind because there's an ordinance on there that we're supposed to get the world to work, and the last six years we haven't got it. Non-sworn personnel, we need to get on the bandwagon, talk with your other employees and join ASME so we can have a union and we can have a voice out here. There's some of us that's been paying organizing dues for about two years. Now we need to get the rest of you all on here. And we can have a voice in Frankfurt just like the police, fire, and community corrections do. but also on I was looking at this and it says for fire and police and fire majors I don't give them I'm glad they get what they get but on their employee plus one they get extra fifty dollars a for their benefit pool for a family plan they get an extra two hundred dollars I I don't know about the police, what their bargaining thing is, I mean, fire, what their bargaining tool is, because it's never come out. But we need to try to get everybody equal. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Tester. Next on... I'm coming. Pam. All right. Most of y'all know who I am. You know I don't live in Fayette County. I'm Pam Brandenburg. I work for the Division of Fire. President of CSEA asked me 3562. Came in here tonight, or started up here today, hoping and thinking that, okay, what came out in the paper on Tuesday gave me hope. Okay, we've got six months for them to try and work with something, put something in place so that these people aren't annihilated. And trust me, folks, $75 extra in your pocket on a single employee or $100 for an employee plus one or $200 for a family is not helping. It is not helping. When you've got somebody that brings home $600 a month and half of that goes to his insurance, where does his rent come from? Where does his groceries come from? Where does his gas to get back and forth to work come from? He doesn't have it. and neither do the rest of us. You've got to do better. I appreciate your efforts. I know you've worked long, you've worked hard, but you've got to come up with something better than this because this is not working. It won't work. People are going to have to quit. They're either going to have to quit, they're going to have to go on welfare, they're going to have to go on food stamps, disabilities you name it that's where they're going or they're going to go out and they're going to become criminals trust me they're going to start selling drugs they'll get a job in your pharmacy steal your pharmaceuticals and sell them I mean I'm being serious here I live in a county that is it's fairly drug ridden and I see it every day the store that I run I mean that little community is very drug ridden. I see this every day. And you're going to start seeing a whole lot more of it here in Lexington if you don't do a little better here. Now, I need to speak to Mr. Briggs. And I don't mean any disrespect, sir. When you keep talking about getting pharmacies, getting people to have their pharmacies or this pharmacy will dispense, If you go have your pharmacy dispense the generic brand drug, there is a sign on every pharmacy I've ever been in that says, by law, we cannot dispense a brand name drug unless you or your doctor specifically ask for it. Now, number two, putting money in FSAs. Where are we going to get it? Excuse me, some people don't have money to pay their rent now. Number three, when you first presented this program, you said you're trying to get the employees geared toward thinking for the probability and hoping the worst doesn't occur. Where on God's green earth did you get your financial consulting? Any strong financial consultant will tell you that you plan for the worst and you hope for the best. You put back three months mortgage or three months rent, three months utilities, three months car payment, three months car insurance payment. This is foolishness. That piece of advice I can't even begin to comprehend. But you guys got all, that's all I got to say to you, Mr. Briggs. Other than that, you guys, we got to get a union. without a union we can't get our we can't get our benefit pool up to $530 a month now I see a lot of y'all have come out and I promised y'all this and let me get her set up because I got some thanks for you Let me get it back here. Come around this side. He's got nine. Might take me a minute. She told me about this, y'all, earlier. This is for all of my people, and especially for you, Deb. No, no preview. It's a song. If they would just get through their interlude. When I am down And oh my soul so weary When troubles come And my heart burdened be Then I am still And wait here in the silence Until you come And sit awhile with me You raise me up so I can stand on mountains You raise me up to walk on stormy seas I am strong when I am on your shoulders You raise me up to more than I can be And I'm going to stop right there. There's a little story behind that. A week ago Friday I was sitting at my desk. I've got a couple of co-workers that can attest to this. And I was at the lowest moment I think I've ever been in my life. These figures had just come out, and I did some figuring. And I figured at my take-home pay, if I take the platinum plan, I'll be working for $2.41 an hour. I pay $20 a day just to come here to work, just for gasoline. So I figured, what the hell? I'll get in my car. It's a nice new car. Not real new-new. Jerry bought it for me. He thought I needed a big, safe car. But you know what? 119 miles an hour down the road against a telephone pole, that car ain't going to hold up. And that's where I was Friday. And I turned on my radio going home. And this song came on. And I thought about my people and I thought about you, Jim. Because you know a lot of times I stand on your shoulders too. And you know where mine and your relationship is. That's never going away. And I thought, no, you can't do that to these people. You fought too hard and you fought too long. So once again I say, you're done! You're done! You're done! You're done! Thank you very much. Right. Next that I've got on the sign-up sheet is now Pat, Pat, Laurie, Pat, you gave your time to Pam, and Pam gave your time to Pam Brandenburg. So Kelly Stidham, is Kelly here? Okay, Kelly. My name is Kelly Stidham. I'm for the Department of Corrections. I'm not real good with public speaking, but I'll give it my shot. I've been figuring out on these plans what people make, and basically the way I see it, the plan is neither flexible nor adds benefit to our paycheck. It's totally biased against families, which, you know, children or spouse, it's totally biased. The only person this plan that would be feasible for this person would be a single person with no dependents whatsoever. That is the only person that could handle this plan or manage it. Because under this plan, a person with two dependents, at the Department of Corrections, on paper, it says we're making anywhere between $14 and $50 cents an hour, and maybe the top person maybe is around $17, $18 an hour. I don't know. But that person there, once you take all this stuff out, that person there is making $1,600 a month, okay? And then you take out, even under this new plan, the $300 per month. It's still going to cost them $3,600 a year for this plan. And they're only going to be making, they're only going to be bringing home $8.12 a month, okay? I mean, an hour. So these people here, and then you've still got a $5,000 deductible. It's only this HSA-1, even the best of the two HSAs, is not feasible whatsoever because this person here is going to have to work, and I already do. I work 16-hour days. Many, many times we are all forced to do it in the Department of Corrections. We face liabilities from any number of sources. We face all of the stresses of the job, which are many. It took all I had when I came to this job just to stand every day and work and do the demands of basically what was forced on me as a two-officer job in a one-officer unit. And I ran and I ran, and I thought the worst they can do is fire me. And it took all I had every day to come in here and stand and do my job. And many days I do work the 16 hours, and I double my check. I net, with the family plan, it costs me right now $300 a month. And like I said, it costs me $300 a month. And so I'm netting about $667 every two weeks in straight time. That's what I'm bringing home, okay? I have to work extra hours just to bring home. I worked 54 hours in two weeks so I could bring home, double my check up to $1,400 for that two weeks. So what I'm saying is, as far as people is concerned, it really is unfeasible. These plans are nothing. You all would have been better off just to offer us a cash traffic plan for that. If we get sick, I'm going to really end up in a hospital, a plan like that that's not taken out of our pocket. Because I guess the kicker to the whole thing is that not only can we not afford it, we're also having these deductions come out of our paycheck if it's a family plan. And I seen just an article in the paper, the Herald-Leader, just the other day, that a catastrophic plan is offered right now with a $2,500 deductible, and it's only costing like $3,500 to $200 a month. So I don't understand where these prices are coming from. And I understand the city has issues. I do. I understand that. I understand we're in really lean economic times at this point. I understand that we have a massive influx of illegal immigrants coming across the border. I understand our jobs all went away. I understand the influx, the massive influx of importation that's coming into this country that's putting Americans out of work. And I understand where you're at with the government, but this will not cut it. And I think there's a better solution, and I think employees would be willing to come up with a better solution. And my solution, and I'm just looking at it, and maybe a lot of people will hate me for saying this, because I understand both sides of the story, both sides of the issue. And I see it like this. I figured it out. We have 15 days of sick time per year we could use. We have 15 days of vacation. We have seven days of holiday time per year. And when you figure this all out, The employee is getting paid if they use the maximum of that seven, starting out, seven weeks and two days of time that the government is paying for. My suggestion is, instead of doing all this, why not keep, if you really want to lower the health care costs, and I crunched some numbers. I don't have everything because this happened so quickly, but if you really wanted to crunch it, do this then. Take away all of our sick days. That way the employee isn't given the incentive just to go, I mean, leave us three, okay? Leave us three a year. I know y'all don't like it, but take a choice between health care benefits or sick days. If you took it and you gave us three days a year plus our other stuff that we got, okay, a person is really only going to use that when they're really, really, truly sick. It's going to cut down on all the FMLA and everything like that because nobody's going to use it unless they absolutely have to. because right now, if I wanted to, I could go to the doctors, get the FMLA, and I'm paid up to seven weeks per year. And I'm not saying everybody does that, but I'm saying that there is abuses that go on. So why not, if you're going to cut it, why don't you crunch those numbers and cut that? Because every time a person calls them sick, it's time and a half. So that's what I'm saying. Don't go after people's medical benefits. Use a more reasonable approach. Kelly, thank you Next on our sign-up list is Thomas Hager Is Thomas here? Thomas, I've got the unpopular job of being the timekeeper on these Public comment is a three minute, three minutes Thanks, Mr. Hager Yeah, this is my first time ever here I understand, right As I said, sometimes it's tough. It's probably not going to be tough for you to speak. No, because as mad as I am, I just got to watch my tongue. But I was crunching numbers myself. And it's me and my son, so it's employee and one dependent. And I was crunching numbers. And after the insurance comes out, I will be bringing home $800 a month. I'm not going to be able to do it. That would have to take my gasoline, my car insurance, house payment, electric, everything else. There's no way. So the only outlook I got on it, because