 Good day. Yes. Present. Here. Here. Mr. Palin? Oh, and also, our city manager had an obligation today, and so we're going to keep her in our prayers, and thank you, Mr. Palin, for taking over today. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Palin. Not a problem. Thanks. Yeah, actually, yeah, some downjected indication. Yeah. Let us pray. Gracious provider of all that you've done for us today, for the blessings of life, health, and strength, for the promise of your presence that continuously abides with each of us. But we pray that our time together today may might be spent in a very productive way, that conversation be of such that continues to expand our city, this wonderful city of ours, that it continues to grow and prosper. Bless us all. Be with our city manager, but we pray that thou would bless and touch each one of us individually. We ask it in your name. Amen. Thank you. First item for city council discussion is an update from the Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority, the Comet. Mr. John Ando, executive director and CEO. Welcome, John. Thank you for being here. I'm John Ando. I'm the new executive director and CEO of the Comet, about 16 weeks new here in Columbia. And I just want to give introduction of myself to the council. And I also just give an introduction of where the Comet is going. And just get some comments and feedback. Just so you're aware, I do have a 20 years experience in public transit management and came to the Comet from Duchess County, New York, as previously there, former county transit administrator. That's the Kipsey, New York. And previously to that, I was with Capital Metro in Austin, Texas as the program manager of bus contracts. And I oversaw the contracted providers operating 450 buses. I'm going around to each of the member agencies of the Comet to introduce myself and discuss the direction that we're going. I'm as you're aware, the city appoints three members to our board of directors and provides to the Comet through at least the transit center and the assembly street bus shelters, as well as the ability of us to install and maintain bus stops throughout the city. The city is served by 20 of our 38 bus routes and services. So the city is our primary manufacturing of the transit system. And as part of those transit services we provide, we operate fixed route, reflex deviated fixed route, where the bus actually goes off route in a zone and picks up people at their door. A dark ADA paratransit for those that have a disability that cannot ride regular fixed route buses. And then most recently, the downtown circulator called the SOTICAN connected. Some of the things that we're going to be looking at over the next fiscal year to help continue to improve the transit system and ensure that the member entities and the taxpayers are getting value from us includes the development of a new short-range transit plan and a comprehensive operations analysis. What we're going to end up doing is evaluate the performance of the Comet system and through community and stakeholder engagement, look at reimagining the transit system and determine is the current transit network making sense for Richland and Lexington County. If it is, then we continue to enhance it. If it's not, how can we make it more efficient and effective so that more people within the two counties can continue to utilize our system? And normally transit agencies do this type of redesign and comprehensive operational analysis every 10 years. And last time we did this analysis was 2009 prior to the penguin community. We're also going to be working with the COG and SCDOT in doing a park and ride lot study to determine the need for express buses from some of the further outpoints of our service area to downtown Columbia to allow those to access jobs and other employment opportunities. One of the biggest things we're working on now is a transit center refresh. We want to change the perception of the transit center, ensure that it's only serving transit riders, make it more beautiful, improve landscaping and partner-form partnerships with the city center partnership as it relates to additional yellow shirt ambassador support, putting up potted plants. We're beeping off our security and then discussions with the police department about having the off duty officers also help control in that area. And then we also want to make them entities inside favorable for our riders. I want to continue to engage the community and business partners regarding transit service design and continue to do community outreach and do and participate in community programs. Some of those programs include partnering with a library to possibly put books on buses to improve literacy for people that utilize the transit system. We're working with a non-profit called Safe Place to where if youth are in trouble, they can come to a transit bus to get a safe place and then we would link them to a crisis counselor for those who are in need. We're working with the bike share vendor to see how we can incorporate transit into the new bike share program. Possibly we can provide a contribution to expand the bike share network and add more bike share stations in the transit stops as well as provide a contribution so that transit users can actually take advantage of using the bike share program especially those that live in the low income area. We're also looking at our route network ensuring that we're connecting the food deserts in the city limits as well as in Richland County to fresh food markets and try to make it easier for the transit rider to get to grocery stores since there's a growing food desert concern that's going on in that service area. We're gonna look at a redeveloping the SOTACAP connector service and I'm starting to engage with the Downtown Associations and the partnerships such as VistaGill, Five Points Association City Center partnership experience Columbia to see how we can make the service robust and ensure that the services we need of the Downtown visitors and residents that are living in the Downtown attractions. And then lastly, we're going to continue to improve the bus stops, bus shelters and passenger amenities and continue to work to add more of those amenities throughout the service area to keep our passengers from having their way to the elements when the rain is too hot. That really concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions about myself, the comments or the direction that we're going. There are any. So, Mr. DeVall. John, you mentioned the reconfiguration maybe of the SOTACAP, but do you have anything particularly in mind there or I'm very interested in keeping the SOTACAP available because I think that we can train people to start using that and give them other alternatives so they can just hop on it and not fall. I'd agree. One, making it faster to connect the Downtown areas so Vista, Five Point Main Street, better. Possibly including West Columbia into the mix. Also including USC as well and Allen and the Benedictine University areas. What we have is we have two routes that are presently operating, primarily traveling down Gervais. But with them traveling down Gervais it's almost out of sight out of mind for the Downtown, people that are patronizing the Downtown businesses. So how can we make a route alignment to ensure that people can see the buses, it's walkable and it's easy to access. Possibly going on Main Street is a good example of achieving that. Or going in front of the convention center, going in front of USC. Going down some of the side streets in the Vista area so that people aren't feeling like that because it's bus on a meeting day. That's a good example. And then also making sure it's running seven days a week with longer service hours during the times before going out, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, night, Wednesday. And then we also just started a pilot Soda Cap Connector 3 connecting Downtown via Main Street to the spare communications park for those to go to the fire flight gate. So if we can link all those together including the Bull Street neighborhood, I think we can get a road to downtown circulator home. Ms. McDow. Done, thank you so much. Welcome to the city. Thank you. And you got a handful of them. Yes. I knew it. Let me ask you one or two questions, everyone. One preferably about Soda Top, Soda Cap. Soda Pop. Soda Pop. There did you say it, didn't it? All right, Soda Cap. And the reason I'm asking this question, of course, I had a call this morning. And I wanna ask you, how many Soda Cap buses are routing themselves through the city? And the call that I got was a Saturday, I had visitors on a corner of Main Street, somewhere out there, thank you. And there was a real lag in terms of, and the visitors to what I understand left. And I have no idea. I think it was going down towards Bull Street, I think. If it goes that way. Yes, that's Soda Cap connected to it. That's correct. They were trying to get the spirit of communication. And for some reason or another, they stayed in an ordinance a long time. I wanna ask that. I certainly appreciate us looking at a reconfiguration, perhaps, of Soda Top, Soda Top. Cap. Let me just say Coke, and you know what I'm talking about. Exactly. So, to answer your first question. Let me finish it, then I'm done. Then I won't get tangled up with Soda Tap or Coke. I think what you're planning to do is something that I think, because ridership right now for the Soda Tour is very, very important, especially for visitors who are in our city. And they're utilizing that too. So I hope that reconfiguration of things as it relates to Soda Top. The other thing is Route 22. You understand that Route 22, you've expanded that zone. Yes, so that's the first question, then