County Council - Regular Meeting

I just because it was bigger. That's it. Good morning everyone. I will call this meeting to order September 15, 2025 to Cal County Commissioners. Good morning, Daddy. What you got today?

Well, good morning. Let's see. Um we are working with um our health plan uh regarding a uh an employee that has well we have a few employees that have some specialty meds. And so um this one in particular the uh the um situation uh this episode this infusion um is $14,000 pop. Yeah, exactly. Um they have found a uh there's a a specialty uh pharmacy uh that can uh do it for 6.5k. So that's a 53% decrease reduction for us. Uh a savings of you know a lot. Um so anyway uh more more to come for us to work through that. Um, so thanks to PHP and um, mostly PHP right now, they've really been uh, looking at that, although Apex and Lauren, they've been really pushing this so that we could get this employee what they need. First of all, they did a um, uh, kind of an override for, you know, one month worth while, you know, we try to work through all of this. So when you're talking this kind of meh, this kind of money, it's, you know, it's the pharmaceutical industry, you know, those are the sorts of things that um, you know, um, this is good, you know, that we're able to cut those costs. So um, moving on, of course, uh, later we will have Apex in here. We'll talk about some of the trends and things and maybe looking uh at uh the future what we can do to enhance some of our cost

reductions and keep keep our employees healthy. But uh let's look at some work comp situations. We um in August we had uh three cases that were closed which was great. Well actually two of them were only recordable only record only. So, um there was no uh medical treatment. Um nothing went forward. However, the big one was the one in the sheriff's office uh that has been open since October of 22. So, that one finally closed. So, that's uh that's great. Um and that leaves only uh six currently open for us and they're all in the sheriff's office. But, you know, we've talked before the risks. You know, you've got prisoners that will bite, kick, whatever, because what do they have to lose? So, um anyway, yeah, speaking of safety, move on. Um last week sent out an email to our department heads asking about some training topics that they would like, uh for us to be able to um provide to them. and uh you know some maybe some department specific things. So we're working on that with IP and our next uh safety committee meeting will be October the 30th. So kind of keep that in mind. That'll be at 8:30 down in the basement of the 9inth Street ANX. Um so other things that we've been working on, well the ADA uh um plan, we've been doing the building surveys um and thank you to our maintenance department. uh in particular Rick who has just really um taken a look

at our buildings, the buildings that he works on, Community Corrections, Central and Sunny Meadows, and um he has helped us get the information that we need to fill out those surveys. So, we have the other ones working al um moving along also. And a big shout out to GIS. They had we had had a meeting with them a while a little while back and uh they have already finished the layers that we need on the maps. So uh we had a meeting well I had a meeting last week with Jarrett and uh talked about a few things. We got some wonky things. We've got some you sidewalks that were never there that were it's like oh okay or they probably were. um you know when we started this process back in 2012 and to get some overview pictures like oh it looks like maybe there was a sidewalk there at one time but the homeowner has gotten rid of it and so that would be in the incorporated Spencerville that we'd be talking about. So, we're looking at that. Have a meeting later on with Ben to uh talk in a little more detail about those. And kudos to them. Also, um the uh and that will need to be um uh supplied to INDOT by the end of the month. So, I think we're on track.

Get that information to them. Um, another thing working on, um, the, uh, maintenance of director's job description. Taking a look at that. Um, uh, Bill Morgan, Larry and I had a meeting a few weeks ago to talk about to talk about this, and Larry is going through his current one and then all of those other uh, job descriptions to try to figure out, oh yeah, I do do that. Oh yeah, that's something else that I do. Um to try to incorporate all the information that we possibly can into this um facilities manager or whatever that the title ends up being. So um we're moving along on that. Of course, Larry has other projects to to work on. So and one of them is my ADA plan. So yeah, I'll cut him a little slack. The last thing that that well uh that I have is really um the uh information that um the handbook policy, the most recent one on the uh uh training um making sure everybody has a hotel room and uh we've gotten really good response. Of course, I put the deadline the end of this month to get them back me. So, um so and we have three commissioners back. So, yay. Got those back. So, thank you very much. So,

probably a record anyway then. Um, so that's what I have on that. And then Morgan probably has a little bit on hiring. Yeah, not much. Uh, community corrections is still looking for a part-time field officer. Um, the treasurer's department, they are doing second interviews and should hopefully have a candidate selected. [Music] Yeah. So, we're pretty well pretty well staffed all over the place. Not much turnover other than probably the jail. Not good. Probably the Actually, the jail's doing pretty well. Not Not bad. Yeah.

