All right, at six o'clock, we're going to call the meeting to order.
Oh, prayer?
Does anybody want to do prayer?
I'll take your prayer.
Thank you.
Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to get together tonight to talk about the county's finance.
Please help us to be good stewards of the county's money.
Thank you, Lord, for all the dedicated people that we have here at Stephenson County.
And Ronnie, in Jesus' name, Amen.
All right, 3.0, approval of tonight's agenda.
Do I have a motion to approve?
Motion to approve.
By Mr. Diddens, do I have a second?
By Mr. Jogerst, any discussion?
Oh, all those in favor say aye.
Opposed?
Motion carried, all right.
Review and approval of meeting minutes for May 18th.
Do I have a motion to approve?
Mr. Diddens seconded by Cindy.
Any discussion on meeting minutes?
Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.
Motion carries.
5.0 Approval of claims and the amount of cash requirements and manuals, $1,263,778.32.
Davis.
Do I have a motion to approve?
So what?
Do I have a second?
Sure.
Larry, Larry.
All those in favor, or any discussion?
No one's saying none.
All right.
All those in favor say aye.
Opposed?
Motion carries.
All right.
95.1 Is the Health Department's claim and the amount of cash requirements and manuals of $83,325.12.
Do I have a motion to approve?
So moved.
By Mr. Brandt in a second.
Second.
By Mr. Diddens.
Any discussion on the Health Department's claims?
Yes.
We just came this month because we did not have a quorum last week for finance for the Health Department.
Okay.
All those in favor, Do we say aye?
Aye.
Opposed?
Well, she carries.
6.0 Public comment.
Seeing none, moving on, reports to the committee, 7.1 is Simon Brothers, Carrie McRae should be calling in on the phone.
Hi there.
Hi Carrie, how are you?
I'm okay.
How are you?
Good.
So you have the floor.
Oh wow, okay.
Good evening everyone.
Okay.
Good evening, everyone.
I assume you have the documents in front of you.
Yes.
Okay.
I'm going to skip through your first few pages here quickly.
I am on page two.
We're just going to talk about cloud feedback.
Let's see, we're really quick and then talk about some claims.
So it's page three and go to page four.
So that's PNC slash work WC claims.
Kind of changed up the format a little bit for this meeting.
This is the claims history claims in each category.
And I highlighted the most recent is current policy years.
So I'm going to focus on that.
There are two larger work comp claims.
One is a tree cutting accident for 60,000 and one is a slip and fall on ice for 80,000.
That makes up the bulk of that 142,000.
It was on a physical damage amount for 76,000 is there was a sheriff's bar that was involved in a collision and we had five or six cars damaged in the hail storm Storm, a couple months back.
Any questions on these?
Does it look like it?
Okay, hearing none, I will move on.
Page five, from the get into benefits.
One thing I want to highlight, right now the employee benefits administered via open enrollment and changes via an online system called EASE.
Employee Navigator bought EASE two years ago, and they have been telling us for two years that there will be a migration from the EASE platform onto the Employee Navigator platform that is coming to fruition, we think, into this year, most likely 2027, early 2027.
We are going to recommend to move and migrate off of EASE into Employee Navigator here this year for the upcoming open enrollment towards the end of this year.
I have an estimated price to do that, $2,500.
I think that's gonna be fire.
So just a mention that as soon as I get numbers, we'll talk about putting that in the budget, but that could be anywhere between $2,000 to $5,000 anything.
Up until now, the e-system has been free to use, but when somebody buys out a system and then charges you for it, kind of get stuck.
Employee Navigator is the preeminent employee benefits platform out there.
We recommend staying with Employee Navigator.
It's just a matter of costing and we'll talk about that now.
I just wanted to mention that that's coming.
Any questions on that?
All right.
I also wanted to talk about the Plains real quick.
We'll talk through the through the year-to-date claims, and then I want to give an RxMapper campaign update.
So next page, page six.
