City Council - Regular Meeting

But I just always want to be able to pay for the employee's health insurance.

You got to wait to some degree. Oh, yeah. Everybody can.

And he figured out he had some pretty good sized traps.

I have a picture of him flexing his trap on his t-shirt. Are you sure about that? I won't be able to pay for the supplement. It's a whole lot cheaper than a major medical health insurance. If they've got more Medicare, we can do a supplement loan. and save us money and make their life easier with insurance. That's what we're going to look at. Yeah, that's $200. Yeah, $1,000. Yeah, $200 or $300. I don't know how much it'll be, but I'm going to get an appointment with two or three local insurance people. I can't take or tell them what the insurance is.

Thank you for coming. Welcome, everybody. I'd like to ask TJ to offer our invocation tonight if he would.

Yes, ma'am.

Father, we thank you for the opportunity to come before you and do your work. Lord, we ask that you watch over this nation, this state, our city, our leaders, and our elections, Lord. Let them be free and fair. Guide us in what we do and what we say so that it's helpful to this city and the people that are in it. Lord, we ask that you forgive us of our sins and help us to go down that righteous path each and every day. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Amen. Please join me in the pledge. I pledge allegiance. Um, items of community interest, um, Stephanie, you and Boyd have anything to talk about? Is there anything coming up with y'all? Not until November. Okay.

My birthday day after tomorrow.

Happy birthday. Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, I, it's, it's getting too close to the end of the year to worry about too much. So let's move on to the city manager's report.

Uh, construction should begin in the next week or so, uh, for the rock and pillar street drainage pro and bridge project. As soon as the contracts are signed and they have them, we should have a pre-construction meeting and work will begin shortly thereafter. So that's something we need to look forward to. I have applied for a TCEQ solid waste grant for the citywide cleanup day, which will be providing 10 roll-off dumpsters for cleaning up the town. There will be city employees checking to see if the dumpers are city residents by providing a copy of their city utility bill. If we were awarded the grant, we would probably have the cleanup day the third week in November so as to avoid Second Monday and Thanksgiving week. Hopefully we can put the dumpsters out at the Second Monday parking lot. The event will be Tuesday through Saturday, and we plan on having the dumpsters at the Second Monday parking lot, which I just said. More information about that later. I've checked with Waste Connections, and we're going to figure out how to make that deal work. We have begun placing buoys at the lake using our new pontoon boat. The first to be placed was close to the island out from Selma Park where some boaters had run aground and hit stumps and things around there. We now have the ability to place buoys and do other things at the lake safely within our time frame and do not have to wait on private contractors to do the work. Jay Evans, Kirk Higgins, Chance Gilmore, and I have contacted a company called Impact Engineering. who specializes in writing the wildfire management plan required by the PUC and ERCOT. If you recall, we must have a plan submitted by the end of the calendar year. We'll have weekly Zoom meetings until IMPACT personnel have all the information they need to put together the plan. We met last Tuesday to discuss our vegetation plan and we'll continue to meet until they're ready to write the plan. We had another meeting today. and we will continue to do that weekly until everything is taken care of. Any questions?

On the city cleanup thing, the dumpsters, I know you said that they're going to monitor and check utility bills and whatnot. After hours, are those dumpsters locked or secured?

I'll have the police patrol it. Okay. The good thing is they can dump those dumpsters at the transfer stations, So they may just move them, you know, go dump them and leave them out there and then bring them back the next morning.

Okay.

We'll take care of that, make sure it doesn't happen at night. But, yeah, I thought about that.

Yeah, I'm sure you did.

Any other questions?

It's not on the report, but what's going to happen up here at Matthew Street?

I'm sorry, do what?

That rough road, Matthew Street and Conn?

What was your question? Are you talking about the construction? Yeah. Tony, I don't know how far along that, if they got completed that project.

No, they have to finish up on Strong.

No, I'm talking about up on.

Yeah, he's not going to do all the pages until at the end. So he'll do Colin, Matthews, Strong, what he's got on, what's it saying, and a couple people.

Yeah, he's got to fix that too. It's going to be rough for a while.

I've been asked.

Any other questions? Just to say the least, the best thing I can say about them is we've scared them, but with our complaints, and they're starting to act better, but it's not the greatest construction company in the world, so... We're trying to stay on Tony to be done.

Yeah, it's a good.