I work three jobs now just to make it from week to week, the only way I'm going to be able to make it, let the government take care of me and my son. That's the only option I'm going to have. quit all three jobs and go get me a medical card, get my son a medical card, and do food stamps. I'll let the government take care of me and my son. I've tried for, I've had full-time jobs since I was 15 years old. And this ain't going to work. There ain't no way. And I'm not the only one. I work in a division that has not had a raise in six years. And y'all going to raise the health care 21%? and ain't had a raise in six years, that's not going to work. No matter who you are, them numbers do not crunch. I mean, that's just a proven fact. I have a son that I have to keep the best plan we have. He has a birth defect, crippling disease, asthma, and all this stems from Agent Orange that the government won't take care of anyway. And now I'm going to have to lose my insurance and my jobs because it can't afford it. And I just want to come speak my piece, and that's about all I'm going to say. Thank you. Next on the sign-up sheet that I've got is Sandy Witt. Sandy here? Oh, yeah. I am going to need the Elmo. I don't know how to work this. Is this an Elmo? No. I don't know. Okay. Council members and Mr. Mayor, thank you for allowing me to speak. My husband is a fireman here in town. And last night, I went over to station 8 to meet with the firefighters and the medics just to kind of sit down with some numbers for them because a lot of people just aren't understanding this health plan at all, and I want to make sure that I can do my best to help clarify it. I've created many spreadsheets, and I have to apologize to everybody in the audience because my husband's a fireman. I have just been working on the firefighters' portion of this. But I think this will help. Can we zoom at all? Well, no, don't zoom. Let me just explain it. Well, if you look at the left column, I went ahead and did the math real quick after you said that you were going to give an extra $200. The first column is the PPOA. I'm the same one on Tuesday. I think Shares has shared the 4,595% increase of our out-of-pocket on the HSA-1 plan. So, you know, we're talking about increases here. But I want to show that not a whole lot has changed. Although I appreciate, and I think many of us appreciate what you have done to try to help us, I just want to show you this. Let's see, first column, you're talking about for a family, it was going to be $899 for a family with the PPO plan. That's before tonight. It is now out of pocket $700 a month for my family. This is the same PPO plan we've been on for over 10 years. We've been with Humana Platinum. I have four children at home. Right now I was paying $214 a month for this plan, and now even with the generous $200 that you're going to give us, I'm still going to be paying $700, which is an increase of $485 a month. I don't have that kind of money. I'm a teacher here in Fayette County. I have four children. We're trying to make ends meet, as we all are here. With all due respect, Mr. Stinnett, is it? I believe you said that there are not comparable plans out there. Before Shressa switches this to the next page, look at the very bottom row. Because I had to cross some numbers out, so just bear with me. The very bottom row will show you the total out-of-pocket that a family could be looking at with any of these given plans. That's the premiums that you're paying. That's the deductibles that you could be paying. and the out-of-pocket you could be paying. And I want to make sure, I wasn't going to speak tonight, but I feel like I would be doing a disservice if I did not leave this room without just at least explaining one thing that I found out through my investigations. With any of these plans, your deductible does not apply to your out-of-pocket expense. Let me say it again. Your deductible does not apply to your out-of-pocket expense. And that's what makes these numbers so devastating. The very bottom row says basically, what are we out as a family? If I have a child in the hospital. If we have a car accident. The PPOA, I would be out $8,389. This is after tonight. The PPOB, $11,427. PPOC, $13,115. The fourth column is the HSA 1, which I would ultimately be out, could be out, $10,040 for the year. And the HSA 2, which I could be out, $10,600. If you look up a little, you're going to see a deductible on the HSA 2 of $5,000 and an out-of-pocket of $5,000. That is $10,000 that I could be out-of-pocket with that HSA. So I want to make sure that that is very clear that you all understand the magnitude of that because that was something I didn't understand. I had never seen a health plan like that where the deductible did not count toward the out-of-pocket. Flip it over real quick, Shressa. I know I'm running out of time. And again, going back to Mr. Stinnett. I've reserved my time. The very next page, if you'll put it up there, please. Okay. He mentioned that there are no comparable plans out there, that this is it. I haven't spent a whole lot of time on this, but I did a little bit of research and came up with 12 different plans between independent agents of Humana and Anthem. I didn't even look at UnitedHealthcare or anything else. Between those 10 or 12 plans, I chose what I thought looked like about the five best plans. Five of those are HSAs and one is the Anthem Premium Plus. I know it's very difficult to see that, but on the very bottom column, If you'll pull it up just a little bit so I can see that. Remember those numbers before on the total out-of-pocket for the fire department for a family up to $10,000 and $11,000? Remember those? Okay. Now we're looking at figures of 4,400, 5,800, 69 or something, 66, 56. So this is almost half of the amount that I could be out-of-pocket if the worst thing happened, if I went with an independent agent. Single, it's even more. I mean, it's greater. And I have worksheets made out for this. Single LFUCG compared to single independent. It's unbelievable. In my opinion, I hate to say this, but I feel like I'm doing a disservice if I don't. If you're a single person and you work for this city, you'd be crazy to take this health plan. Because you are given, and it's crazy, you would be given that benefit pool. If you waive your insurance, you're given that benefit pool. Now, if you opt for an HSA plan, which it's a little risky, but still, you can opt for an HSA, and you would not be able to use that benefit pool for a flexible spending account. However, if you look at that third column there, that is the Anthem Premium Plus, which is not an HSA plan. It's not a PPO, but it's just a regular health care plan. If you chose that, then you could really take that $5,168, and again, this is Firefighter, I apologize, it's the $430 a month benefit pool. But if you take that benefit pool, you could put that into a flexible spending account if you wanted to and use it for medical, and then your deductible is covered. So I just want to make sure that you all look into this. And, again, I appreciate everything you're doing, but you really need to see the magnitude and look at the numbers. I'm going to have ten spreadsheets like this. I'm with the state. I'm right now leaning towards going with the state insurance for my kids and I and putting my husband on some kind of independent plan. One more thing I want to put under there. Hold on. Give me just one second. Okay. Last night I said I was at the Station 8 and I was talking to the firemen, and I was talking to one of their wives and it just broke my heart because she's in my position. Ten years ago, I have four children, so ten years ago I was a stay-at-home mom. I stayed home as long as I could to raise my three older children, and then I did go back to work teaching full time. However, we got to talking and she's like, Sandy, I don't know what to do. We can't do this. They have four children. He's a firefighter. He's been on six, seven, eight years. I'm not sure on that. She homeschools her children. She has one baby and then the other one, the oldest is 11 years old. So she is unable to work out of the home. Even if she did, she couldn't afford child care. And she's like, we can't even afford 50 extra dollars a month. I don't know what to do. And it dawned on me. I said, you know, I'm not one to take handouts. Believe me. I hate handouts. I don't agree. My soul does not agree with the welfare system. I think a lot of things are messed up in this country. However, I said to her, you know, I'm just wondering if you wouldn't be eligible for KCHIP. KCHIP is the Kentucky Health Plan for Children. So I got online today. Real quick, did a little Google. A fireman with almost 10 years on is going to gross with a family with four children. So you see what I have circled there. Six people in your family. If you gross less than $59,980, that is 200% of the poverty level in this country, your children can be covered by K-chip. I want to make sure everybody knows that because I'm seeing people here I know where you're coming from my husband's been on 14 years and I'm working and our children are a little older now but when I sat there we can't afford this house plan we can't, we just can't but I'm listening to you all speak and I know what it means to not be able to put food on the table it's not boo-hoo, feel sorry for us, it's not feasible. And that's what I just want to make sure, and everybody's been saying it, but you can only do so much as a family. You really can. There's only so much in your pocket. And if it's not there, it's not there. And a lot of people here are in that situation where they don't know what they're going to do. That's all I have. Thank you. Just one quick thing that we also figured out in the last week. If you do have two people that work and you do need to pay for daycare or childcare, if you do decide to opt out and take one of the five plans that Sandy has found, you can use that, I think it's like a $5,000 pool. Depends on, I guess, what department you're in. But if you put it in FSA, you can take that. There is a child-dependent clause in there that says that you can use it for child care up until your child is in kindergarten. So you can use it for preschool or something else. So if you do decide, hey, it's cheaper to pay out-of-pocket $200 for this plan that I can get on my own, you can use that money for other things. And I know people thought it was just for co-pays or other things like that, but you can use it for child care. So that's all that I'm going to add to it. Sandy, I think, covered it all. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Teresa. Rather than ask Mr. Cochran or Mr. Morris to comment or respond to individual comments regarding the numbers, I'll wait until perhaps everyone has spoken, and then Mr. Cochran, you may want to respond to some of the numbers. Okay? All right. Next on my sign-up list is Mr. Pinkston. And then, just so you all can get ready, Mr. Harris, Mr. Sweeney, and Mr. Dupree. Thank you, Mayor. Council people. My name is William Pinkston. I am a retired captain of the Division of Fire. I was a 20-year veteran with the division, retired with disability from an injury I suffered while in service to the city. I currently support two families, my wife and teenage son who is a student, as well as my daughter, her three-year-old and husband. I don't fully support them, but I assist them. He's having trouble with this economy, trying to find a job and stay employed, and so many people are having that kind of problem. Right now, I'm just keeping my head above water, but I want you to think about all the retirees who have it even harder. We have a lot of older folks who are on fixed income that are going to find this devastating to take care of their needs. Another thing I'd like for you to consider is what I've been hearing about this pharmacy and clinic that Lexington is going to have for employees. I think it's great. But please consider that there are a large number of employees as well as retirees who don't live in this county. That it's going to create a burden for them driving back and forth. I live an hour away from this room. I live two counties down from here in Garrett County. So it does create a hardship there if we were to try to come to this. I think it is a great thing, but please consider that you have so many active and retired employees who can't utilize this benefit that you're wanting to give us. But I want you to look around at this room here, these people. We have a great city here in Lexington. Even though I don't live here now, I grew up in Lexington. Like I said, I was an employee for the city for 20 years. What makes this city great isn't just our beautiful horse farms, our citizens being the kind of people they are, but it's the employees that this city has working for it that makes this city function, that makes this a great city. And these employees deserve a little help when it comes to things like this health insurance. I was fortunate. The division I was in, Division of Fire, I had a good career here, and I enjoyed it. But there are a lot of people who are struggling, especially when the high cost of health insurance, health care all over is going up. But our economic times in this country are harsh on the citizens. I want you to consider that now might be the time to focus more energy and funds to taking care of the employees, rather than spending it on things that really don't matter. Now, what I'm referring to is, I watched the news earlier today, and I saw, were they broken ground on Triangle Park? This may be a sore subject for some, but do we really need ice skating rings? Do we really need refrigeration for running ice skating rings? Unless it's sub-zero weather, you can't skate, unless we put a lot of money into refrigeration and so forth. My point is, parks are great, an ice skating rink is great, you know, all that stuff. But it's nothing without securing the people working here, giving them a secure future where they don't have to worry. You know, sure, we know the economic times are bad. We know we're going to have to bite the bullet on some things. But just please remember, you know, we're the ones here who are trying to raise our families, trying to make a difference, make this city better. And even us retirees, we still want to see this city prosper and become better. As a retiree from the fire department, I know we haven't had any big raises. I know we get an automatic, but it's been several years since we've had more than the bare minimum. And we're falling behind when you consider cost of living. But I'm also thinking about all the widows and the elderly who are really falling behind. You know, I work an extra job trying to keep my head above water. As I said, I retired on disability from the city, so I'm limited to what I can do. And I have a lot of other health issues, some contributed by my service with the fire department. But I just want you all to consider that, and thank you for your time. Thanks, Mr. Pinkston. Mayor, counsel? Yeah, Frank, I do want to say just before you speak that I appreciate what Mr. Pinkston had to say and the reference to Triangle understand why people could be concerned about an investment like that. That does happen to be if fully private individuals are paying for that one, for that part today. So, Mr. Harris, thank you. I just had a question, I guess, and a point I wanted to make about voting for a second reading. Am I understanding correctly that that means you're going to waive a first reading, or are you just going to read it twice back to back? No, we're not going to waive a first reading. There will be a first reading. So is it just sort of a formality of reading it twice together? Well, sometimes that is engaged as a protocol in order to facilitate, in order to, when there is an administrative issue that has to be engaged. I think I understand. It sounds like, though, that you're circumventing the rule, which is to read a bill twice. by just reading it twice in a row back to back rather than waiting to read it at the next meeting. The purpose of a second reading is to keep everyone honest. And I believe that this council is very honest. I've seen a high degree of integrity here. I've been coming to meetings for several months now, and I'm impressed by the overall makeup of this council. but if you're able to circumvent having true two readings of a good bill, you can do the same thing for a bad bill as well or a bad law. And so I would just discourage this practice, and I hope that this practice is not something that's done often. Understand always when someone suggests that a language like circumvention suggests something that's inappropriate, but this practice is by state law and is routinely engaged as an appropriate protocol. Thank you. But thank you for pointing it out, Frank. All right. Mr. Sweeney. Thank you, Mayor, Council Members. First of all, I want to say that I appreciate you all taking the time to try to redo this plan. I think, though, I would be remiss if I didn't say that you all didn't do a real good job. All you did is add a couple hundred dollars a month, and you stuck a finger in the dike in one spot, but spring and leeks in other spots. I would just say on a personal first that I had surgery last week that I otherwise would have put off until after the first of the year it was supposed to put off until after the first of the year but I knew better than to do that because after the first of the year there's no telling what this would have cost me I want to speak on two fronts number one I represent the FOP y'all know I'm president of the FOP but I represent active and retirees. There's not a lot that's been said about these retirees tonight and what they're going through. The retirees are receiving the same benefit pool as everybody else, $355 a month. Several years ago, several councils ago, the city voted to get paid health insurance for police and fire retirees. At that time, it actually was paid health insurance for police, fire, retirees. With the inceptic costs going up with health care, the benefits not going up, it's no longer paid health care for retirees. Even though it was indemnified by the state several years later that they get it, these police and fire retirees are not getting paid health care. They're not getting anywhere close. I've spoken to retirees who can't afford health insurance on their spouses, and after these increases go up, I don't know if they can afford the health insurance on themselves, even with the stipend that you're giving them. I don't know how much more you can consider these people, but these are people who have given you their service 20, 25, 30-plus years, and this is what they're getting in return. As far as your actives, I represent police. I don't represent fire. I represent the civilian union. I represent police. My constituents are active and retired police officers. As you all know, we're going through bargaining right now. We have been for several months. We, just like the fire department, have made several concessions. We have been asked to make several concessions. In the letters I sent to you last week, you know, the concessions are one thing that you've asked us to take that we're currently bargaining under. It's kind of like a kick in the stomach. But then when you do this to us last week, you know, this is taking the air out of it and this is kicking us while we're down. And this doesn't even take in these civilians. We have it a little bit better than the civilians do with our benefit pool. I can't imagine what they're going through. This is unacceptable to the fraternal order of police. This is unacceptable to police, and I know it's unacceptable to the fire and civilian employees as well. I will say this, that we, the FOP, are right now looking at other avenues, looking at going into a private pool for health insurance. What would this do to this city if 500-plus employees pulled out of this health insurance pool when we get our own insurance through another agency or through another insurance. I don't think that would help the city's incident at all. I think it would probably worsen the situation. You know, you've got to spread the wealth and you've got to spread the bullet. I mean, everybody has to take a hit. We realized a year ago that we were going to take a hit in health care. This did not happen overnight. This didn't happen in the last six months. This didn't happen in the last year. I know you all waited, didn't sign up with Humana until sometime in August. I'm not sure why this couldn't have been done earlier in the year, why negotiations couldn't have been done with other carriers earlier in the year, given better options so that we could have presented these options to the employees sometime early this summer. We're under strict timelines right now. The FOP, as I said, we are exploring other options. But unless we get some type of extension to do this, I don't know how fast we can do it. I think that the city ought to give all the employees more of an extension. I don't think a week or two weeks is near enough to give the city employees. I was thinking a few months. I don't know what it would cost. I know that the contract is up December 31st with Humana. I don't know what type of extension Humana would give under this contract, but as I said, and I'm sure that the police are not the only employees looking at other options outside of urban county government, going to either Blue Cross Blue Shield on their own, going to Humana on their own, but I assure you that the FOP is looking at an option for a group plan outside of the urban county government. And if we get that, we'll be better off, but you guys will take one huge hit by losing 500-plus people. I think that's all I've got to say. Thank you for your time. I have one other person signed up. Tom Dupree. And then Mr. Cochran, you'll be able to speak. Thank you, Mayor. And is there any way to get this where I can hold it? I can't. Oh, is that okay? Okay. Now, I hear a lot of fear in here tonight. My name's Tom Dupree. I have a business directly across the street. I'm an entrepreneur and a taxpayer. A lot of people are afraid they're going to lose their health care, that they're not going to be taken care of. You all have a pretty good health plan compared to mine, which I pay $800 a month for with a massive deductible. Now, folks, remember, how many taxpayers, how many people do you see here tonight speaking on behalf of the taxpayer? Yeah, yeah, a lot of you live in other places. Okay, I don't get any benefit from the Lexington Fayette Urban County government except to pay taxes for it. I get police protection. I get fire protection. I get things that the city provides. But I also pay taxes and my employees pay taxes. They pay the income tax. First of all, fear is the worst thing. And when you promote fear and when you promulgate fear, it's a self-perpetuating thing. We are Americans. We don't walk in fear. We don't live in fear. My taxable income last year was less than most of you in this room. It was less than every one of my employees. try to start a business in this city right now with all the taxes that there are now the other problem that the city is facing is a massive unfunded liability in the police and firemen's pension plan it's been well publicized I've spoken about it on my radio show and I will continue to speak about it I have no animosity towards city workers or people who provide me protection and my family protection. But there's going to have to come a point where both sides are going to have to give in a major way because the money and the revenues are not there. And I've done a significant amount of study. I have a background in public finance. 