Not like it used to be. You nailed I Exactly. Yes. They were the problem child when it came to staffing and so Yeah, that's good. Sure. Yes. Anything for Daddy? I'm good. Thank you. One of the thing I got is do we have a room prepared for Jody the IC conference? We have a room. Y well so Apex will be in um I boy did we talk fast this morning. So but AP Apex should be here at 9 for their time. Okay. Did you say Sunny Meadows is all done with their 88? They got back to you on everything or did they did?

Okay. I thought I saw that. I just wanted Yes. Yep. Yep. Yep. So, yeah, we've got quite a few departments that are all finished. Actually, we have a really good system in place now with um the sheriff's office. Um Tikica wants uh everybody to turn them into her first so that she can check everybody's names before so that they're not onesie coming into me. Fine. You know, so that way she can hound them before I have to hound her to hound them. So, we like it. We're streamlining it. Okay. Thank you, D. Thank you, Morgan. Yeah. Thank you. Have a good day.

Good morning for a walk. Okay, that out of the way. Let's shift over to uh topics of discussion and action items. Payroll bi-weekly. Motion to approve payroll. So moved. Second. Motion. Second to approve payroll. Additional comments. Comments from the public. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Claims. Chance to check over the claims. Yes. Susan, I have a couple of questions. That's all right. Like usual. still trying to learn.

That's okay. Uh the number is 33900 and the claim is 0001475 NIRCC uh 10,000. What is it? That is um the NERK um Northeast Indiana Regional Coordinating Council. Um I have to look. I can't remember if we I think we I'm not sure how often we pay that. Yeah, I'm sorry.

That's all right. Let me look real quick. We pay that once a year. I don't know why that says testing because every other year. Oh, I see. It should be account 33990. I'll fix that before it gets 3390. Yeah. So, it's Northeast Indiana economic development district fees for the year we pay it each year.

Okay. Well, it's not really testing. It's not testing. No. Uh and then the county council it uh which is and the number is 001167. It's the count uh says low associates. Oh, wow. Was it like 42 something? 42,500.

Yeah, that's um getting started on the um payroll uh timekeeping system that you guys had the advanced time I forget. It's advanced advanced time something, but it's the new um timekeeping system that will eventually get through the entire county. Okay. So, it's a new system. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. I was curious, Susan, on the jail the canteen services. Yeah. Why that was seemed to be just half of what we normally see. It's usually around 12 grand. Well, let's look.

Something. Was that a two week? I don't know. I'm going to look it up here. It looks like it's a two week really instead of the whole month, but I'm not. Yeah. Oh, it looks like we've paid a little over 6,000 each time all year. Wait a minute. No, months ago I was two. So, okay. Two weeks ago. Yeah, there's two entries at every date, but I only have one entry

on here. Let me look at usually in a 12,000 range. Depends on the number of inmates, of course.

So, okay, just for an example, one of the entries from September 2nd, so one of the was for $6,500 and some dollars. That one happened to be for about 1,800 meals and 56 snacks. So, the one that just got turned in was for 63 snacks and 19. That doesn't make sense. 1900. I have no idea.

I just Yeah, I don't know. It says I'm used to seeing one number and all of a sudden it was about half of that and the same. I thought maybe it was just a glitch in the billing cycle or something. Okay. So, that is for what we're paying is for the week of August 10th to the 16th. That's a weekly. Yeah.

I don't know. I'm guessing the only thing that I would know is that one of the claims came in the deadline part and it hit this claim run and that we'll have more next time. But yeah, I just don't see another invoice right now. Yeah, that could be. Sorry. No, it's fine. It'll be 18,000 the next probably. So, it all averages out. Okay. Just just curious. Uh did you have any more, Jim?

I I did. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. Uh on the last brother, this would be 007033 U for the sheriff department. 10,000. Not that I I'm questioning the amount. Does the maybe Bill can answer this better than uh does the sheriff's department have their own are they getting it out of a gas station or are they getting it? Yes. Out of out of they have a contract with Lasses, I believe. So they have a lassis card. Yeah, Lass's.