Okay, let's move on. Public comments. Do you have any public comments from the audience? If not, then let's move on to the consent agenda item. Your minutes are in your packet. If you have read them, I'd entertain a motion to accept the minutes as presented. So moved. Sproul's job. Second. Second Boyd. That's what I heard first. Shaw.

Aye.

Truex. Aye. Holstein. Aye. Sproul's. Aye. Host. Aye. McEwen.

Aye.

The next item on the agenda is the second reading of 2026-09, an ordinance adopting an annual budget for the City of Bowie for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2026 and ending September 30, 2027, adopting a reference document, a said budget, and establishing an effective date and repealing all ordinances and regulations in conflict herewith. This is our second final reading for the budget. I'll entertain a motion to accept the budget presented to you.

So moved.

Shaw, do I have a second?

Second.

Post. I'm sorry. I heard her McEwen. Aye. Post. Aye. Sprouls. Aye. Holstein. Aye. Truax. Aye. And Shaw. Aye. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is the second reading. of 2026-10 an ordinance levying an annual ad valorem tax rate for the city of Bowie, Texas for the tax year of 2026. If you choose to make the motion, I have a statement here that has to be read exactly. So would anybody like to make a motion?

I'll make a motion to Laura.

If you'll make the motion and read that. I move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 0.5, 7, 5, 0, which is effectively a 5.89% increase in the tax rate.

Do I have a second? Second Boyd post. Aye. Truax. Aye. Sproles. Aye. Shaw. Aye. McEwen. Aye. And Holstein. Aye. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is the second reading of ordinance 2026-11, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Bowie, Texas, amending chapter 10, traffic control, article 10.2, stop signs established by adding D, regulating traffic flow around Kingdom Ridge subdivision in Bowie, Texas, establishing stop sign traffic control devices, repealing any conflicting clause, providing for a severability clause, and establishing an effective date. Do I have a motion to accept the motion, the ordinance as presented? So moved post. Do I have a second?

Second.

Truex. Shaw. Aye. McEwen. Aye. Sprouls. Aye. Holstein. Aye. Post. Aye. And Truex. Aye. Thank you very much. Next item on our agenda is an update on city health insurance policies by Rodney Dryden from hub international. And if Rodney, if you wouldn't mind taking the podium, you have a printout in front of you that he has presented.

Thank you for having me, Mayor, Council, staff. Each year, as you know, we go through the process of getting our renewal from the insurance company that we have at the time, marketing the plans to all available marketplaces. This year was a more difficult year than we have had. You should have in front of you a list of responses. We received many declined quotes based on the risk characteristics of our plan. With that, we are recommending that we do renew with Blue Cross Blue Shield. Historically, the city has offered multiple health plans of which the city has given employees the opportunity to select any one of those plans as employee only coverage at no cost to them. It is our recommendation this year, based on the level of the increase with Blue Cross, that we renew our current plans, however, that we change the contribution structure, whereas the City of Bowie make the base plan, in other words, the plan that the city pays 100% of the employee cost for, be the HMO plan. Currently, you have 48 of your employees that are enrolled in that plan. Some of them covered appendix that plan will continue to be offered and it will be no change to those employees for that plan. The, you have 41 people that currently elect PPO as an option for themselves and or family members. They will continue to have those options, but at a cost to them, making that decision changes the increase to the city for its part. from $334,000 to $154,000, a 22.41% increase over current expenditures. Before I move forward with anything else on the health care piece, does mayor or council have questions?

So your 21% is with the $154,000?

22.41. It's the shaded yellow piece. I don't have a shaded yellow piece. Oh, my apologies. It says... That is not the correct document. They're missing a page, Robert. This page that I'm looking at, you're missing the meat of the conversation. I'll hand this around to everyone so you can see it. My apologies. When you look at that, the shaded is the current three plans, the middle plans, or the renewal of those current three plans, and the far right are the current three plans, but making the HMO as the base. That's what causes the change in cost. Had the city elected to continue the current structure, which allows employees to choose any plan, and the city pay the cost the cost was almost double to the city of what it is to make the HMO, the base. Okay.

So with that tiered structure, is that pretty typical of other municipalities organizations?