Again, you all have seen this many times before.
The bottom square there are the 2026 plan designs and the number of employees that are in each plan, give or take, the number fluctuates monthly, but you can see the number of employees in each plan.
Next page, page seven.
This is the top set of numbers is an annual rolling annual medical and prescription claims for the last 12 months, so May 25 through April 26.
At the bottom is the summary.
So the total premiums paid over the last 12 months is $4.4 million and the total claims paid out is $4.3 million.
And so we're running at about a 97.5% loss ratio.
That also fluctuates, you can see the right-most column, the fluctuation between damage and items paid out over items paid.
This is nothing new, we talk about it every time I present to the Board, it kind of is what it is.
Is, and then the bottom is just a, the bottom graph there is just a graphical representation of the numbers on top.
The last point at the bottom of that is the high cost claim at total point this year, year to date, is now, it's over half a million dollars.
High cost claims really drive a lot of the costs, same with the specialty program claims.
Next page, we'll get to the High Cost Specialty Drugs.
You can see, I'm on page, I'll look at your page.
Top 10 specialty drugs are listed there.
A lot of those you see, I always make the comment that any drug you see advertised on TV or during a Super Bowl commercial is a very high cost drug, and you can and you can probably recognize about that being said, we implemented RxMapper this year, and I'll get into the status of that in a couple of slides.
If you skip to the next slide, if you can slide nine, we are making headway, which is really good news.
This slide talks about last year's cost versus this year's cost, and we are down with the great, great news.
And that brings me to page 10.
It actually go to page 11.
That'll come up on page 11.
The board moved up to 10 people getting into the RXMAPR program.
If all 10 people are enrolled and use the event program, it will cost the county around $13,000, almost $14,000.
And the IOA is potential of 206,000 claims voided using the program.
So it could be from the first part of January when it was implemented to last week, we have eight people responded.
So six meet the criteria.
So to reiterate program is they have a campaign to employees that goes out to every employee, probably every other week, maybe monthly, asking them, hey, do you struggle with your medications?
Do you feel like they're not working?
You know, call this number and the number is a clinician from the Mayo Clinic that goes through a health history.
And the nurse or the clinician will determine if the candidate who calls in is a good candidate to go.
Who calls them is a good candidate to go through the sequencing.
So members have called, states have met the criteria and two did not.
So of the six who met the criteria and are going through the programs, five have done the DNA sequencing, gone through the analysis and are going through recommendations.
One is starting the progress through the journey.
And I'm happy to report that the annualized drug Medical Savings just for those six people was projected to be around $62,000.
So again, here today, RXMAPR has invoiced the county $6,100 for these six people, and that has generated $62,000 savings on the drug spend.
So that's really, really good news.
I will direct your attention to the conditions among the participating members, those bulleted points on what the the map results are up and what you think should be done.
That is really all I have.
I kind of succeed that pretty quickly.
That's just the update that I have.
Anything on anyone's mind and I can answer any other questions that I didn't.
Do we have any questions?
Sign up for RxMapper.
Director.
Revere Chomsky, Employee or Dependent on Medical Plan.
Yes.
Chairman.
We'll say in addition to the RxMapper, they have DXMapper that is costing $250 that anyone can join, anyone can pay.
If you are interested in that, I can put you in touch with them.
And DXMapper, I apologize, I don't have that with me.
I can send it to you.
DXMapper is also DNA sequencing where there are 12 or 13 largest cause of early death or disease in the United States.
And that's cancers, diabetes, hypertension, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
This mapping, DNA sequencing mapping can help identify earlier that you have a predisposition to say colon cancer or breast cancer, and you can start interventions earlier, and it has been shown to really help, first of all, stay live.
If you are predisposed to any cancer and you get after it early and often, then your chances of survival are much higher, and while that will treat you are much, much lower.
Again, available to all of the employees on the planet.
That is an employee profit of $50, but it is a one-time DNA sequencing where you have it in the system and as they get more and more technology and there's more and more diseases that they can predict and then you always have access.
