I will call the meeting of the Stevenson County Finance Committee to order circa Friday, February 13th and I will ask to see if anybody else wants to break, so let me, I'll take it. Lord Almighty, thank you for offering us the opportunity to serve the people of this county on this Finance Committee. and the Finance Committee, I pray you help us get through the things we need to get through, understand the things we need to understand, to communicate and collaborate as we need to on things and do the best we can for the folks of this county and how we spend their money. So thank you and praise you. Jesus, Sam. All right, I have an entertaining motion to approve the agenda for today. Motion to approve. I have a motion. And a second. That's it. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Meeting minutes for January 12, 2026 meeting. I have a motion to approve. Second. And a second. Any discussion? Any. Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. There's a little claims, I had claims in the amount of, we got to, I'm going to just roll these together. We've got claims for Zoning. Well, for the Finance Committee is $554,3477 in cash requirements, $489,341.48 in manuals, for a total of $1,043,676.25. I suppose we should separate. Okay. So what's your plan here? Sold. I have a motion to approve. Second. Any discussion on claims? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Thanks for Committee 10 or the Zoning Committee, an amount of $1,764.66. I have a motion to approve and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Opposed? Motion to pay that fee. So I have public comments. Seeing none. The first committee, Madam McWright, number four. Good morning, happy Valentine's Day to my favorite clients. My clients are like my children. I have no favorites for all, just kidding, just kidding. Good morning, I am here to talk about the Property Casualty Work Comp and Group Health. Is you going to update on a few things? I assume you have the presentation in front of you that I said earlier. So I will flip through that. I'm going to go through the papers real quick, talk about claims and the public employees to sit down with the F on the KC side. Again, we ensure a lot of stuff as you know, buildings, contents, and equipment. There are property appraisals going on right now. every so often, I think three, four years, the carrier sends out property appraisals to make sure that the replacement costs are up to date and adequate for coverages. Generally speaking, we do see that those appraisals results in somewhat significant increases in replacement costs for property managers. So be aware, once we get that out, I will let you guys know what that is. As you know, in the world today, the replacement costs have increased in terms of inflation and labor and materials. So that will probably be reflected in these places. Any questions on that? Real quick, I go through this every time. I'm going to skip through this pretty quickly and just highlight one thing. So we have liability coverages, public officials, general liability, employment practices, and law enforcement liability. We do have a $10 million umbrella over our liability coverages. Work comp, we have unlimited coverage, as you know. I highlighted that $50,000 deductible on the work comp for a reason. I will get to that in a moment. We also cover a whole bunch of audits, over 100 units. Any questions at the end of your chat? Best Pages. This is just kind of a regurgitation of the last time we met. You can see the premium history there. We have gone down significantly in the last several years, which is good news that is the work we've done in terms of reducing work costs, claims, the work that ICRT does, Loss Control Rep. Mark Bell does a great job with all of the department heads to remind them of safety. So we're really proud of that. Nothing really of note there. Down below are the insured values. You can see those have kind of creeped up for inflation over the years. With this property appraisal, I suspect those numbers will increase more than inflation. Any questions? You can skip this PNC work off claims ICRMT went through an update on their reporting and claims tracking system, we were unable to pull updated claims so you can ignore that. I do know of property claim out of the health department that's pretty small, five, six, $7,000 and there might be a small work off from out there since the last time we talked but nothing other than that, or nothing significant to report in that regard. Next page, PETA, the Public Employee Disability Act. I wanted to make you guys aware that there is a law or an act or a statute in the state of Illinois that requires employers of police officers, law enforcement officers, firefighters that get hurt in the job for work comp. Typically work coverage is when a claim comes through, they pay for all medical and then lost time is paid at 66% of their salary. That is how it generally works. With the exception of firefighters and law enforcement, there's an Illinois state statute that says you have to pay them 100% while they're off getting better. So just a heads up there, We had one claim that that happened with. So if you go to the next page, ICRMT offers additional coverage on the work comp to cover the remaining 33.3% of payroll in the event someone is off due to an additional 9,000 in premium. However, we have a $50,000 