I'll go to 22. All right. So with the Soda Cap, it relates to the issue on Saturday. The service to the spirit communication park only operates when there's a firefly game. And I don't think there was a firefly game on Saturday. I think they just wanted to visit. They wanted to visit. Okay, so we don't really, in order to get there, it'll be on Route 301. That's the closest it would get there on a normal common service. But I believe today, the fireflies will play and we'll be running that service. Okay, good. As it relates, and then they run a consistent 20 minute headway. So buses should be going by those various Soda Cap connected bus stop for 20 minutes. The service is split right now, runs from 11 to three, and then again from five to nine. With the revision, we're gonna look at having it consistently run all day long during the prime time. So people can honestly rely on a consistent public service. As it relates to the redesign, we definitely want, I agree with you, that we do want to have this service to help engage the visitors experience. My goal is to have each of the downtown organizations act as a stakeholder as well as a champion for the service so that they're promoting it within their organization so that it helps improve the viability of the service. I know we initially outreached them in the past, but I don't feel like they've been taking an ownership of the service, and that's what we need them to do. Kind of like what they do in Chagolita with their electric shuttle. We can have those associations take ownership of the service and have the merchants promote the service. I think the service will be very effective. Especially if it's hitting key front door destinations like Orange Street, the Convention Center, the Museum, the Five Points Fountain, Major Attractions in the Vista, and even West Columbia and the Riverwalk. As it relates to Route 22, the Board of Directors did authorize the reinstatement of Route 22. It is going to run seven days a week every hour from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends. It's going to connect the Rosewood Hills area via Harding Five Points through the Bull Street Development and also go into Spirit Communications Park through the Colony. That would actually give the Colony residents and people on Harding direct access to fresh food. I like to save a lot of food market, the Columbia Housing Authority, as well as the food line down in Piping. So that service just far affects the family. Madam Chair, I'm through. Yes, sir. Talk to us a little bit about transition. Transit, center, reset, and a little bit more specific about pushing them. I heard you say security, unifying the area. What do you think of that? Can you talk a little, just a minute or two about that? Sure. Transit Center, I know, has been a source subject for many people in our community, riders, business community, the neighborhood. And there's two things to the Transit Center. And we have a short-term plan and a long-term plan. For the short-term, we want to at least make it more an attractive area. We want to connect that block better with the Main Street District. We are within the boundaries of the BID. However, it just seems like you have Main Street here and then you have the Transit Center here and it doesn't feel connected. So if we can make it connected so people feel comfortable to walk that direction, it can possibly help spur development in the future. So some of the things we're talking about doing is putting better landscaping, removing the weeds and the sidewalk and around the perimeter of the building, painting the interiors better, putting services inside, like having fresh food vendor inside to sell fresh food items to transit riders, having customer service there to answer questions, having our transit information available. In addition to the security guards patrolling the transit center block, paying the city to have off-duty police officers to be there during the peak times, contributing to the city center partnership so that we can have yellow shirt ambassadors patrolling there more and providing that customer-friendly experience. Taking advantage of some of those potted plans that the central city center partnership provides to downtown businesses and improving the fencing. The fencing is inconsistent and it looks out-of-dated, so making the fencing consistent throughout the entire bus stop zone and then picking up any litter that's generated by transit riders and then making sure that that environment is comfortable inside the transit center so that we can encourage our transit riders to start waiting inside the transit center versus congregating outside, creating kind of that perceptive, loitering experience. Thank you, thank you sir. Davis. Thank you. Sounds like you've been assessing the system. I think that's so far we're talking about a number of things that have been, I think the root of a lot of the calls I've been getting and a lot of is systemic, so I think it's good that y'all have taken a look at that. Two quick things. One, shelters. There's been a number of attempts to provide and locate shelters throughout the system. Where is the, where are y'all on that? Really placing shelters for the riders, especially the elderly and young mothers with children. That seems to be a challenge. We've budgeted federal dollars to cover installation of shelters. We have a plan to at least install 11 to 20 shelters a year throughout the service area. Our biggest challenge has been getting right-of-way. However, we're working with each of the jurisdictions, city, Richland County, Lexington County and SCDOT on our abilities to try and get right-of-way so that we can put up shelters. We did find an ordinance that authorized the RTA to construct bus amenities within the city right-of-way. So we're trying to work through how we can take advantage of that ordinance that was adopted by council back in 2005 so we can get more amenities up sooner rather than later. But our biggest challenge has been getting easements from property owners to install the shelters. Okay, yeah, that's, I've got one to this week. So today, a picture, I won't tell you where it is, but that's sometimes there's a challenge with storefronts and that sort of thing. I'm hoping that we can, y'all can work that out. The other thing is. Yeah, that's why I want more things too. I am looking at an alternative bus shelter design that can almost be like a, like if you're walking down the sidewalk, it could be like an overhang over the sidewalk. And then instead of putting a bench, possibly people could stand underneath it, so that if we can. Everybody benefits from that. And get the right-of-way, we can at least still give a basic level of shape. Working on something that stems from a call yesterday. Just trying to see how we fit in with the RTA. Trying to help a guy that leaves here from Wilkes Road, for example, then it takes him to Sumter, Camden. Do we work with them in any way as far as pickups and pick up points, transfers, for example, from maybe Dart to our system to the RTAs? So the Dart's part of the RTA system. Dart's only for those that have a disability that cannot use the regular fixed route system. So there hasn't really been crossover between Comet Bus and Dart Bus. We are going to be looking at doing some innovative things to help promote people that are utilizing Dart to access the Comet system. And I've been doing some zones in certain areas where we would combine the fixed route and the Dart into one service, which we call Reflex. So it's basically a bus that'll pick up general population, but it'll also go off route and pick up those within a zone closer to their door, so that then people don't necessarily have to walk through a bus stop. But in that zone, the Wilkes Road area, no, we don't, beyond the regular fixed route and the Dart service, there's still two independent services. I'm going to refer them to your office. I think the way we operate is good, but there seems to be a void in there where a drop-off for a person with disabilities and the next pickup by a Dart, that's his problem. And so he's left even out of county because of that. Oh, so is he possibly out of the zone? I don't know, so I couldn't be too specific with him, but it sounds like we do have a process, we seem to have a system that kind of troubleshoots to be more specific with riders. I'm on the center, be all. If you can give me those information, well, I'll reach them and see what we can help with. Okay, thank you. And John, can you just expound upon, I know that you're working on several things regarding energy efficiency. Can you just briefly talk to us about where you guys are on the planning with that and potentially what resources you're trying to tap into? Yes, so we've been doing electric bus demonstrations. We've demonstrated the Protera electric bus back in July, let's see, in June. And then we tested another bus called BYD or Build Your Dreams last month. And actually, this week, we'll be testing a new flyer electric bus. And we've been running them on various routes throughout the system. Soda Cap connector is some of the downtown-oriented routes here in Columbia. And we've also pursued some grants with the Federal Transit Administration to possibly buy a small fleet of electric buses to start replacing some of our diesel buses. So if we are successful in getting these electric buses, we can start having a zero emission fleet. We're also looking into, as it relates to the charging, if we can find a way to put solar panels on our building so that we can charge these electric buses through those solar panels and also possibly sell power to the grid, then we can have a true zero emission fleet because now the buses are being powered through, in essence, the