So that is something of interest, I can use to work something out there with MAPR.
And it is a really cool thing, I'm very excited about it.
Should get it.
So, in your estimation, what could we do better to get more employees to use the Meeper program?
Are you seeing other entities offering incentives or I don't really remember how many people are on the plan 200, maybe, I don't know, but.
Close amount of 60 to 170 employees are on the plan plus dependents, so it's about 400 people.
The MAPR folks do a really great job at reach outs and emails.
I would say internally, the best thing to do would be at department head meetings, you know, I'm happy to present, I'm happy to send information to the appointment heads.
I'm happy to present again and really encourage them to manage.
Now, our xMapper, which is the prescription mapping DNA sequencing, you have to qualify.
You know, it's one of the things where you, if you have specifically targeted Fords folks that have chronic conditions, answers, excuse me, and or are on the serious specialty offensive drug.
So it's not for everyone.
That's why we only approved up to 10 people.
And if say, let's say, you know, well, 14 people qualify, we certainly can get that approved and paid for, you know, through this committee.
So that's one side of it.
The DXMAPR side, again, I'll send it to you all.
The MAPR folks do send out communications, very, very regularly based to all employees about it.
So that is coming from the MAPR side internally, that's kind of, you know, I leave that up to the department heads and what they know motivates their employees best.
I don't have the magic wand for that.
It really goes back to early engagement and communication, which we do a lot of.
It goes back to wellness and taking control and ownership of your health.
You certainly can offer incentives.
Every employee group is different.
I don't have the magic number for that.
To answer your question, it's up to you.
I have seen a lot of different things where, yes, you can offer some as, hey, there's a 10, $20, $30 gift card.
I think we've tried that with the wellness programming.
It's going to work for folks that really are engaged and want them to know more about their health.
It's not going to work for people who don't really care to be blunt.
I'm not going to answer your question.
Thank you.
As far as the claims, is it spread out pretty evenly or is it like it has been previously where it's just a small percentage of the census?
That's where I understand your question.
Well, is it four or five people that are driving the majority of the cost of the claims or is it- Yes, yes.
There is a small, Let's see if I can have that data.
If you go back to page eight, this is a very good representation.
Actually, if you go to page eight, in the bottom right corner, that number, specialty claimants, eight folks are driving 169,000 year to date of specialty drugs.
With 27 prescriptions by three people.
So very small amount.
Yes.
That's how these drugs are.
Thank you.
The other thing I will mention, and again, I can get with charging the department heads, we have seen in other groups that we should focus on is Let's say, second one down, Tremfaya or Skyrizy, if I'm on that, you can search on the internet and get manufacturer's coupon to make that drug really cheap.
But again, going back to if you look at the employee deductibles, they're pretty low.
So employee benefit plan structures drives behavior.
Mayor.
The employee knows that there's only $1,500 out of pocket.
They're not going to be shopping around for Trump Fire because they know they're only on the hope of $1,500.
So it kind of goes hand in hand.
And also give them tools to help.
When it hits in the pocketbook, again being very blunt here, there's going to be more of an onus to file a two or four or five or $6,000 deductible.
It would be more apt to buy a manufacturer's coupon or shop around to buy drugs, and it doesn't have to be specific, you know, it can be anything, since it's lower deductible than how many or eight remember it.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Doesn't look like it.
Okay.
Well, thank you all.
Again, I've always read you both.
If you have any questions outside of the team, feel free to call me or email me.
Happy to help.
And I'll send the address back to each other.
Are you ready?
Okay.
Thank you, Carrie.
Thank you.
Have a good night.
You too.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
All right.
7.2, County Administrator, Ms. Newman-Commer asked for a link in her report to the agenda.
So if anybody has any questions, reach out to her.
7.3.
Bye, Director.
Okay.
The Revenue and Expense Budget Comparison Report, there's nothing really noteworthy, I guess, unless anyone has any questions for kind of status quo.