deductible on the work comp. So I would not recommend we add this endorsement to the grant, but I wanted to talk to you about it and let you know and make you aware of it. Any questions on that? Please. So if we want to revisit that at renewal, we can. We'll certainly get an updated goal for that, but as long as we keep the $50,000 in duck little workshop plans, if there's really no need for this additional public sheet. Moving on to benefits. Couple of things that are going on in the benefits world. We use a system called Ease for online open enrollment. This system or this company got sought out by employee navigator two years ago. There has been a migration that has gone super slow over the last couple of years. they keep pushing out the migration date or the drop dead date when EASE is turning off and Employee Navigator is turning on. This will eventually affect the county where we have to migrate everything on EASE, our online open enrollment platform to Employee Navigator. I don't know when that's going to be. Might be the end of this year, might be into 2028 or 2027 into 2028. Don't know the additional costs or the implementation timeline. Cost will be minor. Right now, the E-system is free to the county. Employee Navigator, I have heard, has some nominal costs, 100 a month, $50 a month, something like that, that will keep the board updated on that one thing. Just a heads up, Navigator. The Employee Navigator system is more robust, lots of bells and whistles that can be used for the county. but again, not sure on the timeline. I'm going to go through the plans just to review with you, remind you, talk about planes and then talk about RxMapper and update with that. Next page, you can see the plan migration from 24 to 26. Just a reminder that a couple of things lack over 2025, the $1,500 deductible plan is no longer offered We had to go to a $1,800 plan that was mandatory. We had no other choices in that, it was a 20-25, 20-26. The $2,500 deductible plan was not offered and it went to 27. You can see the. You can see the number of employees in each plan has changed somewhat. I am most proud of the $3,500 HSA deductible of 12 employees in 2025. That has jumped up to 25 employees in 2026. Those are things that we'd like to see. We'd like to see employees moving to higher deductible. Any questions on that? Next page, 2025 claims. This is a full year effect of 2025, no surprise there. The County paid approximately 4.4 million in change in premiums. Total claims paid out was about 4.6 million. The graph below is probably a better visual of how claims come in. Again, we are running in the red. So just a reminder that, hey, insurance is working here. We, I say only have to pay 4.4 million in premiums. If we were self-insured or on different plans, we would have had to pay 4.6 million. Again, we always track this number to try to get a feel for what the renewal will come in at. I have no feel for that right now, but based on 2025 numbers, we can expect an increase on the renewal because we're charming at a loss right now. Can I take you back one step? Sure. Back to the benefits plan, we had 20 employees less on all the plans this year than last. What's the cost of that? I was going to say there's less employees this year than last year, so that's a way to go about it. Let's see, the bottom there you can see, let's flip to the next page. Sorry, at the bottom, I'd make a note. Hey, of the total 4.6 million in claims, high cost claimants are 2.3. That's an issue that I will talk about here in a moment. Next page. Next page just gives the high cost prescription claims Prescriptions drive about 7 or 80,000 of the high-cost planets. These brand names you may be familiar with. I have a slide that I present to a lot of groups that I stole from someone that says, you are one Super Bowl commercial away from huge pharmacy planes. And if you recall, if you watch TV at all, you will recognize a lot of these pharmacy names. Nothing wrong with that. and it's just that, you know, cutting edge pharmacy is great. It helps people tremendously, but it is super, super expensive. Like I can comment that SkyBusiness is, you know, this is an order you could say, Jay, Kirk, or Humira. Most of these are autoimmune, again, lots of advances in the autoimmune space, but it is expensive that we have implemented our X-Matter to hopefully help that and then we'll talk about that. Specialty claimants, 10 employees utilize these drugs. What was that specialty claimants? Where are you? Right hand side of that. Yes, yes. The next page is just a graphic view of the previous page. And you can see 2025 saw a big jump, significant jump over 2024 in specialist drugs, which which is not the best time to want it for everybody. I'll flip to the RXMAPR. So given what I've showed you on the pharmacy side, we really hope that RXMAPR will be able to help move the needle on the pharmacy claims. So the whole point of RXMAPR was to do DNA sequencing for folks that are on specialty drugs, those that qualify for the sequencing, You know, the ROI, again, you all approved to spend around up to $13,000 on for 10 employees to take advantage of RXMapper. And the ROI there was spending $13,000 to offset almost over $200,000 in claims. So we really hope to see that in this year and into next. and I can say that so far, five individuals are currently enrolled and participating in the