57 cents of every property tax dollar goes to the school system. Three cents goes to the city. The rest of it mainly comes from the income tax, which is two and a quarter percent. People can decide where to take their businesses. And if they don't want to pay that, they can go other places. Cities are faced with incredible pressures these days. And I'm not arguing that your all's contentions are not legitimate. But the revenues are not there. And they're not going to come back. one of the things I've talked about is that there are large institutions throughout this town that pay no property tax none whatsoever and they sit on the most expensive real estate in town the other thing is that I just think that the division of the property tax money is unbalanced with the school system getting almost 20 times the amount that the city gets. I hope you all will resolve this, but keep in mind that the taxpayer is the one that foots the bill. And I might also say that one of the reasons I'm here, because I'm not a guy who likes to come to these meetings. I'd rather be somewhere else, but there was a guy that attended every one of these meetings who was a good friend of mine. His name was Louis Cobb. He made his living shining shoes in downtown Lexington. He was a very good friend of mine, and he encouraged me to get involved. And I'm here partially tonight because of him and how he inspired me. I love our city. I love what the city employees do. I have five dogs and I use the dog parks regularly, among other things. And I want this to get worked out because I live here. I care about you all. I don't want you to give in to fear. I have gone through periods where I had no health insurance. I had nothing in the bank and I was living on my credit card, starting my business. And yet we got through. Don't have fear. Have faith and do the best you can to pull together. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Dupree. All right. Nobody else. I have no one else showing to speak to the issue, so I will go back then to the council. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Mayor. Maybe a word of explanation before I make my motion. On the docket tonight, scheduled for first reading is a resolution, if you have it in front of you, number 28, which has to do with adding an extra $1.9 million toward health care rates for all employees. I'm going to move that we suspend the rules, as we have the right to do, and that we take this for first reading now, which is out of order, so that those who are here on this issue can see the vote and hear the conversation about it. And then I will also move to further suspend the rules after first read to have a second read so that the people in government who have to prepare all of the technical and other aspects that will support this plan will have time to do so. So my first motion is to suspend the rules and have the first reading out of order of Resolution No. 28. It's a motion by Council Member Kaye, who is a second by Council Member Farmer. Is there any discussion? All right. All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Be a first reading. I'll give it first reading, yes. Resolution number 28 for first reading, a resolution of the Urban County Council authorizing the mayor and administration to commit up to an extra $1.9 million toward health care rates for all employees and retirees to bring the rates similar to the current Platinum Plan rates. All right. It's a motion to suspend the rules. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Mayor. I move to suspend the rules and have a second reading of Resolution No. 28. Second. It's a motion by Council Member Kaye, second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion? Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to remind my colleagues and everyone in the room, this is not just $1.9 million. It's actually $3.8 million because it will take effect over the calendar year. We're talking $1.9 tonight because we only have six months left in our budget. But beginning July 1, we'll have to come up and commit to find another $1.9 million. This is, in essence, $3.8 million of the $10 million problem. That was up to $3.8 million. So I just want to make sure people understand that it's $3.8 million in total. All right. Council Member Farmer. So we may not be able to get that money. And we may not be able to get more than that based on the comments here tonight. So this represents our best shot here now. Point of order, Mr. Mayor. My understanding is that the motion on the floor is to suspend the rules, and then we would have a second reading and then commentary on the point of order sustained. Thank you. Motion is on the point of order. All right. Is there any further discussion on this motion to suspend the rules? All right. Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. All right, now. Madam Clerk. Yes, I will give second reading to resolution number 28, a resolution of the Urban County Council authorizing the mayor and administration to commit up to an extra $1.9 million toward health care rates for all employees and retirees to bring the rates similar to the current Platinum Plan rates. Thank you. All right, is there a motion? Motion to approve by Council Member Blue, second by Council Member Ellinger. The floor is now available for discussion. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. I guess my question quite simply is what else can we afford to do? Can we afford to do what the motion is that's on the floor? I'm assuming so. You all worked on this. Is there anything else we can afford to do at this time or in six months' time? and can you set rates now and change in the middle of the game later? And any one of you can answer. I'm just, this is our time to find out. Briggs, do you want to comment on this? I was going to say that you could also comment and respond to some of the other observations that have been made, but we, pardon? This is really a budget question. I wasn't really so much asking him something. I was kind of asking you all that worked on this. We know that there's no surprises about the difficulty of this budget, And there's no surprises about the stressfulness of these decisions on our employees and on others. Our belief is that as we move through the education process, that the pain will not be as difficult as it may be perceived today. Now, I understand that people in the room may not see it that way. That is the belief. And it is more than $3 million than we had budgeted. So we are going to have to work very hard to find that. Because we don't have fund balance today that would cover this. And we don't have, unless we decided to defer payments to the Economic Contingency Fund, the Ring of Day Fund. Yeah, all of those are being considered. Or that we decided to defer the bond, all of those things. All of those things are being considered. In your all's conversations, to come up with the best shot and the best plan and the best opportunity tonight, which doesn't make enough of a difference for some, helps others, but represents everything else we have in the cupboard to pull out at this point in time. I just, you all were there, and I appreciate totally the work and the commitment. But, I mean, this is the time for a little bit of discovery, and I just wanted to have it before we had the vote. I think it's part of the public commentary, and it's part of where our resources are and how we're going to allocate them. Because it has been a tough budget year, and we're surviving in it. but there's been some life-ending kind of conversations here tonight, which does pander to fear. But I just want to make the alchemy known on how we got to where we are with this motion tonight and the amount of money that it entails for us to find and then spend. And I want to do it, but I just want to make sure we've got it and we'll do it. We've said we will do it. We don't know where it's coming from yet. That's what I'm trying to get to. Right. And I appreciate that. But I think that those here and those listening need to know that. Right. Because this is as tough as it's been, and it's not going to get any easier. Or better. Done. Right. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Farmer, I really appreciate your questions because I asked in our meeting whether we could adjust the rates halfway through the year. And I believe the answer was no. We will be contracting with Humana right now or pretty soon to set the rates and make the plans, and we can't change it. From my perspective, this means that even though the motion says up to $1.9 million this fiscal year, that means it's up to the mayor to present us a budget that puts that money into the next fiscal year so that we can make good on our promise through the whole health care plan. And the other thing, I think all council members surely want to know where we're going to find the money, and we talked about a lot of potentials, everything from rainy day fund to, I mean, a lot of different things, but we asked them, the administration, to look at those. And, of course, they would come to us as budget amendments, I would presume. And we would have to approve how we're going to pay for it. And so we've asked the administration to look at what they think would work out and make some proposals to the council. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yes, sir. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. If our consultant could come up for a second. Because I think Vice Mayor Gordon and I are having a sidebar about this, and I want to explore it just a little bit. So the supplement that the city is proposing to put in, that's this motion. That can or cannot be changed midstream. Because what I just heard was the rate can't be changed. But when I think of the rate, I think of the premium amount for the policy. But can the supplement be changed midstream? I'll answer it directly as I can. The gross premium that we built based on correct actuarial standards cannot be changed. We don't need to be modifying the top line. We think that that adequately states the liability, and we need to fund to that the best we can. In terms of the allocation of the 1.9, which could be 3.8, the modeling that we did for this presentation was distributing that to alleviate concerns, help with payroll deductions, the employee's net cost. So the model of how the supplement was distributed was our best thinking, our recommendation on how it should be distributed to help everybody in the government reduce their payroll deductions. That's not my question. Thank you. My question is, can we change it July 1? I think that's more the question for Commissioner Driscoll or Ryan than it is for... Well, from a humanist... Let's just ask... Well, if I may, Mayor. From a humanist issue, will they allow us... Do they care whether or not we put in the supplement or not? Humana? No, Humana is... Humana is interested in covering the gross cost of health care. Right. Right. council member martin to answer your question yes we can change the supplement and in fact it can happen the mechanism is going to be a budget amendment so our consultants calculated the cost of service rates council has decided tonight to supplement that so um you could cut additional money above and beyond and that shows up on the pay stub excuse me that just shows up on the pay stub is that right well there's two components of the subsidy there is the diversion of money through a budget amendment and then there's the component the allocation towards mitigating the the cost of service rates right so what i think i'm hearing and this is a little out of my area is the additional money that we're going to allocate on the payroll will be locked in and set. But you could subsidize additional monies because we're self-insurance. If we have exceptionally high claims, then we are going to have to cut additional monies and allocate it into the fund to pay the actual claims. So I think the answer is... We have some flexibility with the supplement. You have flexibility in terms of the allocation into the self-insurance fund. You could put more money into it. But I believe the subsidy line that will go on the payroll, on each of our paychecks to mitigate that cost, I believe we'll be locked in once we do the open enrollment. That's because of Humana? No. That's our election when we do the open enrollment because an individual has to evaluate what's best for their family. So they're going to evaluate the rates, their benefit pool, and the subsidy, and all three things of those are locked in through the open enrollment. At least that's my understanding. So we couldn't double or increase the subsidy as of July 1. What we're trying to figure out here is how permanent is this decision tonight. I think that's one of the issues. Is the 1.9, are we going to be living with that for a whole year, or can we tweak it as we go? Again, you can tweak the 1.9, but the allocation on our paychecks, the additional subsidy, I think that would best be answered by some of the IT folks. So we can get back to you on that specific question. I don't think that's the question. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I think the answer to that is yes. That's what's been done in the past. That we can tweak it. Sure. We're more certain about that than out here, though. So I think they know more than we do maybe. I don't know. Policy. Thanks. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. The response that this motion, that this resolution brings us is, I think, a sincere attempt by Councilman Stinnett and the rest of the caucus. Vice Mayor Gordon had met. When it was discussed on Tuesday, the first thing that came to my mind was whether or not it would be enough. And the second thing that came to my mind, be enough to the benefit of the employees. And the second thing that came to my mind is where would we get the money and what services in government would have to suffer for us to do this. I support the effort, and I almost think that we have to at least support this resolution to continue to work with the administration towards a plan. But the fact that it's a supplement provides me great concern because it is a Band-Aid. We have to do it, but it's not the long-term solution. because six months will pass very quickly. Twelve months will pass very quickly, and we'll be right back where we are. One thing I did notice about the supplement is that it pertains and applies only to health insurance enrollees. It does not apply to the whole benefit pool. I think that we've got to look at the benefit pool, if I can just throw that out there, long term. So those are my concerns about financially and otherwise about this resolution. but we have to do something. I recognize that as well. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Ford. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. To get back to Council Member Farmer's question, I think the original question that is worth discussing, to keep benefits the way they are, you need about $11 million the rest of this year if you want to freeze the Platinum Plan and provide the benefits. So I think we're talking about a couple things. One, even if we lowered every plan up there to zero, there's still going to be hardship on the plans themselves in terms of payroll out of pocket. So I think unless we're going to sit here and talk about changing the plans, which were presented to us last Tuesday, you know, you can change the rates a little bit more and add more subsidy. But as the mayor alluded to, we're in a tough budget right now. We looked at fund balance. We looked at the pension bond for police and fire. We still haven't bonded that yet. We've looked at the Rainy Day Fund and other funds out there. But keep in mind, if we continue this course, we would need $11 million the next six months to keep the platinum plan around. And that's the struggle, to find that $11 million in a budget that was built on a lot of savings, one including health care, already built in there. So it's not easy. It's not something we all had an easy time with the last two days. but in order to find the 1.9 for six months alone, it's going to be difficult. We're already at operating budgets across departments of 2004 levels. I'm not sure how much more you can cut that without severely hampering that department. Debt service, we didn't bond anything this year yet, except the pension bond is the only thing scheduled. So there were zero bonds issued across the board for anything. That debt service remained the same, except for the pension bond, of course. So the last thing you've got to look at is personnel. The normal way we have paid for this difference at the end of the year has been from vacancy credits. And what are those? That's when you budget for positions that were never filled. That's how this has happened over the last several years. We've always had that extra minute at the end of the year. Well, beginning this budget year, and wisely so, all vacant positions were cut out of the budget. So that extra will not be there at the end of this year. And that's the problem. We can't count on that again. And that's how tight it is. You know, I'm sure there will be a few that we have in field along the way, but that $11 million won't be there this year like it was last year. And that's our dilemma tonight. What services do we cut? So if you don't want to cut operating, you can't cut debt service because we've issued bonds unless Mr. Barrow can refinance them all for us and find another million. Our last but not least is personnel. And that's just talking very frankly. So what do you do there? And that's what's left up to the mayor and this council to make that decision. So any other dollars you put in towards this, and I'd love to find the $11 million now and be done with this and move on. I don't think I wouldn't. But frankly speaking, it's not there. And unless we're going to seriously go back to the drawing board and change plan benefits, that's the big issue, I think. I mean, there's three plans on here that are below last year's cost for a lot of categories in terms of out-of-pocket. But then once you get into the benefits, it's where cost is shared. And that's some of the fear, and that's some of the areas we're going to have to work on. I mentioned earlier that you can't buy the platinum plan I think the lady who spoke referenced it You can't buy that plan anymore in the public sector Period And Briggs, if you tell me wrong, please do now You and I would sell it if we could sell that plan There are no zero-deductible plans left in this city To purchase through Anthem, Humana, United Or I would be selling it today if I could Because people would like to have that plan Believe me And you're not going to get it for $700 a family It's unheard of So, I mean, these are tough decisions, so I just want to give you that kind of framework on the budget and how we thought through it today. So you've got four main categories, the personnel, operating, death service, and obviously grants and transfers. I mean, maybe we can find a grant, but we're under critical timing on this. So I hope that sheds a little bit more light on some of the seriousness of the situation. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Stenet. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Mayor. just a couple of comments the work that the committee did was not easy you've already heard enough about how tight the budget is the question of where that money is going to come from is still up in the air and so I would agree with with Councilmember Ford this is a band-aid this is a stopgap this is not what anybody wants to do what the provision will make possible is for someone who was in the Platinum Plan, myself, to move to PPOC and not have any increase in my deductibles on my monthly paycheck. So I can move with no difference in that aspect. That's what this money makes possible. But I will be more liable for my own health expenses going forward. The PPOC does not provide the kind of benefits that the Platinum Plan provided. But the intention was to make it possible for employees at whatever level, single or with a wife or spouse or family, to move to a plan that would not increase your cost, what comes out of your paycheck every month. That's what this does. It's not enough because we all will still be more liable for other health care costs going forward. But I believe it's the best we can do at the moment, and that when we get to the new budget cycle, we need to look at the benefits pool, we need to look at the entire budget, and we need to see if we can find a more equitable way to answer the question of how we provide services to our community and provide fairness to our employees. So I will be, since I made the motion, of course, I'll be supporting it. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilman Kaye. Councilman Myers? Thank you, Mayor. I guess I don't want to rehash everything, but I guess there's one question that we really haven't asked, and that's how we got where we are today. Councilman of the Senate talked about, unless we want to redesign the plans. And I know that in our conversations the other day, Councilman of the Senate, you and I talked about the fact that we have 200 less employees than we had last year. We have reinsurance now, so those two $100 million claims won't be in place at least this year. So when these rates were based, as our consultant said, on claims history, I guess I would like to know from our consultant, what was the process used to determine the rates? If we didn't do anything, didn't do any planning, put any of these new initiatives forth, you would have been basically taking the previous 12 months claim and assumed an inflationary trend 8%, 9%, 10%, and you would have ended up with your new projected claims cost. If you take your current health care spending of $33 million and you put them on an 8% trend line, that comes out to approximately $35 million. So if we hadn't done any planning, all these other things that we're going to do, we wouldn't be talking about building premium equivalents to fund $33 million. We'd be building premium equivalents to fund $35 million. But what we have done is we got better deal strength on prescription drugs. We got cost advantages with the wellness center. We purchased reinsurance so that if we have any high outlier claims, the city is protected against them. So all those steps that we took, took that $35 million back to $33 million. And we built premium equivalents to fund towards the $33 million. Did that answer your question? Pretty much. So the next step of that was, did we not have to negotiate with Humana for what the rates would be? What we evaluated Humana and the rest of the market for that matter, we evaluated them on the basis of their deal strength. We're not buying insurance from Humana. Right, because we're self-insured. We're self-insured. What the value proposition that Humana provides us, and I'll just make generalization here, a health care provider will bill a $100 charge, retail health care claim. Humana has a contract with them to reprice that claim and get, on average, a 50% discount off billed retail charges. So out of a $100 gross claim, it's repriced down to $50, and the LFUCG plan pays that $50 in accordance with the benefit structure, and the $50 that they wanted to charge is thrown away. Your employees, and I'll just take that one step further, you're actually consuming gross health care costs somewhere around $60 million. But due to the fact, when they bill it on a retail basis, here's your bill, but because Humana comes in and reprices the claim and gets a discount off billed retail charges, that's their value proposition. So that's what we had to negotiate. Right. We analyze that with a lot of different carriers. There might be some carriers where if we move to them, they might not be getting a 50% discount off billed retail charges. Maybe they might be getting 45%. Well, that would create a spike up. So what we wanted to do, since we're not buying insurance per se, we're buying who has the best deal strength and a broad panel of health care providers, That's the analysis that you do in a self-funded plan. In addition to the reinsurance, admin charges, negotiating that, which is really only about 5% of your plan. 95% of your plan cost is built on just gross retail claims repriced and paid in accordance with the benefits. So the benefits, the premiums that we find us looking at today, Is that the original that you came back with from Humana? Or did you go back and say? Working with Humana's underwriter and taking into consideration reinsurance, wellness center, additional deal strength on the pharmacy, we think actuarially, predicting forward, that the claims would not be $35 million, but they're going to be $33 million. And so we're not real aggressive with the $33 million, nor are we real conservative with that $33 million. But we think that if we deploy all the things that we talked about and everybody enrolls like they would, we should spend about $33 million, plus or minus the margin of error. I think Ryan might have even alluded to that. But when we have a million-dollar claim in the coming year, we're going to pay up to $250,000, and then the insurance company is going to pay. That is the only insurance we're purchasing is for high outlier claims that are unpredictable, of which you don't want to be exposed