Any questions on that?
So, I'll move on to the audit update.
We did get an email from Lindsey Fish at SIGCH that she did request an extension from the Illinois Comptroller's Office.
And the Illinois Comptroller's Office.
So the revised due date is August 28th of 2026.
So we are still missing a lot of information from the nursing center.
That's what the holdup is.
So she's requesting that information by June 30th.
And ideally they would schedule another week of fieldwork once they gather that information to kind of complete the remaining audit procedures and kind of the backup work that they have to do after getting that documentation.
And then after that point, the report has to go through their internal quality control review process which could take a few weeks.
So that's the reason for the June 30th kind of deadline for the nursing center.
I know they've been working on the cost report.
So hopefully a lot of that information kind of can be Supply to the auditors and help them out with what they need.
We'll review the budget policy later and then the Teams Worksheet is going out to the departments.
It'll be available on the 24th of this month.
So they can start inputting numbers if they so choose.
Great, any questions for Adrienne?
All right, seeing none, 7.4, Treasurer Reports.
So I think everybody's had a chance to review this and set it out on the 6th, kind of as with the Revenue and Expense Report, we're kind of in a holding steady pattern.
So sales and income tax receipts are steady.
The monthly report shows you that they were up over $70,000 over the previous months.
So far through May, sales and income tax is total over $4 million, which is a good place to be in.
As of the end of May, the total county funds were only down 1.79%, like $442,000 compared to April's month-end, which is, as with our last several preceding months, really good in a month where you don't have money coming in from property taxes.
So it's well below what we would normally see with our situation.
And on the investment side, four investments matured, almost $19,000 in paid interest earnings.
As of the end of the month, there are 17 investments in place across nine different funds, maturity dates between this month and next April.
I have to make the first entry on page four regarding bond payments, which I think this audit approved last month, a payment that we made, it was just interest on each of the two mill race crossing bonds.
So there's almost $32,000 after that payment, just about 46% of the total amount that was Refinance in 2020 has now been repaid, both between principal and interest.
And recall that Debt Certificate A matures very soon, actually, relatively speaking, 2028.
And B, which is the one we're currently only paying interest on, that one matures in 2031.
Does anyone have any questions on anything you've seen?
Moving to the collector side, pretty busy right now, we're kind of running great tech speed, especially on Mondays with tax collections, so the traffic's been constant, phone, email, in person a lot today, so we've had, I mentioned this to an admin, we've had really good response, if you had a chance to take a look at your own tax bill, the redesign that we've done, I believe that this year, this bigger, better color fall has a lot more information.
We've had some really good feedback.
So although we did have one situation today where a gentleman actually had to call me back because he wanted to, I won't say argue, but tell us that he was right about who he makes his check payable to.
So technically you pay your taxes to the county collector.
Always said that if people write treasure, we don't care.
It doesn't matter.
We're going to take your money no matter what.
But because it specifically said that on his bill and he'd never seen that before, he was very irate about that.
And then called me back later to tell me he was right.
So this is the kind of thing that we're dealing with.
But other than that, the response to the tax bill design has been great.
So when people have been, as someone asked earlier in another meeting, people have been by and large very, very civil of the City Council this year, so the need for the kitty condos has really dropped off, although we still might revisit that given the population and animal control, so that's just to say that people have been very, very pleasant this year, so it's been nice.
Electronic payments have really been on the rise through Friday, we had 1.32 million already Submit Electronically, which is really a lot higher than it was a previous year at this time, and we continue to increase that, and people are using their bank accounts rather than credit and debit cards at a rate of about three to one, which has been a very big surprise to me this year, so all good, and just a reminder, the first installment due date is June 26th, and the first distribution to the taxing districts will be July 13th, So unless anybody has any questions, that's all I have.
I actually have a question.
The different payments that you can make.
Yes, you're allowing credit card payments.