sun through the charging. So that's some of the electric or the environmental initiatives that we're looking at at the present time. And I encourage you guys, if you're interested, to check out the electric bus service starting on Thursday through next week. Anything else? Well, again, welcome to Columbia. We're glad to have you. Thank you very much. And if you could just, I think we say this all the time, I know last time it's August is here, we stress that we're, you've got an excellent community person. Tiffany is everywhere and she does everything. She does a great job for you guys. I did wanna say that to you, compliment you on her. But we're a great resource. So when you're having stuff, make sure that we know that we can let it out. There are means of community meetings and engaging. Just I think in the past, the times that there's been issues that's mainly been miscommunication and we can certainly help you make sure that the community has a hold on those things. So please don't let this be, the only time you come in front of us, let us know what you need and keep us updated. You definitely can do that. And I can actually tell you that I'll be scheduling community listening sessions throughout the entire service area, that we can just go to the riders and just listen and hear from people what they like, the good, the bad, and the ugly about the comment so that we can gather together a plan on how we're gonna address those issues of the community. Hopefully start doing those in August and September. Is it like undercover polls? No, no, not at all. It's just our way of making sure that the community can talk with us because I've heard from, I ride the bus myself. I live off of Beltline and Covent. So I see some of the riders and the riders tell me that they perceive that we don't listen. So I wanna change that perception and let them know that we do care, we do listen. It is their system. We wanna design the system that works best for the community. Thank you very much. Mr. Davis. Just wanna follow up question. I'm going back to the route designs. You mentioned some areas where you plan to kind of put a little more meat on those bones. But how do y'all make the determinations of the actual stops along corridors? I think the corridors are okay. There are clusters of neighborhoods, I think, and based on some conversations, could benefit more if there were more routes on some of the interior streets that kind of bought a cluster before they get to one of the major corridors. Have y'all thought about that? You know, normally service design is based off of need. So if we get a large number of people requesting the service, then we look at how to provide that cluster or a neighborhood with the appropriate level of service. As part of our service reimagining process, I would like us to look at the types of services that we're providing. This transit is more than just the conventional bus. We can do innovative things like a microtransit, partnership with Uber and Lyft, partnerships with taxis, bike share, van pools, demand response dialer type services, volunteer transportation. So depending on the need, depending on how the neighborhood design is, I would like us to start getting creative on how we can provide them with some type of service that works best for them versus just trying to run the conventional bus. Right. The reason I mentioned that, I think when you go back and you look at how Columbia was designed initially set up and sort of evolve, transportation for folks was critical. And you'll notice when you grade certain streets in the city, you'll see the trolley track. And there's a lot of work on the interior of the neighborhood, even before they get to the main Jervais and spaces like that. So that's why I'm just clicking. And those were the neighborhoods too that had the back alleyways, folks had that convenience of the trolley up front and the garbage and track pickup and the milkman in the back. Kind of similar to some of the older urban cities. But yeah, we definitely look at that as part of our service design. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, John. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Much appreciated. Item number two today is our healthcare update. It's panel of Benjamin, Chief of Staff, Director of Human Resources. Thank you. Since it's our last presentation, maybe we can all share information, make sure that we have, or what's not on here. I know or what has one. Brandon makes her usually has one. I don't see it on here. I thought I saw one on the previous one. She went as far as he had one. I'm gonna go to far sales. Yeah, I'm over. Yeah, she asked if they have ice cream. I got to make a stuff that my kids want. I went there last year, but yeah, it's starting at eight o'clock. Which one? St. Mark's. Oh. That's Mr. David, huh? It's awesome today. It's awesome today. Change it. Okay, so Brandon is not having. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. So I am here today to give another health care update. I've passed out as many copies as I have. Of course, we will post the updated version on the website with the agenda. And so everybody will see that. Because I have added a few different slides since it was posted on Friday. So just a few things I've added. So as you all know, we've been in a constant discussion about health care, which is a very important topic for all of us here. And so I wanted to give you all just another update based on some of the instructions you all gave us to look at some other options, some additional options. So as far as why, as you all know, the city has had the fortune to be self-insured for our health care benefits for over 30 years. That has typically been a very beneficial strategy to manage health care costs. And it's allowed us to have a lot of flexibility and provide a very rich benefit. And some financial options for us as employers and employees and retirees. But the trend has been that nationally health care costs have increased significantly. In addition to changes in health care, some of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act and changes in the governmental accounting reporting standards, the city really had to look at making some difficult decisions as far as providing health care benefits to our employees and our retirees. So health care claims, as you all know, were projected to grow to 32 million in FY18, 19. And forecasted to grow five to 15% per year after that. And in addition, the city was facing an OPEB liability of between two to four times. I'm higher. And by fiscal year 2047, a liability of $1 billion, or to exceed $1 billion. So those growing health care costs, those claims costs that increase liability had us really looking at a lot of options as we've discussed in the last couple of months. So based on those factors, the ability to sustain our current health plan without significant reductions in the benefit or elimination of coverage and the potential for both was imminent. So we had to kind of look at some other options. So the options that were explored, as you all are aware, to maintain our own self-insurance plan included premium increases, plan design changes, introduction of spousal surcharges for active employees and for retirees. We were considering complete change to the benefits, dropping spousal coverage, things like changing the eligibility and eliminating coverage for some retiree populations. We were even looking at whether or not we would be able to provide health care for our retirees, for our future retiree, for our future hires, whether or not we would be able to provide them with retiree insurance. So based on all of those options, we had to give some consideration to the state health plan as being a viable option to allow us to continue to provide comparable insurance coverage to eligible active employees, retirees and their dependents. So that sent us on the journey of looking at the state health plan as you all requested of us. And as some of our employees and retirees had also suggested. So I will say that that's something that we had considered previously, but we really wanted to stay self-insured. And so we were trying to look at every option possible in order to maintain that form of healthcare administration here at the city. So it wasn't that we didn't consider the state health plan previously. We just really wanted to maintain those rich benefits and be able to maintain our self-insured status. So I say all that to get us where we are now. So with these considerations, of course, any transition, there are things that are gonna be different and things that have to be considered. I don't wanna say pluses and minuses, but that's kind of what we have to look at when we make these big decisions. These are in no order of importance or good or bad. They're just in order here, things to consider. With the state health plan, it does offer us a similar network with comparable benefits. Blue Cross Blue Shield is the administrator for their health plan. It was the administrator for our health plan. And so there will be similar networks and comparable benefits. We looked at this as a recruiting and retention tool in the sense that some other people from other entities, such as other state agencies, other municipalities, other counties, they have the state health plan. And we certainly are trying to recruit the best and the brightest. And there are those employees who may say, well, I've been in the state health plan for a while. If I come to you all and you're self-insured, that will affect whether I have retiree insurance coverage or not. So they made a decision that they may not come to work for the city of Columbia because of that. So we may recruit and retain some employees or some potential candidates