to. So would it have been possible to negotiate Humana down to believing that our claims are going to be $28 million? I think that the premiums that we've set are correct. They're based on solid actuarial renewal projection data and principles. And I would not modify, consider modifying, based on some other hypothesis, that that $33 million is going to diminish or go up. I think that you're funding to the correct number, and you would be funding to $35 million had we not done all the things that we've already done. I understand that. So what would happen if we had negotiated to $28 million? There's no negotiations. All we're doing is your employees are consuming health care. They're going to have so many heart attacks, so many cancers, so many offices, so many labs, so many prescription drugs, and the fact that you have 6,400 members in your population means your data is creditable. It is a great predictor of what the future is going to be. And so we're taking that creditable data, you know, thinking of the cost-saving things that we put in place and predicting what it's going to be going forward. So there's no negotiating down unless we say to employees, you know, don't quit using the doctor as much, you know, that type of thing. That's the only price points that you get. Okay. So when you say we set rates, you basically mean you guys looking at that data set the rate? We have a, with Humana underwriting, so we say what is going to be the future cost in 2012? If history repeats itself, we take into account our cost-saving issues. We're going to consume $33 million of health care based on having 2,559 employees. And then what we do is we say, let's take that $33 million and turn it into premium equivalents. So the premium equivalents you see are based on the number of people enrolled with single, employee spouse, employee child, and family. And if we take the headcount of your employees and multiply them times those premiums that you all have been looking at, it will fund $33 million of liability. so the premiums we build are a function of what the gross liability is and then we re-express those or redistribute those in the form of premium equivalents so if we want cheaper premiums next year we've got to get our claims down bottom line that's the only way to do it exactly or reducing risk factors we talked about wellness all that type of thing Okay. So then that's our goal this year is to get the wellness program off and running. There's a lot of strategies once we get through this discussion. Okay. A lot of great things we can do. Thank you. But this is difficult now. A lot of good things we can do. Remember, Briggs. I said, but this is difficult now. Not hyperbole. Nobody wants to hear about things being fantastic and great right now. It's not great right now. They're still very anxious. It's difficult right now once we get through this. Right. We can say that Marathon has an outstanding record. That the doctor who led the Central Baptist team in proposing for this project, for the Wellness Center to manage it, said that we made the right decision by hiring Marathon. They are the best in the country. and he says they can learn from them. That's a little bit of reassurance, but I ain't going to say everything's great and rosy at all. I'm not saying that either. I know you're not. I'm just cautioning. Okay. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you. I just briefly want to go back to the issue of the supplement so that I understand for sure. we will Humana will set our rates and our health care plans will be set in stone, correct? The rates that we've set will fund to the $33 million and they'll be set in stone and they'll be our metric for budgeting purposes quarterly reporting. We'll be looking at those premiums they'll be the basis for our quarterly reporting. Okay, so this might be a question for budgeting. So if the new budget year starts, and going back to the discussion of whether we can adjust our supplement, will the supplement make any difference at all in the premium that our employees pay? It will. We adjust it. The supplement reduces the net cost the employees pay. So we can adjust the premium halfway through the year. I assume that you all can adjust the supplement, and if you did, you could impact the net cost that the employees pay for health insurance. So, in other words, when our budget folks and our LFUCG folks bring us back these quarterly evaluations, we can see whether, in fact, the money that we're putting in and they're putting in is covering costs. and if it's going above or below, we can use our supplement and adjust it. Ryan, stay. Oh. I'm sorry. The Vice Mayor wanted Ryan to stay up here. No, I just am trying to be sure that I understand that that can be adjusted, that premium that our employees pay could be adjusted next fiscal year if we adjust the supplement. Actually, we had some talented people that were watching, and they were able to give me some clarification to my comments before, we have that latitude. We've got to keep in mind, though, to execute that, we would have to do a new open enrollment. So all the things that go along with that, the cost, the manpower, vetting it on an individual basis, we would have to do a new open enrollment to make modifications to those numbers. Well, what I'm thinking is if, in fact, our health care costs go down, it might be very reasonable that our supplement could change or be the same and the premium that the employee pays would go down, could go down. Yes, that's reasonable, and it would be a policy decision at that point. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak? To the motion. All right. If not, then we're ready for a roll call vote. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mr. Beard. Mr. Blues. Yes. Ms. Crosby. Mr. Ellinger. Yes. Mr. Farmer. Yes, ma'am. Mr. Ford. Yes. Ms. Gorton. Aye. Ms. Henson. Yes. Mr. Kay. Yes. Mr. Lane. Yes. Ms. Lawless? Yes. Mr. Martin? Yes. Mr. McCord? Yes. Mr. Myers? Yes. And Mr. Stinnett? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. The vote reflects passage on the motion. All right. We can now resume the regular agenda of the Council meeting. Thank you all. Thanks to those in the audience who have joined us tonight. We are now at the second reading, Roman numeral V, the second reading of ordinances. Madam Clerk, would you please give us the second reading of ordinances? Ordinance No. 1, an ordinance admitting certain of the budgets of the Lexington-Fayette-Irban County Government to reflect current requirements for municipal expenditures in appropriating and reappropriating funds, Schedule No. 40. No. 2, an ordinance redistricting the districts of the members of the Lexington-Fayette-Irban County Council. And No. 3, an ordinance admitting Section 22-52 of the Code of Ordinances abolishing one position of Citizens Advocate, Grade 118E, and creating one position of Citizens Advocate part-time, Grade 115E, in the Office of the Citizens Advocate. There's a motion to approve and a second. Is there any discussion? Vice Mayor Gordon. Before we pass the redistricting, which I think we will, I want to thank all of the citizens who worked really hard on this. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Is there any further discussion? Did we get a motion? Yeah, we did. In a second, okay. Thank you, thank you. All right, Madam Clerk, would you call the roll, please? Thank you. You did? No. There's a motion on the floor, and so we can just do the roll call? Yes, take the roll. I'm sorry. Sir. Please take the roll. Yes, sir. Mr. Blues? Yes. Ms. Crosby? Yes. Mr. Ellinger? Yes. Mr. Farmer? Yes, ma'am. Mr. Ford? Yes on one and two. No on number three. I'll denote that in the minutes. Ms. Gorton? Aye. Ms. Henson? Yes. Mr. Kay? Yes. Mr. Lane? Yes. Ms. Lawless? Yes. Mr. Martin? Yes. Mr. McCord? Is absent. Okay. Mr. Myers? Yes. And Mr. Stinnett is absent. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The vote reflects passage of the ordinances. All right. Next on our agenda is the first reading for ordinances. When you're ready, Madam Clerk? Ordinance number four, an ordinance changing the zone from a single-family residential R1D zone to a planned neighborhood residential R3 zone for 5.0 net, 5.74 gross acres, with a conditional use permit for property located at 564 Asbury Lane, a portion of, subject to certain use restrictions imposed as conditions of granting the zone change, DMK Development Group, LLC. Number 5, an ordinance amending Article 17-7E6 of the zoning ordinance to allow a third wall-mounted identification or business sign for buildings with two street frontages within a professional office project in the professional office P1 zone. Number 6, an ordinance amending subsection 7... Excuse me, Susan. We've lost our quorum. We've got nine. We need ten, right? I believe it's the vegetable lasagna in the break room that has taken people away. We just need one. Wait a minute, Councilman Farmer. We need one. Councilman Farmer, don't run away. Councilmember Farmer, are you running away, or are you just going to find somebody? Oh, thank you. Thank you. Okay, okay, okay. Now listen, I'm just trying to make sure. Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo I'm going to go. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Hello, everybody. Let's come back. We'll be simple. Richard, let Bill Farmer go. Please. Free farmer. Free farmer. Free farmer. Oh, Richard will never let you go, Bill. Hey, listen, you were there with Richard Maloney. He'll never let you go. I know. All right, we got it? Okay. Okay. All right. we're coming back to order madame clerk working can you go back to where we were there can you tell us where we're number six i have a body richard is Councilman Crosby is taking it up for you, okay? All right. Madam Clerk, please proceed. Ordinance No. 6, an ordinance amending subsection 17-148A of the Code of Ordinances of the Lexington-Fade Urban County Government to limit enforcement to those defects which create a hazard to public safety and to provide for the adoption of enforcement regulations by the Urban County Council and amending subsection 17-152B of the Code to decrease the maximum civil penalty from $1,000 to $500. Number 7, an ordinance amending certain of the budgets of the Lexington Fayette-Arvin County Government to reflect current requirements from municipal expenditures in appropriating and reappropriating funds schedule number 41. Number 8, an ordinance amending section 2-87A of the Code of Ordinances related to the Masterson Station at Park Advisory Board to reduce the number of the Board from 20 to 19. eliminating the members representing Inline Hockey and the Federal Medical Center and replacing them with a member from the Kentucky Radio Control Racing Club. Amending Section 2-87D of the Code of Ordinances relating to the Masterson Station Park Advisory Board to delete the term limits and replace the section with a sentence of any member may be appointed or for additional terms. Number 9, an ordinance granting a waiver to the Richmond Road Landscape Plan, an ordinance number 21383 for 3043 Richmond Road, number 10, an ordinance creating and enacting Chapter 9A of the Code of Ordinances of the Lexington-Fade Urban County Government pertaining to fireworks and more specifically creating the Section 9A-1 of the Code providing for a title, creating Section 9A-2 of the Code defining ancillary, fireworks retailer, consumer fireworks, fireworks permanent, fireworks retailer, and seasonal fireworks retailer, Creating Section 9A3 of the Code prohibiting use or sale except as provided in ordinance and providing additional requirements for use or sale of non-consumer and display fireworks. Creating Section 9A4 of the Code providing for compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws, providing for use between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. only except on December 31, July 3, and July 4, or officially recognized Independence Day, when use allowed until 12 a.m. prohibiting possession or use by persons under the age of 18 years, prohibiting use within 200 feet of any structure, motor vehicle, or any other person, or during a ban on burning, providing for compliance with KRS 227.752 storage notification, and providing for responsibility for resultant trash and debris, creating Section 9A5 of the Code, providing for retail fireworks permit and application process, including information on applicant and site, proof of other compliances and approvals and insurance coverage, and payment of permit fees per location of $500 for seasonal fireworks retailer or renewal of permanent fireworks retailer and $2,500 for initial permanent fireworks retailer creating Section 9A6 and 9A8 of the Code, providing for restrictions on permittees and or retailers including display of permit, no sales to or by those under the age of 18 years, and sales between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. only, creating Section 9A7 of the Code providing for suspension or revocation of permits, and creating Section 9A9 of the Code providing for penalties for violations not to exceed $1,000, 30 days imprisonment, or both with a minimum fine of $500 for violations not related to Sections 9A4A through E or G, and a minimum fine for all other violations of $100 for first offense, $200 for second offense within 12 months, and $500 for a third or greater offense within 12 months, all effective on January 1, 2012. And number 11, and ordinance amending sections 4-12.3E, 4-21D, and 4-21.1 of the Code of Ordinances relating to the spay and neuter funding grant program to permit an agency designated by the Department of Public Safety to operate and administer the program and to retain a portion of license and redemption fees for funding the program. That's it. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Are there any motions? I think, Dr. Blues, have you got a motion? Somebody tell me you do. Thank you, Mayor. I can move to suspend the rules in order to give second reading to ordinances. on number nine so that the project can go forward that this waiver was contingent on, and also on number eight so that the Park Advisory Board can move forward with the new membership profit. Second. Motion by Council Member Blue, second by Council Member Myers. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, okay, we can vote. All in favor? Oh, oh, oh. I'm sorry, I didn't understand why we needed to get a second reading. Can you repeat why we need to get a second reading on both of these, since we have a meeting next week? Just number nine, right? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Okay, never mind. I'm sorry, I misunderstood which number you said. No, number 9 and number 8. I had asked for it. 8 and 9? Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry, I misunderstood which one you had said. I'm fine. Okay. All right. Any further discussion? All right. If not, then we can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion passes. All right. Ordinance number 8 for second reading. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Ordinance No. 8, an ordinance amending Section 2-87A of the Code of Ordinances related to the Masterson Station Park Advisory Board to reduce the number of the board from 20 to 19, eliminating the members representing inline hockey in the Federal Medical Center and replacing them with a member from the Kentucky Radio Control Racing Club, amending Section 2-87D of the Code of Ordinances relating to the Masterson Station Park Advisory Board to delete the term limits and replace the section within the sentence. Any member may be reappointed for additional terms. and number nine, an ordinance granting a waiver to the Richmond Road Landscape Plan, Ordinance Number 21383 for 3043 Richmond Road. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Is there a motion to approve? Move approval. Second. Motion by Vice Mayor Gordon, seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none, Madam Clerk, would you call the roll, please? Most happy to. Mr. Blues? Yes. Ms. Crosby? That's okay, yes. Mr. Ellinger? Yes. Mr. Farmer? Yes, ma'am. Mr. Ford? Yes. Ms. Gorton? Aye. Ms. Henson? Yes. Mr. Kay? Yes. Mr. Lane? Yes. Ms. Lawless? Yes. Mr. Martin? Yes. Mr. McCord? is absent, sorry. Mr. Myers? Yes. And Mr. Stinnett? Thank you. All right. Vote reflects passage. And we can move on as soon as, Madam Clerk, as soon as you're ready to resolutions for second read. Resolution number one, a resolution accepting the bid of Detroit Salt Company establishing a price contract for treated rock salt for the Division of Streets and Roads. Number two, a resolution accepting the bid of Old Castle Precast Incorporated establishing a price contract for concrete items for the Division of Water Quality. Number three, a resolution ratifying the probationary civil service appointment of Tamara McMullen, Program Coordinator, Grade 109N, 15.605 hourly, in the Division of Family Services, effective October 24, 2011. Number four, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute an agreement with the Southland Association, $100, LexArts, $1,900, Bluegrass Greenworks, Inc., $300, Police Activity League, $575 for the office of the urban county council at a cost not to exceed the sums stated. Number five, a resolution authorizing and directing the mayor on behalf of the Irvin County Government to accept a grant from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, which grant funds are in the amount of $52,000 federal funds, are for the development of the old Frankfurt Pike Corridor Management Plan, the acceptance of which obligates the Irvin County Government for the expenditure of $13,000 as a local match to be provided by the Lexington-Frankfurt Scenic Corridor, Incorporated, authorizing the mayor to transfer and encumbered funds within the grant budget and directing the mayor on behalf of the Irvin County Government to execute an agreement with Lexington-Frankfurt Scenic Corridor, Inc. for management of the project at a cost not to exceed $52,000. Number six, a resolution authorizing and directing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute an agreement with the Fayette County Commonwealth Attorney's Office for a fast-track prosecutor for the street sales drug enforcement project at a cost not to exceed $56,200. Number seven, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute an agreement with information station specialists, incorporated a sole source provided for an AM alert station at a cost not to exceed $44,975. Number eight, a resolution authorizing and directing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to accept a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women, which grant funds are in the amount of $400,000 federal funds from the grants to encourage arrest policies and enforcement of protection orders program and are for continuation of a project designed to hold offenders of domestic violence accountable for their actions through investigation, arrest, and prosecution, the acceptance of which does not obligate the urban county government for the expenditure of funds, authorizing the mayor to transfer unencumbered funds within the grant budget, and authorizing and directing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute sub-recipient agreements with Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program, $52,000, Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center, $8,000. Legal Aid of the Bluegrass, $5,000. Fayette County Sheriff's Office, $8,000. Fayette County Commonwealth Attorney's Office, $42,000. And American Probation and Parole Association, $5,000 for services for the project. Number nine, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the Irvin County Government to execute a release of easement, releasing a streetlight easement on property located at 2387 Merluna Drive. Number 10, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute a quit-claim deed and release of easement, releasing a utility easement on a property located at 2010 Harrodsburg Road. Number 11, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute a purchase of service agreement with Bluegrass State Games Incorporated for operation of the Bluegrass State Games at a cost not to exceed $47,250. Number 12, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute a concession donation agreement with Fayette County Cooperative Extension District Board for acceptance of an agricultural building and concession agreement. Number 13, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the Urban County Government to execute a facility usage contract with Fayette County Board of Education for Kitty Capers at Norsworthy Auditorium at a cost not to exceed $1,299. And number 14, a resolution appointing an ad hoc citizens committee to recommend candidates for the position of citizens advocate. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I'll ask for a motion to approve. Council Member Ellinger? Second. Motion by Council Member Ellinger. Second by vigorous second by Vice Mayor Gordon. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none, Madam Clerk, can you call the roll, please? Mr. Blues Yes Ms. Cosby Yes Mr. Ellinger Yes Mr. Farmer Yes, ma'am Mr. Ford Yes Ms. Gorton Aye Ms. Henson Yes Mr. Kay Yes Mr. Lane Yes Ms. Lawless Yes Mr. Martin Yes Mr. Myers Yes And Mr. Stenet Yes, ma'am Thank you Okay Vote reflects passage of the resolutions. Okay. Madam Clerk, when you're ready for the first reading on resolutions, go right ahead. Number 15, a resolution accepting the bid of S&S Truck Tire Center establishing a price contract for truck tire retreading for the Division of Facilities and Fleet Management. Number 16, a resolution accepting the bid of MMI of Kentucky in the amount of $78,424.82 for portable heating system for municipal recycling facility for the Division of Waste Management. Number 17, a resolution approving and adopting regulations for the Division of Code Enforcement for sidewalk violations, replacement, and repair pursuant to Section 17-148 of the Code of Ordinances of the Lexington-Faylor Urban County Government. Number 18, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the Urban County Government to execute a clinical education agreement with the University of Kentucky's College of Nursing to provide an intern to perform services for the Urban County Council Office and authorizing payment of the site. Excuse me, Madam Clerk. Council Member Lawless. Would this be a time I could ask a question about number 18? Sure. This says a U.K. nursing student for the Urban County Council Office. with a stipend of $500. Does anybody know? Council Member Blues has raised his hand. I do not know the details on this, but I know that this is an internship that Council Member Myers has arranged and worked out within his office. And I assume that if he has an internship program, then he has something for the intern to do. But more than, I don't know the details of that. I just wondered, I mean, I think we probably need a nurse now in the council office, other than Vice Mayor Gorton. or in addition to, I just wondered where the funds were coming, where the $500 funds were coming from and why we were having a nurse. So I'm sorry. Thank you. Well, I don't know if we've got any answer beyond what. Well, this is first reading, so I will ask Council Member Myers. Okay. All right. Then, Madam Clerk, you may proceed. We'll get it on the next round. Yes, sir. Number 18 for first reading. A resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the Urban County Government to execute a clinical education agreement with the University of Kentucky's College of Nursing to provide an intern to perform services for the Urban County Council Office, an authorizing payment of a stipend to the intern in an amount not to exceed $500 upon successful completion of the program. Number 19, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the Urban County Government to execute a memorandum of agreement with Federal Emergency Management Agency Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Program Management Office for management and utilization of various warning systems. Number 20, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the Urban County Government to execute a customer services agreement with Windstream Communications, which is attached here to and incorporated herein by reference, to provide ISDN dial tone service to the Division of Emergency Management 9-1-1 to 29 East 3rd Street at an annual cost not to exceed $6,000 plus any additional long-distance charges. 