It's very typical. Um, as you know, we represent a lot of cities and it is not uncommon to offer a plan as the base. Um, then give the employees the option to buy up to a different plan if they so choose as i said 48 of your employees are already enrolled in that plan that is the base plan and they will see no change the the other programs that the city offers dental vision life disability no changes to any of those costs so Just a difficult year. Health care is difficult right now, just period. Thank you. So you'll have this in front of you any minute. So now that we have the right correct page in front of you, um, the, the shaded call columns on the left, those are your current plans. You have three current plans. You have an HMO with a 2,500 deductible. You have a high deductible health plan, HSA eligible plan with a 3,500. It's a PPO and then you have another PPO that is a $3,000 deductible that has a $40 and a $80 office copay. When you look at the, um, the middle three columns, the first white columns, those are the renewals for those plans. And you can see the renewal increases are staggering at 35, 60 and 60 with a blended increase of 48.6, four. That's a $334,000 increase to the city if you said, we're going to keep doing what we've been doing.

What's the biggest factor contributing to these renewal rates? Risk. Claims.

I'll kind of put it rawly. The raw truth is we had claims 200% above our premium.

That's correct. So we have to be careful with what we discuss, but our loss ratio is Blue Cross paid out almost two times what they took in in the last year.

In just our city?

Just your city. And so, which explains why the other 14 carriers declined. They looked at our risk characteristics of our group, claims, ongoing claims, projected claims, could they make a price point that made sense or did they want to assume the risk at all? And the answer overwhelmingly was no thank you, declined to quote. And that includes Texas Health Benefits or TML. I was going to ask that question. Which we have quite a bit of, quite a number of cities that utilize TXHB for their programs. Interestingly, they use Blue Cross Blue Shield's network. So, but they declined to quote based on the risk characteristics of our plan. And so again, we are making the recommendation to continue the three plans that we have, although we looked at many alternatives, but we are making the recommendation to continue the three plans we have, but from the city's perspective, change the contribution method to be focused on the HMO as the base offering of which the city makes its contribution. And we did that in order to mitigate the increase as much as we could.

I'll kind of give you an example of what that will do to you. Our health insurance went up because of how many claims we had paid. Our casual property and casualty insurance went down. Our liability insurance went down because our experience rate were lower. And I nearly fell over when I was doing the budget when I saw that.

I have a question, Rodney. Yes, ma'am. I'm looking at the employee spouse plan. And their cost is $2,000 a month. Unreal.

On that PPO HSA, are you looking at the 2074.78? That's correct. Man. A month. I can afford that. This is, this is the challenge we face with virtually every client.

What, what we see $3,200 for a family.

That's it's really, if you look at it, it's $4,033 less the 7 88 that the city pays, which gets you to the 3,200 number.

Absolutely ridiculous.

As Bert and Robert. and I have discussed health care is broken.

There's no care in health care.

And this puts it on paper for people to see. And it's a difficult conversation. And this same story holds true really Regardless of size people say well if we're bigger if we have more employees we can we can band together with other cities Or or what have you? The healthy cities with good risk don't band together with other cities because their rates are lower only the ones that are struggling with cost want to band together because of risk and Even in our very large employers that we represent with thousands of employees, they're struggling also. The difference is they just continue to subsidize more at the employer level to help those numbers that you pointed out be lower. It's, it's just a challenge blue cross blue shield or HCSC corporation that owns blue cross of Texas and four other blue crosses across the country lost $4 billion in 2025. So it's, um, there's a lot that goes into that, but it's, it's a very, it's a complicated metric. And unfortunately, in the end, it's the members, it's the people that are using the programs that are having challenges. And we looked at many, many, many different options. We looked at really high deductible plans with HRAs, with MRPs, to see if we could get to a price point that made sense, and we couldn't. And the market wouldn't yield anything for us because of our risk. What are some of the factors that make us a higher risk? Diagnoses and conditions within your covered employee population. I have to be super careful because of HIPAA and PHI and those kinds of things. When you have forget the city of buoy and its participants. But when you have a situation where you have a person that has been diagnosed with something, they look at how much in claim dollars do they project to spend on that condition in the next 12 months? And how much premium are we generating today? And how much of that will it cover? And so, um, to the city managers comment about utilization on your property and casually it's no different they look at what has occurred it's less about what has occurred and it's more about projecting what is coming so they look at it two ways because we have we have stop loss even though they look at our risk we still have a stop loss meaning once a claim gets to a certain level it goes to the reinsurer well that resets every twelve months so if those claims are ongoing when we renew those claims come back to the city as a risk. So it can, they continue to evaluate those risks every single year. Um, the reality is for this city, the vast majority of your employees do not use a lot of healthcare. That's the reality. Um, but you're no different than any other client in this way. It's a handful that drive cost. And, and that's, and that's why you have group insurance. Um, It's difficult. You have currently seven people that cover dependents at some level at the city, meaning a spouse or they cover children. Um, even today with the city paying a hundred percent of the employee costs, regardless of plan, you have no one that can afford to cover a family, even at today's numbers. So, and, and to give you perspective, that's $1,365. Um, for your least expensive plan. Now that number goes up $500 per pay period, which is quite honestly, it's devastating for people.