that may have been reluctant to come to us because of our health benefits, because they would have to change from being a state health care plan participant. It will offer us some potential savings for the city of Columbia. We always say potential because Jeff makes me put that word in there. So nobody thinks there's gonna be some huge windfall, but there definitely will be some savings in terms of administrative costs, in terms of claims that we won't have to pay now, that we had to pay before. But as we all know, when you talk about the cost of health care, it's a complicated formula that you look at. So there will be some potential savings, just me. Pam, can you explain when you said we wouldn't have to pay claims that we had to pay before? Is that because it's a bigger pool or is it because certain things aren't covered? That's a very good question that I skipped over. Now we will be joining a group before we were self-insured. And when you're self-insured, you're responsible for all liability, all the claims, all the costs for administering the claims, you're totally responsible for it. If we join the state health plan, we will be part of that group. We will no longer be self-insured like we are. They are a self-insured group that we're becoming a member of. Does that make sense? No, really? Yeah, but I still don't know why that would save us. So, I mean, if they will be paying them a flat amount. Right, we will be paying them a flat amount. We'll pay them a flat amount no matter what the claims are, how much they cost. Exactly, now, what will happen is because we're a new participant, after we're in it for a year, they will reevaluate what they charge us and there may be an experience rate adjustment based on our claims activity. So, they will be looking at the claims, but we won't have to pay the claims directly like we do now. So, Pam, the experience rate either then goes up. It will go up. So, it's at a baseline. The baseline is what we'll pay. And then if we have some really bad years, then they'll do an assessment of what our experience rate is and they will charge us a capped amount, 50% of whatever that is. So, we looked and that's an important question. So, we, me, Jeff, Missy, Jan, we looked at what, and St. Helpland, I forgot to introduce Matthew, Joseph, and Jennifer, Dollar, they're from the state, from Peeba, they're from Phil's Services and so they're here to answer any questions you all may have in addition about the St. Helpland. But we had some extensive meetings with them and they gave us some trends for entities that had to join them to look at the trend over a 10-year period. And so, we could get an idea about what that trend would look like and what we would be considering. It looked, some years, no trend for some people. Some year, it was around 4%. It just depends on your claims activity as to what that experience rate may be. But it still, with all the things considered, it still seemed to be a manageable amount compared to what we were doing before. So, but we did give that some consideration. The answer is probably no, but you guys certainly can chime in. I mean, we will, our experience rate will be based on what we, what our experience is. Now, we do have the benefit of being in the pool, but our experience rate will be calculated based on our experience, our claims. But if we had an incident, a medical incident in our claim now, as a self-insured, that incident cost $100,000. And that same incident, if we were in the pool, it only cost $80,000. We're gonna be based on your analysis after a year on that $80,000 that's been with you for a year rather than the $100,000 that we would get. That would hit us if we were individually. So the big group kind of sets the overall baseline that we have to pay as a participating entity. But then we may have to pay an additional percentage based on our individual claims activity that we experience. So it will be both. So you get the benefit of the big group with the baseline, but then we'll be impacted by the amount of claims that we have. So it'll still be a percentage and it won't be actually paying the claim itself. And $100,000, that's a good claim. Mr. Duvall, we have a million dollar claim. But of course, we have stop loss and all that. Of course, it's a complicated issue. But yeah, so when we talk about savings, we are looking at, currently we have several administrators that we pay administrative fees to our TPA there are a medical plan administrator, then there's our pharmacy plan administrator. So we're paying some administrative costs to those to provide to help us manage our benefits anyway. But we certainly looking at having without the instability of those claims costs, you know, the total amount of those claims costs, we're looking at potential savings going forward. It continues the coverage for all populations, active employees, the dependents, pre-65 retirees and dependents and post-65 retirees and dependents. There will be some costs that we occur during the transition, so we wanna be forthcoming with that because we will have what will be incurred claims that will not yet be processed. So if we do this, we'll go live with it in January of 2019. But say somebody went to the hospital December 31st of this year, we'll have to pay that claim. In addition to the cost that Blue Cross was your charges to administer. We'll send out a memo in December. Please do not go to the doctor. Well, and it all depends on whether or not the provider, when the provider submits those claims, you know, we could, people could have a claim from July and the provider doesn't submit it until January 25th. So we'll have to pay any of those incurred expenses through the transition. So that will be a cost that you'll see calculated in. And what our total healthcare cost will be where we present next year for the budget. You'll see how that's gonna, how that's gonna. Just for inquiring purposes. When that happens and a claim is filed prior to the entrance. What's the numbers? Are there numbers available in terms of when there is a transition to the larger group? What's the numbers that are available in terms of the number of folks? Perhaps who will file claims prior to the insertion of the larger group? Well, we don't have the number of individuals but I will say that we have gotten some information from Blue Cross Bushield and we're, they're projecting that we'll have $2 million, 2.1 to 2.3 million dollars in claims and then we'll have to pay a percentage for them to manage that, those claims. We're looking about two and a half million dollars for those claims. Now of course that's an estimate. Because it could be none or it could be more. So that's an estimate. So it's hard to say but that's what they're projecting based on the data that they have. So I want to make sure I answer the question about our self-insured. So because we're a self-insured, we pay all the costs, all the claims, everything. Now we'll be in a larger group and we won't be paying those claims directly but we'll have that experience. So everybody's clear on that. I want to make sure. So that's not an additional cost. That's not an additional cost, the claim cost and of course is it in addition to the cost that would take place during when you're actually transitioning, is it different or is all one in the same? So there's, it's really gonna be two costs. So the cost for doing the transition. That's one. Potentially we would have had to, we were gonna have to pay those claims anyway. Whether we paid them in the plan we're currently in or in a different plan. So that doesn't change that. There is a little bit different percentage that we're charged to manage those claims because we're no longer with them as a self-insured entity. But that's just one cost. And then we'll have to pay, our cost going forward will be the cost to the say health plan in order to be a member of their plan. So we will be locked in for four years. And so that's, you know, that has its, the things and not so great things. So we will be not having to have quite this discussion again for another four years. We'll certainly still talk about healthcare because it's always gonna be something that's very important, but we won't have this same type of discussion. We'll have less flexibility in the plan that we're in for the four years. Meaning that if we decided we wanted to add, add insurance to our plan, we wouldn't be able to because we have to offer the options that they provide. So I shouldn't use pet insurance because actually that's an optional thing. We probably could add pet insurance if we wanted to. But I should say, if we wanted to provide someone with, you know, unlimited Botox, then we could add that to our plan. That's not a good example either because that's, I can't think of anything that's good. But along those lines, and you're giving those examples, but for instance, the conversations that we continue to have regarding tobacco surcharge, if we wanted to change that. Thank you. Or those kind of things. Those, we wouldn't have those discussions. That would be based on whatever is in the state's plan. Absolutely. Thank you, Ms. Devine. That was a great example. I view it as a positive rather than a negative. Well, and again, it definitely, things are set. It could be. Things are not, you know. But, and I don't know what the state plan provides and we'll hear that, but it could be. But it also could be, you know, we have, I think we've been trying to be pretty aggressive regarding health, you know, wellness and things. I don't know if that's provided. And if it is great, if it's not, you know, the directions that we've been talking about going, we might, sounds like we might be limited or at least we'd go it, but it'd have to be optional versus