program. That means they did the swab, or they met with the clinicians over the phone. The clinician did determine that that person was a good candidate. They got the DNA kit, sent the swab in, and they're getting sequenced. There's another one scheduled for a screening call later this week, and then there was one that did not qualify. So that's great, and that is only in the month of January. So again, you guys approved up to 10, we're already at 586, just in the month of January. So I'm very, very excited about you. So we'll see what the results are, hopefully. Now, and again, I'll remind you, you approved up to 10. That doesn't mean you have to spend all that money. You will only spend for the folks that get to see it. If we go over 10, then I would have to go to the Board to get that 11th, 12th, 13th person. Any questions on that? What if we took this, do we have five, where? So the marketing started, I believe, Early January and late December, we sent out, Diamond Brothers sent out Heads Up Marketing. We did talk to the department head saying, hey, this is coming, you know, tell your employees. RXMapper has sent out email blasts almost weekly since then. So RXMappers, we kind of handed it off to RX. We introduced the concept. We talked to the department heads. We tried to get the word out. I've sent emails out as well. Now RXMapper has a trip campaign going out to every single employee, I think. We also talked about in the department that we didn't miss most of the trip, yeah. Is it possible to put a message on Facebook? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe try it out if we can, so we can look at you, Hayes, if we can. Yeah, sure, yeah, it doesn't hurt. So I am on the RxMapper page, there's a highlight there. On the bottom, the January invoice was just sent to Jogerst for approval. And you can see everything is lagging, So there's only two people on that invoice that got sequenced. There's three more people that will be billed in February. The really only sunk cost is the per employee per month membership fee of two bucks. You know, nobody participated in the plan, let's say. We would be out $2 per employee per month. And then as people do get sequenced, it's about, it's three, four, five, $600. Let's say 10 people do get enrolled, what's our cost on those 10 people next year? People, Master, I would assume the same, they don't get sequenced, unless they can take a new drug, they get sequenced again, I will ask that question and get back to you. I would assume it's the same. The second. Let's go back to PNC. Sure. As you're doing these audits I know it's early in the year. Have you seen any, I guess, what rating increases are over this point? 26, or at least the fourth quarter of 25 during these audits, just as a percentage? You mean the appraisals? Well, we've increased in premium. Obviously, the cost of the buildings replacement, things like that are going up. So I'm just curious if you're saying a 10%, 15%? ICRMD does a really nice job of keeping costs low. They are better than most carriers, I will tell you. First-hand knowledge. I don't want to give you a number. Your property premium will go up slightly because you're afraid of the mortgage. I think it would be single digits. I think the property values would go up to 10-ish, maybe in the teens percent. But ICRT does a really nice job of keeping property rates low. Go to the offset. Your work cop is a great story that has really gone down a lot with only other issues are liability and those have gone down a lot too. I mean, there's been a really good, you know, the departments that are engaged with Mark Bell and the safety team really do a nice job that you can make this good. you know the things that you can't control broken pipes or weather related things that's going to happen I'm not worried about anything else really you know what column is doing very well I should say this you know I don't have any other concerns in any other lines of coverage property will be going up because of the appraisal to review other than that I don't have it That's right. Senator, any questions? Senator, thank you. I have this off the top of your head, but I'd be a little curious. The dollar percentage increase year over year for health insurance points, and they were 4.6 for 25, just 24, 23, 24. Yes, you know, I can get you that. Yes. I will do that. Yes. If you recall back in 2020 or 2021, we moved from the State Plan to Blue Cross Blue Shield for a savings of $2 million, which was huge. We have kind of eaten into that now by this time. I think it's been a long year. I will give you a history on that. Blue Cross Blue Shield just say we're never going to get our money back. How high should we increase the premium? I don't know. I don't see that happening. I just see them increasing it from teens to 22% over here. I really do. That's why it's, again, I have this conversation with a lot of my employers. What you can do inside four walls helps you on the outside. When you can control your health plan, you will control your costs tremendously. Blue Cross Blue Shield has zero incentive to help with anything, they just, if it's a million dollar drug, they'll pay it and they'll charge you for it next year. That's how it goes, which is neither good nor bad. Again, the reason you pay for insurance is to insulate yourself. These are costs that you have to have. Every five