21. A resolution change in the street names and property address numbers of 1, Imperial Court, to 779, Newtown Pike, of 1765 Hatter Lane to 1781, Sharky Way, and of 1839, St. Ives Circle, to 3849 Hidden Pond Road. Change in the property address numbers of 336 and 372 Corral Street to 368 and 374 Corral Street of 231 Elm Tree Lane to 217 Elm Tree Lane of 770 Fox Industrial Road to 747 Fox Industrial Road of 109 through 111 Church Street to 111 Church Street and of 200 and 206 Burley Avenue to 208 and 202 Burley Avenue. And change in the street name of 786, 790, 794 and 798 Glendover Road to 786, 790, 794, and 798 Glendover Court, all effective 30 days from passage. Number 22, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the Urban County Government to execute an amendment to the management agreement with Meridian Management for courthouse facilities maintenance at a cost not to exceed $36,000. Number 23, a resolution authorizing and directing the mayor on behalf of the Urban County Government to execute a certificate of consideration and any other documents necessary to accept a deed for the property located at 416 Carlisle Avenue for the Meadows-Northland Arlington Public Improvements Project and authorizing payment in the amount of $84,000 plus usual and appropriate closing costs. 24. A resolution ratifying the probationary civil service appointment of Beth Florence, accountant, grade 113E, 165640 biweekly in the Division of Accounting, effective upon passage of counsel, approving the probationary sworn appointments of Gary Harris, Fire Lieutenant, Grade 315EN, 17.786 hourly. Carrie Bowling, Fire Captain, Grade 316EN, 23.039 hourly. Andrew Aro, Fire Major, Grade 318E, 3,52179 biweekly. And the Division of Fire and Emergency Services effect September 29, 2011. Twenty-five, a resolution authorizing the Mayor on behalf of the Irvin County Government to execute engineering services agreement with EA Partners, PLC, Integrated Engineering, PLLC, Nesbitt Engineering Incorporated, Palmer Engineering, CDP Engineers Incorporated, HDR Engineers, GRW Engineers Incorporated, and Tetra Tech Incorporated for stormwater and sanitary sewer projects for the Division of Water Quality. 26. A resolution authorizing and direct to the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute agreements with Rabbit Run Stonewall Neighborhood Association, $600. Black Church Coalition of the Bluegrass, $1,225. Copperfield Neighborhood Association, $600. ACT Ministries, $450. for the Office of the Urban County Council at a cost not to exceed the sums stated. Twenty-seven, a resolution authorizing and directing the Division of Traffic Engineering pursuant to Code of Ordinances Section 1886 to install multiway stop controls at the intersection of Belafonte Drive and East Lowry Lane. Twenty-nine, a resolution authorizing the Mayor on behalf of the Urban County Government to execute a contract with the Lamar Companies for the production and installation of Smart 911 billboard advertisements for the Division of Emergency Management 911 at a cost not to exceed $5,650. Number 30, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute an advertising space rental contract and any other necessary documents with advertising vehicles for Smart 911 advertisements to be placed on Lex Trine buses for the Division of Emergency Management 911 at a cost not to exceed $6,535. 31. A resolution accepting the bid of MX Energy and establishing a fixed price contract for natural gas purchase SVGTS contingent upon a price not to exceed 6.06 per MCF for the Division of Environmental Policy. 32. A resolution accepting the response of J. Stowe and Company, LLC, to request for proposal number 5-2011 to perform the auditing of utility franchises for an amount not to exceed $45,760 and authorizing the mayor on behalf of the Urban County Government to execute a professional services agreement with J. Stowe & Company, LLC, for the performance of such services. 33. A resolution authorizing the Department of Environmental Quality and Public Works on behalf of the Urban County Government to renew the contract with Bluegrass Pride for the Environmental Public Education Program for a period of one year at no additional cost to the Irvin County Government. Number 34, a resolution authorizing and directing the mayor on behalf of the Irvin County Government to execute a lease agreement with Nursing Home Ombudsman Agency for Space and the Senior Citizens Center for 1538 Nicholasville Road. Number 35, a resolution authorizing and directing the mayor on behalf of the Irvin County Government to execute an auction listing contract with Schrader and Robertson Commercial Auctioneers, LLC, for disposal of surplus properties that have been unsuccessfully advertised for bid at 10% of the gross selling price. Number 36, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the Lexington-Fade, Urban County Government, and its Division of Historic Preservation to concur with the memorandum of agreement among the Kentucky Finance and Administration Cabinet, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, Bluegrass Community and Technical College, and the Kentucky State Historic Preservation Office regarding the development of a Bluegrass Community and Technical College, Newtown Pike Campus in Lexington Fayette County, Kentucky, and No. 37, a resolution approving an amendment to the addendum to the purchase of service agreement with Chrysalis House to permit Chrysalis House to use the remainder of funds provided in the agreement for FY2012 for the treatment of women with substance abuse issues and mental health disorders. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Are there any motions for wall cons? Council Member Blues? No, not a wall con. Any motions for suspensions? Yes, I move to suspend the rules in order to give second reading to number 18 at the request of Council Member Myers, who wants to get these documents to UK and to finalize the terms of the internship. So moved. Motion and a second for number 17? 18. 18. All right. Any others? Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. I move that we suspend the rules to give second reading to number 23 so that the project can proceed on. Thanks. Which one? 23. 23? Yes, sir. Is there a second to that? Second. Motion by Council Member Ford, second by Council Member Ellinger. Okay. Anybody else? Richard. Keith. Yes, sir. Mr. Horne. If it's acceptable for number 31, MX Energy has to close that bid tomorrow, or this will be no good to us or the Fayette County Public Schools. Move approval. Second. Oh, good. Motion by Vice Mayor Gordon, seconded by Council Member Ellinger for suspension on 31. Mr. Maloney. I'd like to have to suspend the rules. On number 32, we are asking to go on with the utility franchise audit. Please. Second. Motion by Council Member Ellinger. Second by Vice Mayor Gordon. All right. On number 32. Okay. Is that it? Going once? Okay. All right. We have motions and seconds on all. 18, 23, 31, and 32. Is there any discussion on any of them? Nope. All right. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? We got a vote on this. We need ten votes. We need ten votes. Ten votes. Voice vote. Oh, oh, oh. Sorry about that. It's okay. We can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Now. I'll give them second reading. Thank you, ma'am. Number 18, once I find it. Resolution number 18, a resolution authorizing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute a clinical education agreement with the University of Kentucky's College of Nursing to provide an intern to perform services for the urban county council office and authorizing payment of a stipend to the intern and an amount not to exceed $500 upon successful completion of the program. Number 23, a resolution authorizing and directing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to execute a certificate of consideration and any other documents necessary to accept a deed for the property located at 416 Carlisle Avenue for the Meadows-Northland Arlington Public Improvements Project and an authorizing payment in the amount of $84,000 plus usual and appropriate closing costs. Number 31, a resolution accepting the bid of MX Energy and establishing a fixed-price contract for natural gas purchase, SVGTS, contingent upon a price contract not to exceed $6.06 per MCF for the Division of Environmental Policy. And number 32, a resolution accepting the response of J. Stowe & Company, LLC, to request for Proposal No. 5-2011 to perform the auditing of utility franchises for an amount not to exceed $45,760, and authorizing the mayor on behalf of the Urban County Government to execute a professional services agreement with J. Stowe & Company, LLC, for the performance of such services. Thank you. Move approval. Motion to approve by Vice Mayor Vorton, seconded by Council Member Kaye. Is there any discussion? All righty. Okay. Then, Madam Clerk, you may call the roll. Yes, sir. Mr. Blues? Yes. Ms. Crosby? Yes. Mr. Ellinger? Yes. Mr. Farmer? Yes, ma'am. Mr. Ford? Yes. Ms. Gorton? Aye. Ms. Henson? Yes. Mr. Kay? Yes. Mr. Lane? Yes. Ms. Lawless? Yes. Mr. Martin? Yes. Mr. Myers? Is out of the room. Mr. Stennett? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. That's it. All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The vote reflects passage. Okay. All right. The Roman numeral next item on our agenda, communications from the mayor for information only unless there's comments. All right. Next on the agenda are announcements. And Commander Weathers is here. Commander Weathers is here for a police disciplinary action. Good evening, Mayor, Council. I'm here in reference to a formal complaint made against Officer Anthony Godooly, alleging him to be in violation of General Order 73-2H, Operational Rules, Section 1.13, Operational Vehicles. Chief Bassett has recommended discipline of a written reprimand and suspension of home fleet privileges for 80 hours for the violation of the general order. Officer Gadouli has accepted the recommended discipline, and Officer Gadouli has signed the agreement of conformity and release. Second. Motion by Councilmember Ellinger, second by Councilmember Crosby. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none, we can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Commander. Are there any next on our agenda announcements? Any announcements by Council Members? Council Member Lawless. I promise to make it brief. I want to announce, remind everybody about the Thriller Parade on October 30th. And right before that, the Change for Art meter program, where they have taken and retooled old meters and made art projects, artist John Darko reimagines the final meter in 2011 for Change for Art. at 6 p.m. at the Kentucky Theater for the Thriller Parade, and everybody is invited to come. It's a really neat project. So thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. I was talking to Vice Mayor Gordon. It was a motion by Council Member Lane to adjourn and a second by Council Member Martin. Don't you need to do public comment? Oh, my goodness. Slow down. Mr. McCarthy, please forgive me. Bernard, please forgive me, sir. Your Honor and members of the Council, where I've seen articles about talk of replacing Rep Arena, I think this would be a terrible mistake. the thing I most want to see happen to that place is for this government to retire the debts that it owes on that complex and not run up any new debts and to that effect I think you need to hold the university to the terms of the lease agreement until it runs out, whatever year that is even if you have to haul them into court to do it I think it would be a mistake even for them to spend their money to build a completely new building and result in the current Civic Center being abandoned. But if they're stupid enough to do that, just make sure that you don't hand over any city money or city property to enable them to do it. And in the terrible event that our Civic Center ever does get torn down, I would like to suggest that you should connect Manchester Street with Vine Street. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McCarthy. All right, now I'll take a motion to adjourn. Second. Motion to approve by Mr. Stenet, second by Vice Mayor Gordon. All in favor of adjourning approval. No, thank you. We are adjourned. you