some of the things that we've entertained trying to do. So, I mean, it really kind of loses, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it somewhat, potential would be to lose some of the autonomy of the direction we wanted to go in if that's not part of the big plan. Is that accurate? Yes, but. And they also have, if we were with the state health plan, we would be able to use rally as well, that we use now. It'd be a different rally, but it would be some features available through that system as well. So they do have some wellness, but you're right. The next bullet says we will lose some benefit of being self-insured. But we lose some of that flexibility. Individual, oh yeah, like late enrollments. I mean, you know, we, you know, we certainly have some flexibility to some things that we allow, some eligibility things that we can make some judgment calls on, those type things, and you won't be able to do that anymore, which is not altogether a bad thing. Individual participants may see changes in their experience. When you go from one carrier to another carrier, you may see some differences in your experience. What we have as a negotiated rate for a procedure, the state health plan may have a different negotiated rate for that procedure. So there may be some differences in what people pay. And it may be a little bit, some differences in some of those benefits. So we just, I just say that to know that, you know, with everything in life, everybody's not gonna be happy because everybody's not happy with anything. So there may be some people who have some experience switching over to the new plan. So I just wanna make sure everybody knows that. And it is, you know, we've been extremely generous like you said, Ms. Devon, and we've provided a lot of benefits, like, you know, unlimited chiropractic visits and things like that, that we won't be able to do anymore. So there will be some less rich benefits that we provide. Still comparable, so very comparable, I think, but there will be less rich benefits. And just another point to point out, we offer three plans right now. We offer a basic or in a buy-up plan. It'll be two plans when we go to state health plan. There will be a standard plan and their savings plan, so that's just to point that out as something to be considered. So as we move forward, the state health plan offers a variety of coverages, and I'll show you a chart about that in a second, for employees, retirees, survivors, and their dependents. The plan covers almost 500,000 people, and they have 709 entities that are participants, including all your state agencies, your school districts, a lot of your local subdivisions, including municipalities, counties, special purpose districts, and other organizations that are specified in statute. And since 1985, the General Assembly has allowed local subs, or people such as us, to participate in the state health plan. Any questions about that? Okay, so as Mr. Vile was talking about earlier, what do we have to provide, or what do we have to participate in as a state health plan participant? So if you look on this page, and I have to take off that dress, and I'll just show you. These are the things that we have to offer. All the participants in the state health plan have to offer these options. Health, dental, dental plus, state vision, basic life, which is a $3,000 life insurance policy, optional life, dependent life, basic long-term disabilities, supplemental long-term disability money plus, which is their flex spending account, vision care discount program. So we have to offer all of those to our full-time employees. Some of those there's no costs associated with, but some of the ones that are optional, there's no cost that we have to pay. But we do have to pay a $3 administration cost for all of our members to participate in the plan. So those are the ones that we have to offer for our full-time employees, for our retirees and their survivors, it's health, dental, dental plus, state vision plan, vision care, discount program, and then for our Cobra participants, it's health, dental, dental plus, state vision plan, vision care, discount program, and money plus. And the participant has the option of whether they want to enroll in dental plus or not. That's an option that's available. Whether they want to get supplemental long-term disability, that's an option. Whether they want to participate in money plus, who they cover under their health insurance, that's an option to them. So there'll still be those options of who they want to cover and which level of covers they want to take as far as participating. But these, we're locked in, we have to provide these coverages to all of our full-time employees, our retirees and the survivors for our Cobra participants. So again, those things are standard for anybody that participates in the plan. So, how we're gonna do this, how we're gonna transition, to get started, we had to submit an application and a small fee to the state health insurance program in order for them to consider us as a participant. We are certainly by statute, a local subdivision that falls within their guidelines as to a group that will be able to participate. It's real municipality, so we check that box. So we had to submit that application along with some of our enrollment, some of our population information for them to be able to evaluate. So the application had to be in 120 days before the date that the coverage will take effect. We're trying to shoot for a January one coverage date. And so we got that in already, but I'll tell you a little bit later what we need to do next. Once the decision to participate in the state health plan has been approved by council, then we'll become part of the state health benefits plan and the related group programs. Information will be sent to the active retirees and COBER participants starting as soon as possible because the more, I put September because we'll talk about that in a minute, but the sooner we can get information out, the better. And we will be having an enrollment. And I put October just because I think that's what we're shooting for. But of course, dates are subject to us approving this and moving forward with it if this is the decision that we're making. So, I'll talk about that in my next slide, actually. Just to do all. So, when we talk about eligibility, all of our employees that are permanent city employees working at least 30 hours per week are eligible. There are some different eligibility criteria. There are some employees who work flexible schedules, who work on a daily basis, who work on a daily basis, some employees who work flexible schedules, who over an aggregate period of time, if they work at least 30 hours, will have to offer coverage to them. That's an ACA requirement. So, there are some eligibility guidelines. But in general, all of our employees that are covered now will be covered when we move forward. Even our employees that have declined the coverage will be offered the coverage if they want to participate. We do have employees that may have declined the coverage because maybe there's spouse works for the state health plan and they were on their coverage. So, now they'll have to take our coverage because you have to have your own coverage. You can't be on the state health plan. Right, you can't be on both. So, there'll be some eligibility requirements, but we'll work through that. But in general, all the employees that we have covered now will be able to be covered under the state health plan. That's just a question for that. Are we considered 30 hours a week? Yes, you all are eligible for our insurance. Let me say that. I know we are now, but I was just wondering, I just asked the question. It's really not about your, with you all, it's not about the number of hours you work. It's about your position that you hold and that. Well, I knew that under there. I just, you know, you have to ask the questions transferring, I didn't know if that would, I've never heard it said 30 hours a week before. I knew we were eligible, but are you eligible if you're not considered, because we're not hourly employees? Right, so you all will be like the legislatures, legislators and other elected officials who will be eligible for coverage. I put that 30 hours, because that's a general rule for a regular permanent employee. As far as retiree eligibility, and I put this on the slide, I added this because I felt like people needed to see this information. So in order to be eligible for retirement, the person has to retire from the employer that participates in the state insurance program, which will be us, the city, is eligible to retire when he leaves employment. He hasn't had his last five years of employment or served consecutively in a full-time permanent position with an employer that participates in the state insurance program. So any of our employees who've been with us five years in our, you know, we're getting that question. Well, if I'm ready to retire at the end of this year, will I be able to be on the state health plan? The answer is yes, as long as you've worked for us for those five consecutive years, which you would have had to work for us for even longer than that to be eligible for our retiree health insurance. But remember, you can be employed with us for 20 years, 25 or 28 years under our current plan. And with some of the options that we were proposing, we were adding an age requirement and some other eligibility requirements. So those are the guidelines. So a lot of people who are about to be retirement eligible, they've got their 25 years of service in, they will be eligible for the state health plan as long as they're eligible to retire and have had that five years. Same thing with our retiree. Yes, sir. Same thing with our retiree. So if we have some current retirees who are on our plan, they will automatically be eligible for the state health plan. There won't be any issue with them transitioning into the state health plan. Don't want to make sure people who are comfortable with that. So to ask that, so because we've still talked about different eligibility requirements regarding retirement, that the second one, the eligible to retire when they leave employment. So if someone came in once, because we've changed it twice, it was 20 years, and we changed it 25, then we've changed it 28. Well, we changed it from 20 years to 25 or 28. 