years, generally speaking, your group is going to have a really bad year. So within those four years, you're paying for it. So that's why we put in RxMAP, and that's why we're doing the wellness, that's why there's a lot of other things we can do, that's why we're trying to increase the deductibles, not to punish employees by any means, but to get them engaged and educated on their health care spend, be good up their consumers. Just like you shop for a car, or a microwave, or a refrigerator, you should shop for medical services, MRIs, TAP scans, and the way the medical systems work, they make it really convenient for you to get an MRI and just go right down the street, go right down the hall in that effort to get an MRI, whereas if you went down the street, literally, the MRI process happens. So if there are higher deductibles for employees, again, not to punish them, but to make them, oh, well, this is my money, you know, people forget about it. I was guilty of it for a long time, too. It's a mindset change, it's an education, it's an engagement, and that's what we're trying to work on. to the constraints that we have. We're working on that. You can see kind of the progression of the deductibles. I think before we had zero except for some people we passed. So we're getting there, but it's a long road, it's a long. Last thing, just like you've done a great job of giving us tools to try to get beyond the deductible, which seems like it's been a brainer. Is there anything else out there that we haven't utilized that you can think of? There's nothing now if you can, I guess, just go back to the drawing board and see what else is out there. What we try to do is send out employee communications and campaigns, educating them on the tools that they can use. There are tools in the Blue Cross Blue Shield app to really try to harp on folks when we do online enrollments and when Terry and I are here onsite talking to employees, Hayes, download the app, look at the costs. Download the GoodRx app, look at the costs between Walgreens, CVS, Walmarts, and Liar. Use the tools that you're given. There's a lot of online tools to do. We try to educate them and keep them informed. It's kind of a whole, bring the horse to water, can't make him drink, but. It's your word to us, Doctor, since you. I was just thinking that. I'll find out. Thank you. Chairman, I have a question. It does probably isn't a curious question, but at the auto insurance, we're insuring 108 units at 5.6 million dollars. This has been brought up before. Do we need to do a, you know, check and see if we're, all 108 of these units are still in service? At one point in time I had heard that there were units that were being insured that were no longer even owned by the colony. So I don't know who would do that. I would say the last couple of years we've really, between the asset listings and the renewals, I'd say we've really railed that in. So along with that, you're tracking the titles, right? So we should know. We have 108 titles, we have 108 vehicles. That's a lot of titles. If we should know, now my question, do we know? But apparently George is also good. Thank you, Carrie. Yeah, thank you. All right. Madam Administrator, you have the floor. All right. Update, which we'll talk about more later with past due vendors and settlement offers with the nursing home continuing to work on those. I had a conference call with a new shredding service company. They're going to, it's going to be a couple months till we actually transition over to that company. and they need to send pictures of the two different types of receptacles they use to determine what's needed in each department for their pickups. So we have a follow-up at the end of this, hopefully by the end of next week, I'll be able to fill the outside. Greater Food Partnership meeting was on the 28th of January. New Board President and two new members were appointed. The annual dinner was on the 5th with the awards, that's when I spent. Our next meeting there is on the 25th. In court on the 11th, there was another continuance in the nursing home phase to March 4th at 1.30. There's been an uptick in boyas lately. Last week, I received nine. In talking with the County Clerk and a few others, there's a group that is playing neighboring counties as well. So most of the ones I got, most of the neighboring counties received as well. It was overtime reports, contracts, board-executed documents. There was a lot of payroll stuff. January 30th was the ribbon cutting for the new line at Sevensia for Lena. The governor was there and they're rolling out a new product line to make little three bytes. They only place the other US that will be producing it. So health screenings, Empower Health, those health screenings will take place April 2nd and April 9th. We narrowed it down to two locations as opposed to three. Trying to hit our max, our minimums at each location. With the insurance coverage, they're going to cost the county a few dollars more per participant for the full panel that the county employees are used to seeing. Once that's approved for the board next week, then the information, flyers, and things will start being distributed. I met with Mark. I met with Mark Bell on the 4th, and he'll be coming to our April Department Head meeting. He was talking about the new platform that you mentioned, Origami, but it'll be easier for us to access