Well, fortunately our families are covered someplace else, but So let me ask Sandy a question. Is this something that we vote on every year? So we're not taking a vote on this. Are we? I didn't think so. All right. I appreciate that. The breakdown, it's certainly, um, educated us to a lot.

Does anybody have, it's a difficult conversation. There's no doubt. Um, we've kept, we've kept your leadership in the loop throughout the year because of budget. of what's coming, what was coming, disappointing results, but we went to every market we could go to that carries a financial strength rating of A- or better that would offer to the city. There are other options out there that don't have A- or better financial stability, and we do not participate with those companies. We just don't think it's a prudent decision. So we will continue to explore opportunities. Leadership and my team continue to talk about alternative ideas for opt out options and things like that, that we're contemplating for future, because you do have some. Don't necessarily need the city's insurance. So we're talking about making some other changes in the future that could benefit, um, the city's budget, its employees on a going forward basis.

Sounds good. Anybody have any more questions for Rodney?

What numbers are included in the budget that we have? Um, are they these most current ones?

Yes, I believe when Burke finished the numbers, he gave us a contingency plan for it, too. So that'll more than cover this.

But that was above this final?

No, it was above this final. Okay. So we're covered in the budget. Thank you.

Thank you.

And we appreciate your work.

I wanted Rodney to come and explain to you all what... Robert and I have been listening to him. We didn't like listening to him, but we heard him. So it's a complicated deal, and it's sound advice from Hub International. We appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah, and I appreciate you and Robert bringing this to our attention, because it's really kind of hard for us to understand when we're budgeting when he says insurance is going to go up 60%.

It's certainly not a message that we enjoy delivering. And some people, and none of you asked this question, but in transparency, we are not paid based on the amount of premium that the city funds. So, um, that is not how we are compensated. So, um, our, our job is to effectively represent the city and, and create the best picture that we can for the insurance market. And we're in a pretty hard market right now. If you know what that means, it's, um, It's difficult to get exceptionally good numbers on the health care side. You saw that in the property and casualty over the last four or five years, and that softened some. On the benefit side, it's just a tough market right now. So we will go through this exercise again. I will continue to keep staff up to date on changes within our risk. Also, just so you'll know, in the next week to 10 days, we'll be in front of your staff explaining the programs to them and what their options are for the coming year.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Have a good night.

You too. Um, all right, let's, uh, move on. I'm sorry. I'm still a little frazzled by all that, uh, to approve the joint election agreement with the county of Montaigne. This was brought to your attention. I think at the last meeting, plus we have to do this every year. We do a joint election with the county. You can see all the information in there. So again, we need to approve this. Um, do I have a motion to approve the joint election agreement? So my true acts, do I have a second? Second post make you one. All right. Holstein. All right. Sproles, Shaw, Truax and post. All right. Thank you. All right. The next item on the agenda is resolution 20 26 dash 28. A resolution authorizing the filing of a grant application with Nortec's Regional Planning Commission for a regional solid waste grant program grants program grant authorizing Burke Cunningham, city manager, to act on behalf of the city of Bowie in all matters related to the application and pledging that if a grant is received, city of Bowie will comply with grant requirements of the Nortec's Regional Planning Commission the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, and the state of Texas. This is what he spoke to you about in his report.

We have to have a resolution. I've already sent in the grant, and she told me because we hadn't done this that I could turn this in later. So anyway, as soon as y'all approve this and we sign it, I'll send it in, and that'll complete the grant application.

Uh, I would entertain a motion to accept the resolution as presented.

So moved.

Okay. I'm gonna pick one, Laura. Pick one. Oh, thanks. Second.

Okay.

Boy. True X. Aye. Holstein. Aye. Sproles. Aye. Post. Aye. McEwen. Aye. And Shaw.

Aye.

All right. We are going to leave and go into executive session at 6 30. That's all I'm gonna do.