25 with fours, 28 with regular South Carolina retirees. OK, so we've not changed it again. I thought we changed it. No, we were talking about changing it again. So if we change it again and someone came in when it was 25 or 28, they have that 25, they leave us, and they've been here for five years, that makes them eligible. As long as they have that 25 or that 28, then they will be eligible. And so then if we change it, it changes for the new people coming in. So let me be clear. This will be the retirement eligibility. If we go to the state health plan, we won't have any flexibility with that. We have to go by their eligibility. So we, OK, that's ultimately the question. So we wouldn't be able to change anything. Because, again, remember, we're part of a plan now. So we're part of the rules that they set for the whole plan. So we wouldn't be able to say, like we did before, we're going to add 55 years old as a requirement for eligibility. We won't have that flexibility. We have to do the eligibility requirements that they have in place. I have another slide to talk about that. Go ahead, Mr. Davis. No, no, that's good. I'm glad you said that, man. One clarification. Explain your funding requirement. What does that mean? They're not participating. Are you talking about their participation or their deductions for employees? He's talking about how much they get charged for premium. How much we share that with our retirees or not? How much we pay? How much the retiree pay? OK. That's an option for the agency. That's an option for us because we're a local subdivision. It's not an option for state agencies, but it is an option for us because we're a local subdivision. So a big part of what we'll be working with Matt and Jennifer on if we make this transition is communicating this change to all of our retirees, all of our employees. And so we'll be doing a lot of educating, a lot of sending out emails and messages. Hopefully, as many people who've had come to our sessions where we talked about insurance, hopefully it all come to the sessions where we talk about, say, health plan because they need to know what's getting ready to happen and they need to be educated and informed and a lot of what is going to be said. SIPA does a great job of providing communication. They've got a lot of stuff on their website. I would encourage any retiree or current employee to go out and look at the people website, to look at the insurance program, because it is some extensive communication. But we certainly will hope people will be as invested in this as they were in some of our other discussions because this is what we do. They need to know how the plan works, how it's covered all that because one of the things that will happen is my benefits managers, Connie and Caroline will have to work with PIVA. So a lot of our communication will go directly to PIVA for some of those decisions and some of that information. It's no longer our plan. So it will be on their plan. So that's going to be important. We're going to make sure that everybody has that information. I think she's going to pass. Okay. So we already kind of talked about, Matt, we talked about the funding and all that. So the premiums, when we transition to the state health plan, we no longer can change our premiums. Transitioning is really going to help us to try and kind of manage our costs and our old payable liability, but it's going to be managed in a totally different way as we've talked about before. We will pay a set amount of money to the state health plan to be a participant. So we won't pay the claims. We won't have some of the administrative costs, like I've said before. So it's a totally different dynamic as to how we're managing those benefits and those costs. Active employee premiums are set by PIVA, but like Matt said, the retiree premiums can be determined by our local subdivision, how much we share the love with our retirees. So we have the option to pass all that cost off or a percentage or what happens. So just to be clear on that and to Howard's point before about some things being good, I mean, the reality is the reason sometimes we go through all this really isn't, because of our active, our actives don't come up and say, we don't like the premium, but they probably should be more engaged, but they're not who we always hear from are the retirees. And so with that point, that doesn't save us from those meetings because if there is a decision of this council to ask or mandate that the retirees pay more of their premiums or something else, that still is going to be a call that we make. Is that correct? That's correct. So every year we will be looking at that because based on the experience rate, you all might want to make an adjustment. You know, we'll have to see. We definitely will still be talking about the cost as we move forward. We based on the trend, we don't anticipate there being, you know, but I don't know. Lord knows I don't have a magic ball crystal ball and I can't predict that. So I guess, and again saying this is bad, I'm just wanting to make sure we have all the right information. So we potentially could potentially be in a situation where we really have no autonomy on plan design and other things that we've done in the past to change premiums or costs. But we, whatever the cost is, whatever the premium is, it's going to be done not, and we don't have any decision-making ability in that, but we will have to say whether or not we're going to pay a defined benefit up. It did find amount of that. We're passing it all to the retirees, whatever. Is that what, pretty much? And so we'll, we're gonna, I got a few more slides to talk about that a little bit. So what we are recommending is that the city cover the funded rate for the pre-65s, just like the funded employees. As you all know, we've said we had a DDB, we haven't honored our DDB. We paid more than we were supposed to pay forever. So this sets it where the retirees, which we've traditionally done, we have had our retirees' premiums be the same as our active premiums. And so that's what we're suggesting when we go to stay health plan. Is that the pre-65 retirees' premiums reflect the employees' premiums. I mean, I'll show you that in a second. And that we continue for the post-65s to provide some assistance to them as well with those premiums. Let me show you what those premiums look like. So if you look at a comparison of premiums on the next page, remember on the city of Columbia side, we had shown you some numbers about some plan design changes, some increases in premiums, and some increases in co-pays, deductibles, co-insurances. So I wanted to make sure that we were clear on that, because remember you all passed the motion that we were gonna share that, start going towards that 80-20 spread. So that's what our premiums would look like in 2019. So I felt that that was the best comparison to show you. These are the 2019 premiums for Peeba, because they're premiums for the employee not increased. So that's what those premiums look like. These are monthly premiums. And then those are what the city of Columbia premiums were projected to be for 2019. Can I ask, what's the... It's a huge difference between the standard and the savings. Why is it such a... The savings is a how deductible plan. It's not the benefits that are... Similar to our base plan. So it's not the coverage that's different, it's the deductible. Right, right. It's the deductibles, the co-insurances, the co-pays, and you'll see down on that chart a little bit lower, you'll see... Oh, I see, oh yeah, that's a huge difference. So that reflects that difference. Because they don't charge with that. It's generic preferred and non-preferred, $9, $38 or $63. With the savings plan, you would pay 20% of the cost of that prescription, and the plan would pay 80%. So if that prescription was $300, you'd pay 20% of $300. You wouldn't pay $63. You'd pay 20% of whatever that $300 is. So the savings plan is really, and we will make sure that they do a lot of education for people on that. Because the savings plan, the high deductible plan is for people who are relatively well and manage their money very well. And have $300 to $600. Exactly. Now there is a health savings account that's attached to it that they can put money in so they can anticipate these increased costs, but if somebody looks at the premium, as you can see, it's $9.70, it's $77.40. So they might get a little fooled by the plan. That is cheap, but cheaper means that the benefits are different. So we'll hopefully do a lot of communication with people on that. Because we say we have a high deductible plan, our core plan, but it's not by definition. So most of our employees are either on our buy-up plan or our core plan. I mean our base plan, that was our attempt at a high deductible plan was our base plan. Most of our employees are either on our buy-up plan or our core plan. So the buy-up, the standard is between our buy-up and our core plan. So we're anticipating most of our employees will go to the standard plan, but we wanna make sure that those people who think, well, I was on the base, so I'll go to the savings that