more detailed information about the claims that we're seeing. So he was very excited about it. And we talked about the open claims that they still have, and he'll be presenting more of that is permissioned to the department heads in April. And then just kind of piggybacking on what Ms. McGratt said on Tuesday is when our appraisals are done on site. Any questions? All right, carrying on with this record. So just to touch on the Revenue and Expense Report, it's just through January, so we're just getting started. You can see in nursing center, and a lot of vendors have been paid, so the percentage used is quite large. And then I did want to mention in Fund 22 and 25, there were grant dollars that came in, so that kind of looks slightly inflated for January. Did anyone else have any questions on this report specifically? Okay. So, moving into the audit update, the auditors were onsite on February 4th. The goals basically during this time were to conduct fraud interviews and review the internal processes of accounts payable, cash receding, payroll, and any corrections to the general ledger. So we did that, and most departments were very responsive uploading documents to the ShareLink portal before the auditors were on site. I can tell who's actually accessed the site and who hasn't. The nursing center did access the site, but nothing was uploaded. So we do not have any information currently on the requests made to the nursing center. Yeah, so that's unfortunate, but we did get the final field work requests this week. The Circuit Clerk and kind of a countywide, which encompasses the Treasurer's Office and our office are the ones that do the majority of that work. So they are going to be back on April 27th. So we have a couple months to upload that information, but that's the update as it stands. Any questions? Thank you, Adam. Presenter's reports, hopefully everybody got a copy of that, there's a link in the I'm not going to be going through it, but you still have money, so that's good. So any other thoughts on that? Hearing none, moving on. Approval of payment prioritization of outstanding benefit claims for the nursing center. and maybe just speaking up. Is she the one driving that? She is kind of the one driving that and speaking to vendors so she'll probably have to come. She's just right outside or maybe come back to it. So approval of settlement, the agreement with McKeeson's reparations, you got that one too? Yeah, I'd love to go back to that, but here she comes. So that's all we got, so it's two lines. Yep. And I apologize. So the approval of payment prioritization of outstanding vendor Under Claims for the Nursing Center. Yes. Kind of an updated spreadsheet was attached. I, since the post, since sending that out, I did get a settlement offer last night from Fox Tire, which, let's see, they were in the third agreement. The third green one, they did make a settlement offer of $15,288. They were in my paymaxed category anyway, but just kind of wanted to update there and see if my line of thinking is in line with what your guys' directive was. I mean, I've got notes in most of them, but if you have any questions about any of them. So all the greenies are going next? Until, I do want to keep. Well, and you do need to keep a cushion in there. We're reserving money for the civil money penalty because we don't know what that We've also had a few employee payouts that now that the sale is not taking place, vacation time, things that were owed to them, when they would have rolled on to the other payroll that were going to be worked out through the sale, we've had to now come back and pay, it was under $8,000 total for the two, but I don't want to not have the funds to come back and pay for the two, but I don't have the funds to come back and pay for the two. available for that as well. So that is kind of the plan. Yeah. Still going with the ones that are making settlements, prioritized, and then working down. And then the local others. I did get a message from the Treasurer, she said a rough number was about 48-49,000, but without her coming in and double checking the accounts. Any questions on that? Do you need us to do anything? Because there's an approval statement on the agenda. I think as long as we're in approval of this document, yeah, yeah, prove it. So I would entertain a motion to approve the spreadsheet as per that. Motion to approve. I have a motion and a second. Any other discussion? If I could just notate, the payment that was made to country human suites was made from the money that Mr. Perez has been reimbursing us. So, I just wanted to notate that, that's why it's the two different colors, so. Just to find something to get into. To our what, 15? Yes. Yeah, because through our financial software, we have to pay for the invoice, we have to hold the dollars until we can pay a complete invoice. So, I just wanted to let you know that for clarification. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Approval of Settlement Agreement with the Keeson Corporation. So that is the payment amount that you see notated on what was just approved. They sent the formal agreement that needs for approval. Otherwise, I would have been able to probably pay it through the prior authorization. But that is what they are offering for further settlements. and Carl's looks at this. I have a motion to approve. Can I have a second? I have a second. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. All right. So as far as the Chair reports, I don't really have anything specific. I think things are going along pretty good. As Dale mentioned, we did in fact sell our house. recently, and closing on the 23rd, but we're doing a rent back because we're struggling to find the right place to go to, we'll give the Rockford land area. So, I thought everybody, though, I took a different job about, I was in June of last year, and I didn't think it would change anything necessarily after that, but it's got me going into the Chicagoland area at least three or four days My brother is here. She's got sisters that are here. It's like that. So it's not as pertinent that we be physically here all the time. And so I just so we discussed it and got open the door and there's a ministry opportunity. I'm real excited about the Chicatoland area that I'm working with now too. and so on. A lot of stuff takes me that correction to itself. There's just not time for everything. Scott, I'd love to continue. It's been a joy being part of this, except for one thing you all know. It's been a struggle, but it's been fun working with all of y'all. So I'm going to be here next month yet. I committed to Scott when all this went down and out because of the rent back and the way I think that was a God thing, man. I went through all that stuff from my wife's grandparents and learned a ton about that. And so I was kind of prepared for it. on that side of things. And I just, I'll probably make a statement if the chairman allows me before I start covering the board in March. I don't understand the way people look at that from the other side, that you're just, because they have to want to have control. It doesn't make any sense to me. That business at this point, it just doesn't make sense to have an accounting about that. It just doesn't. You know, three years ago, yeah, maybe, maybe that was different. but really I'm hoping that the public gets that at some point because I think they're going to be lied to a lot. And then we told them, we need to hang on to it because it's ours, all this crap that you see on these signs. It just, it makes no sense. You know, you got to understand the business that you're in and it's changed, you know, over the last three years. It's not something you really know what the heck you're doing. And what people changing on these committees every two years That takes no sense for us to be part of that, so that's not on you, Andy, but anyway, that would be my, anything from the administration, Iris out here, anything else on that? Since I could just talk about, we had action items of approving a walking program through Empowered Health to run parallel to our wellness screenings, and that was, I forgot to talk about it in the report, which is what I went out to talk to Ms. McBride about. and the Assistant Director of Nursing. I think that was a good idea to get everybody moving. We're going to run that. So that will be before you explore a lot with the biometric. Well, thanks. Nursing Center. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. Assistant for Director of Nursing was hired on a new business. Office Manager was also added to the team and everything is good moving and moving forward. Public Property and Safety? Just three things. Three things to be brought before the Committee for a memorandum of agreement for police, for civilian police, for law enforcement, for direction patterns. One is a statement about the employee will not receive seniority while off work, paid for, and nothing like that. Do you even agree to it? So, you had no other choice. The corrections for Erwin Corey, who was mistakenly placed on the list due to incorrect number of servers and get calculated, ERT receiving time and have cop ties for training. That's pretty much all. This closes freedom of fraternity or the police. It's a new union for the sheriff office, which must be stated. Thank you, sir. Court Services. Everything's moving along. Placed it. All in the notes. All right. Oh, planning and development. Planning and development. But we did not. It was canceled. Did you not have a good forum? So there will be a special use stalling from it's coming to the pulpit. And we just did the fight area. Well, it works. Well, it got a little chilly out at the Highway Department during that cold snap. and get down to 61 degrees because a couple of heaters quit. So there is a, we've just approved last evening, a RFP for HVAC new units being put in the roof. So we'll see where that goes. They've been doing some fresh work and preparation on Orangeville Road because that's going to be resurfaced this summer. So, soft and otherwise it's pretty quiet at the highway. So, Animal Control is working on moving the great old babies from the animal hospital over to their new building. So, yeah, thanks for going along. Cool. Yeah, that's going to be so nice. And that's what I was much most getting in and out of that place too, is fall. Most days, and they'll start there themselves. Okay. Chairman, anything to add? All right. Mr. Bush, I have a motion to adjourn. I have a second. I have a second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. I oppose. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Snipes, how are you, sir? How are you? Doing well. Well, yeah, that's all right. Yeah, that's all right.