What happens if they default on their credit card or if that just goes through and you've got your money?
I don't know.
Do you remember having an issue?
We've never had that be an issue.
Issue, actually we've had a couple of accounts with EFTs that have been rejected because people entered the wrong bank account number accidentally.
So basically if that were to happen, we just vacate their payment, they're charged $40 and then they have to re-sign that payment because of the late payment, don't they get that?
Any situation that causes that payment to not be on is a $40 fee.
So if they pay after the due date, then they would have the $40 fee plus the statutory late fee as well.
And with the credit card payments, is it the 3% then on three and a quarter?
Three and a quarter.
Right.
And the late fee for the first 30 days is only one and a half.
So we've had that discussion with people about which is profitable.
So, yeah, I'm just curious, I just think that was never years ago, being able to play.
Yeah, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Venmo, bank accounts, it's out, we take it all.
If it makes it easier for people to make their payment or have the edge to get it.
Okay.
Any additional questions for Stephanie?
No.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
8.0 Is old business, no old business, 9.0 is new business, 9.1 approval of the FLI 27 Administrative Budget Policy.
Okay.
So there was one suggested change made by the Circuit Clerk and that's on page one and Ron.
And just a report back to the Finance Committee before the next fiscal year budget process of July 31st of each calendar, current calendar year.
In regards to alternate service delivery and outsourcing, she just made the point that she's never done this.
So if it's The other is I highlighted in red the 3.5% COLA and those are the only two changes this year aside from the budget calendar from the last page.
On page six, vehicle replacement and this is a paragraph that I don't know that we do.
So it's an evaluation of intended use to be completed comparing benefits with a purchase for Dees, where practical standard size pre-owned or program vehicle be considered instead of new vehicles.
I mean, perhaps it's just boilerplate things, but I don't know if we actually are putting that into use.
To answer that, that was put in place back in, maybe I'm remembering wrong, but it was Believe.
We looked at leasing a few vehicles.
I still think it's a good idea to do the research.
I mean, this is County Board's Guide to Department Heads on what to do.
On what we would like them to do as they present their budgets to all of you.
So I personally would leave that section in.
I would leave the first section on page one and report back to the Finance Committee before the next fiscal year each of each year, July 31st, if I'm reading it correctly, report back to the Finance Committee before the next fiscal year budget process Officer, July 31st on cost savings, I mean, that was something we put in years ago.
It's on us that we haven't really followed through and required that, but I think it's still a good process.
But this is just a guide.
So the leaner you make it, the less likely things are going to occur.
Practices and Ordinance, that's a guide.
The issue with the paragraph as a whole, really, I just wondered if we were actually doing that.
So it seemed like we're, like the vehicles are coming through the committee, but not necessarily through finance.
Well, it's up to the seven of you, it's in the budget policy when, inevitably, one department or another comes forward with wanting five or six vehicles, that's the time to reference that section and it's one of their, assessor methodology was how to come up with what they I think there's not going to be a lot of vehicles in 2027.
Well, there's quite a few in 2026.
Yeah.
I just told her that I would bring it to the committee and see what they thought.
So we can leave it at that.
Okay.
Any other comments, questions before we take a vote and go into more discussion?
Okay.
What are we doing now?
The policy as is, right?
Without the changes.
Other than the 3.5.
Correct.
Just double-checking.
Yep, nope, I'm trying to keep me on my toes.
All right, is anybody, all those in favor say aye, or do I have a motion to approve?
Motion to approve.
I'm going to say Diddens, you're going to have a second by Mr. Fricke.
Okay, any additional discussion?
So a quick question.
In the last County Board member meeting, you had IMRF, Social Security costs, and you've concluded, right?
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, all those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Post.
Motion carries.
All right.
10.0.
Adjourned.
Mr. Bush, do I have it back in?
Second.
Mr. Vins, any discussion?
Okay.
All in favor, say aye.
Aye.
Post, Marguerite Hinn, Thank you.