they understand there's a difference between those two plans. So that's just kind of a summary. Again, that's what the plans look like at a glance, just to kind of give everybody some comparison. So you can see what the deductibles look like on their plans, the co-insurance, the co-insurance max. And again, like I said before, those were proposed for 2019. Those aren't our current, but those were the proposed changes in order for us to deal with our liability issues that we had. Tim, go back and tell me again, the buy-up core base between the standard and the point of savings. So their standard plan is kind of in between our buy-up and our core plan. It's not as good as our buy-up plan. We've got an extremely rich plan, but it's a good plan, it's a very comparable plan. This between the buy-up and the core and then the base and the savings are more alike in terms of what the plan plays for our employees. Does that answer that question? I switched it again. I know, it didn't. It didn't say? It didn't copy to this. I said that like five times. Okay, so the deductibles are switched. If you would write in, now fix this. Jeff's watched me change it. She did. I changed it five times. I don't know why I didn't say. So the deductible for the buy-up would be 1,000. The deductible for the base is 2,500. That got switched. We'll make sure it's right in the final presentation. I changed it five times, I swear I did. And those were the proposed plans. And I put on here, premiums are estimates and subject to change, because Laura, if it's appending off or something, I, y'all don't, it may be different. We'll make sure we communicate it extensively to everybody so everybody knows what the new premiums would be, okay? So when we look at the retiree rates, these are the proposed premiums for retirees. Again, these are monthly premiums. These are proposed again based on what the active employees are paying for our pre-65. You'll see that they should be the same amounts, okay? You all will remember that we had not determined whether or not we were going to do premium increases for our retirees because we had not made a lot of those decisions. Whether we were gonna put, have an HRA, whether we were gonna drop people from coverage, we hadn't made those decisions. So we hadn't made any premium decisions, but I guarantee you that either the changes or the amount that we were gonna recharge was gonna be significant. So I can kind of guarantee you that was gonna happen. The post-65s, it's a Medicare supplement and you'll see our plans over there. We have a senior supplement and a RX plan where they had to get both. Now it'll be just one Medicare supplement. And again, the pre-65 is up to us. Pre-amp post-65 is up to us what we charge for those premiums, but those are our recommendations. And I don't know if you want Mr. Lundy over here to give you any, have any questions about how those, what, you know, anything about the numbers, but he calculated it based on looking at what we would have to pay, our trends, reviewing all of that information. And this makes it sustainable for us now. You know, today is what, what's the day? August 7th, 2018, so that's, this is our proposal. Just about all of the premiums would be less expensive for the employees. And when you're talking about the retirees, the retirees are gonna be able to continue on this plan where we were looking at some severe cutbacks and decisions that would have eliminated some of the retirees on the Gellis, especially the spouse. But this is, as you just said, a sustainable decision, rather than one that you would have to fight each year. All right. Sustainable today? You know, I don't know what's gonna happen next year. And then we just have to know what we're doing, and I actually do think it's good, but I'm sitting here, I was thinking, Sam and Howard were talking about the state plan, but I remember very distinctly one of the conversations we had. We had a retiree, I won't say the position that the person held, who came in front of us and basically now works for the state and told us they don't do the state's employment plan. They stayed on ours because it was better. So I mean, you still will have folks who are not going to be happy or not gonna be satisfied, even though it's been proposed, people were saying, look at this, the reality is, as Pam has said, we've always known our plan is very rich. I think the state plan is good, it's still good, but still when people are accustomed to a certain level of access and care, they're not gonna like any kind of change. And though, although they want certain things, we just have to be, we have to be very clear in what is doing and be prepared to deal with any discussion or opposition. And most importantly, when we come to that defined benefit, we still were making changes that really, I think, benefit out of everybody, benefits the retirees more than anybody else. And if we're doing that, and then still they don't pay their full share, that's not fair to everyone else. That's one of the trade-offs. But I do want to ask some questions on the next steps, really the two and three. So, well, not really two, I know my position on two. Well, two and three. Two, why is that a question? And is there something that switching over causes us to feel like that would be a discussion? And then number three, most importantly, the switch, what is the mindset behind potentially closing the health center? And if, or if we modified it, what do you mean by modified? Okay, good. That's a good segue to the next slide. So, if you all were to make this decision, we would need you to vote on it at the next meeting in order to say we were gonna accept to participate with the state health plan. The two and three, right now we have our wellness incentive program where people get $25 active employees and their spouse get $25 for doing certain $75. Why would I say $25? It just came out just like it was the truth. $75 for activities up to $225 per person. So, if we were to go to the state health plan, that's currently managed by Blue Cross for shield because we're self-insured, they manage that for us. So we would either have to look at finding another administrator for that program or not having that program at all. Because right now it's part of the administration that Blue Cross for shield does for our entire plan. So we'd have to go out and find another administrator for the plan. Does the state have any kind of comparable wellness initiatives or incentives? Not in the same manner where they give actual dollars for doing the activities as we do. Now they do have certain wellness incentive programs and certain things that they do but it's not in the form of cash dollars that we provide to a person for going to get their T clean or going for their wellness visit. It's not that same type of a plan. I will say that last year I think only 10% of our population participated. So we're talking about 200 people. So it would be a decision to make of whether or not it's worth hiring an administrator and going through all the administrative costs or something that only three people in the room do. So I mean, I do it, but I can't tell you how many people don't have never heard of it no matter how much we try to communicate with it and they don't do it. So it would be a decision we have to make. We can certainly explore other on third party entities that could manage that for us but we would have to get somebody to manage that for us. I personally don't know that it's worth it when we have such a low percentage of people who participated in the first place. So it's certainly a loss for those of us who do it but most people don't. So on our employee health center, do we get our fire and police physicals at the health center? Yeah, our pre-employments, our fire physicals, the police are starting to do some fit for duty physicals there, just visits that our employees can go there free of charge. The reason why we might have to close it or modify it is because again, that's Blue Cross Bushill with our relationship with them and UCI medical who runs doctors care. We were being invoiced and managing that all together as you all would see in those budget documents that give you, there's a separate cost for managing the health center. So we'd have to figure out a new method or a new model for managing the health center. We may still be able to continue to do it. I'm not saying we won't, but we're gonna have to explore how we do that. Because right now those claims just go through Blue Cross Bushill, there's zero co-pays, there's nothing. So once we separate, we become a member of the state health plan, we no longer have that type of connectivity. But I mean with UCI. We already, I thought we were switching anyway. Well, you know, we did, we did that, that RFP and we ended up not switching to marathon, he's the one that get that contract. So we would have to, we didn't switch, we stayed with Blue Cross Bushill and UCI medical mostly because of cost. It's gonna cost us a lot to go to marathon and at the time we couldn't afford to make that switch. Because it was gonna mean having a totally different model, paying for some technology and a whole lot of other things that we're gonna make the cost go up considerably. So we didn't make that change. If we kept it, you're saying if we kept it. When we, I think it was two, was it two years ago or three years ago? That we did an RFP and we considered going, switching to marathon hell here to manage. Yeah, I remember us holding up and I thought the conversation was, some members of council would go check out Lexington because the marathon was still in there and at the conversation I thought came back from, we were impressed with what happened at Lexington and we were gonna transition, but then I know that stuff happened never. So all across, all across now she says it's not. Well, what happened? It's not financially. Well, no, Mr. Davis, what we haven't done is, right now it was just they were, their organizations were tied together. So it was an easy relationship. Once we're no longer self-insured, it's gonna change that dynamic. So we have not met with UCI medical yet. We reached out to them to say, if we ever, let's talk about what that'll look like. So we still have the opportunity to either do that and see how much that would cost us. And then we can bring back to you all, whether or not the cost and how we would manage that center and then we all can make a decision, whether or not you wanna do it or not. I'm trying to remember the total conversation on that, but you minutes ago indicated or alluded to the fact that there's not, doesn't appear to be a great demand for the service. That's for the wellness incentive program. That's for the wellness incentive program. For the health center, I mean, we do have quite a volume of employees that go through, it's a great benefit. Again, we do our firefighter physicals through there. We'd have to contract with somebody else to do that separately. And so I do think that there are some benefits to having the employee health center, but we may have to take a look at what we do, how we provide it, whether people have to pay copays. Right now it's free. They may have to pay a copay. I don't know, we didn't get, we wanted to stay away from charging and dealing with money and all that kind of stuff that comes along with that. This is expensive. We took credit cards and if we took money and you know, all of that. So it was an easy thing to do it as a free health center. And so we would have to look at that. And Jeff and I, it was all potential savings. Would there not be any value at looking at the savings that we might have with switching, the investing that into all of our wellness initiatives, whether it is keeping the employee wellness center, whether it's doing some other things. I do think, I think it's taken a while to get off the ground and I don't think that it's utilized really to the level where it could be, but it's starting to utilize a lot more and more and more folks who go like it. I enjoy it and I think that we're able to, it's a huge benefit I think to the employees who use it and I would hate to see us have come this far and then close it. That's my concern. That's my concern. Those persons who are currently enjoying the benefits of our health initiative in that center. Particularly for those concerned like Abby, part of your problems that follow up to that, some of those things. It would certainly be of interest to me to see if where that ball would bounce, whether it bounces in a way where we issue it to a third party or we do something else. Those persons who are, some of those persons sort of depend upon that wellness check, that wellness factor. Well now, I don't want us to not remember that the state health plan has a lot of crime disease management. They have some of the same things that Blue Cross Michelle is offering us now with some of those and they are, that's important to them as well. The wellness checkups and those types of things. It just looks different. It'll be different under their plan and then it is under ours. That's fine, that's fine. Yeah, but we do, it's a great benefit. Like Miss Devine said, I go, I take my children. I love our employee health center. I think it's a wonderful benefit. And we certainly want to keep the benefit if we can figure out the logistics and technically how to do it and then how to afford it. We certainly want to do that and we want to do the wellness incentive program. It's just weighing whether or not the cost of keeping these things is going to be beneficial or not. We don't want to stop the process of determining whether we will go into the state health plan with making those decisions. And so we can do those decisions at a later date. We need to go ahead and vote in order to start a process of educating and moving this ball forward. Right, we're getting later in the year and so we want to make sure we go ahead and do that and we will continue to evaluate whether or not that the wellness incentive and the employee health center is something we can do. We want to keep it because it's a great benefit. It's just how do we keep it and how can we afford to keep it is what questions that have to be answered. But that's the next step. Down the road, that's the next step. And it's an immediate next step. I mean, we're already talking about because we would want to make that change close to the first of the year as well if we could to kind of do it all together. But immediately, we need to vote on it. Well, at the oldest 14th meeting, yes, sir. We need to make a decision about it and vote on it. And then again, you all have had some great questions and definitely things that we have talked about and considered and we wanted to make sure that you all understood all the facts, all the information to help you determine where your vote will be when you decide. I just want to make sure that when we do that on the 14th, that there's a parameter beyond the vote that's going to look at wellness care and that sort of thing. If that's going to be any long gated conversation, I certainly would welcome that. And the state health plan, they always encourage their participating employers to do those things from their perspective in their organizations to help wellness because it helps them too. The healthier our people are and the lower the claims are, it helps everybody. So any of this stuff that we can do to continue to do some of those wellness things and paying attention to some of our chronic diseases and helping our people become healthy. And we're still going to continue to do those things. Yeah, definitely. Does anybody have any more questions, comments? I'm going to update that presentation, that dog on the chart one more time. I mean, I'll have to turn it over to you because typically that's not... Yes, ma'am, that's fine. Come to the podium so that we can get that on recording. I would just say as she's coming forward, Pam, I think it would be helpful just because we're kind of talking abstract, but between now and the 14th, I think we most of us know where we're going to end up, but we'd like to see the details of the benefits. Like what does the state health plan provide and what we currently plot and where there might be some differences, like so that we are very clear on what might be both lost or gained from the transition. Yes, ma'am. Hey, I'm investigating my Stella for the view that this might be, but I just want to say thank you for probably, I can say that for myself and most of us active and retired employees. We've been fighting this for years and this is pretty good and this is, I think that's what I'm saying, but thank you. I do have a few eligibility questions. This is the right direction. Thank you. Thank you. Does anybody have any other questions from Ms. Benjamin or the representatives from Iba? And again, this is the start, I do thank them for last minute coming. This is certainly the start of us communicating. If this is what we do, we will have lots of sessions. So I wouldn't, like I said before, I hope any people come to those sessions has come to some of our meetings we've had because this is very important. Typically people don't pay attention to their benefits and then when something happens, they'll be knocking on your door to say, I didn't know and this is different and so we want to make sure that we do a lot of outreach to help people know what's going to happen. Is that important? Yeah, I'd echo that as I said before, the reality is every time we have these conversations we typically get a lot of retirees who come, but are active employees. And I know where you meet during the day and they're working and that's great, but we've got to figure out a way to make sure that they understand and engage because I do think that there will be some differences and people won't realize it until they go to the doctor and realize something's not covered or they change something and it's different. So we just need to make sure that we have a responsibility to our retirees, we have a responsibility to our current employees and we need to make sure that they're engaged and they know what's happening. And we definitely will do our best to be at their locations, having meetings and times that are convenient for them, have as many people, sitting down with them as possible because we really want people to really understand benefits in general and then understand what these new benefits will look like. So that's important to us as well. Okay, all right, thank you Ms. Benjamin. Thank you. And that's not on the agenda, but I guess before we leave what I thought, because we all have this, if you haven't already, I guess we all need to get asleep and be aware where we're going this evening. But just looking at this list, I just see a couple and I know Howard saw one. I don't see Earl Wood going here. Earl Wood is having a social, beginning at 6th at Earl Wood Park. And then I see down here, Forest Hills says six to eight. It's actually the email I have says seven to 830. That was, I think those are two corrections that jumped out at me. Howard, you had something too. Gilbert Heights is meeting from six to eight at the LaVenice home on a little name of the street. Good. Like Kilburn Heights. Kilburn Heights. Does anybody else see anything? No, Earl Wood was the only one. Well, if there's nothing further, is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. It's been moved in second. And all in favor? Well, no. Let's vote three to roll.