Yeah, they have a lasses card. They um which is the normal place I go to for sometimes when the transport officers and stuff are out of area and there's not They have um what's called a WEX wex a wax card. Y um but we're actually looking into possibly changing that one um because that one's giving us a monthly fee and stuff and so we're looking at getting rid of the WEX one possibly. But that's their normal fuel is the last. Well, and yeah, I noticed like the surveyor's office and the other ones I presume I just was curious if we had a contract with glasses that we're just like I say they have the card so they get the lower rate with that card. the last card to get the cheaper rate. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. Yep. Um the TNR it was for 1214. Does she just send in an invoice every time? Is that how I just didn't know that process worked with her? Oh, it's 32 Fort Wayne or I think it's Humane Fort Wayne. They will send um her and myself. They will send me the monthly invoice and then welfare alliance, animal welfare alliance. They actually pay Fort Wayne Humane and then she will bill us. So I have both her invoice and the Fort Wayne Humane that I can match together and then we pay animal.

Okay. So it just as they as they do the cash as they do it and bill it out. Yep. Go ahead. Motion and I second. Excuse me. I make a motion to approve the claims as presented. I'll second. Motion to second additional comments. Comments from the public. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Motion carries.

And one more thing on the claims. Um Sus and I have been talking about we're starting to look at Sunny Meadows. I know we're not an update with Sunny Meadows, but we're looking at some of the contracts that we're having out there with Sunny Meadows that we're tracking down. So, as we transition so into closing it down, um we're looking at some of those contracts. So, some of those might be dropping off and see where we can step up and take those things over. So, or if you need me to send termination notices or something. Well, we're trying to find the contracts right now. So, see, there might just be arrangements or agreements that we just have to deal with. So, we're kind of working on that. So, if you need anything, I can shoot out a letter. Perfect.

Okay, moving on to minutes. So move that we accept the minutes as presented. I'll second a motion a second to approve minutes. Additional comments comments from the public. All those in favor signify by saying I. I opposed. Minutes are approved. Sentiment residents. So now you can do that again.

Um one second though. I didn't have Tyler actually on there, so I don't know if this one will take quite a discussion and if you wanted to do his ordinance or ordinances first or if you want to start here. I don't care. Either way, I just wanted to let you know because I saw him come in. Sorry. Oh, I see he's on.

Yeah, let's get him. Let's get him up here. Let's do that. So the first one that I have is your um perpetuation one. So the cornerstone um you want to do cornerstones first? Uh do you want to do the second third reading or the you tell me the second third reading? Okay. So we're going to

the fees. You did the first reading last meeting, so we're ready for second and third on that one. So, we made a change in there. Um, it's number five where Andrew wanted us to uh alter some of the non-compliance wording there. Uh, just to make sure that all attorney fees were covered. That was that was really the only change that was made. The motion probably needs to be to approve it on second and third reading as amended. As amended. And I will make that motion. And I'll second.

I have a motion and a second on the floor. Are there any additional comments? Comments from the public. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Now, Andrew, this goes into effect today now, right? Well, no. It has to be uh published in the newspaper first advertise it because it's a feat. How long does that take? I think 30 days from the last day it was published possibly when it was published. I think so. Is it 30? I think it's 30 days. Yeah. Pretty much next month we'll start. Just to give people a chance to learn about it theoretically. Of course, not everybody reads that. Of course.

I was just wondering because we have all these permits and stuff coming in if we're going to capture that now or have to wait. So,

we have to wait just a little while. uh for I guess I have one I have one last remaining question with that um for redirect where redirect uh those funds to what's it so um I believe in here we had it going yeah to the cumulative maintenance account um to get that change like to a cornerstone account or something like that would you have to come back in front of the commissioners get that approved to change it okay y want to know Next up, uh what I have is a new ordinance under bringing to the commissioners for uh our cornerstone perpetuation. Um so, uh as part of the surveyor's duties, uh 5% of uh our section corners throughout the county uh need to be perpetuated each year. So that's uh something we're trying to get ahead of something that's been uh kind of put on the back burner uh for the last several years. So we're trying to get uh compliant with the state's requirements and get that taken care of. So one way we're going to do that uh is is through this cornerstone perpetuation ordinance uh for all new uh development that comes in if uh the cornerstone is located within the development or is utilized in the surveying uh and engineering of the development. that it needs to be perpetuated by their license surveyor that they hire. Uh so that would apply to um any replats, subdivisions, development plans uh that come through the office. So uh this ordinance would then be uh sent to uh the cities and towns that have their own uh development control districts and uh we'll work with them so that we ensure all plans are routed through us. we can

check uh we can we can check through those to make sure that they are all um handled appropriately. So we put in some limits in there. Uh so cornerstones can be uh pretty fluctuating on cost. They can be pretty easy and uh around $300 for a corner um up to several thousand dollar if it's an obliterated corner. the original location was lost and it takes a lot of survey work to reestablish. Um, the amount of unverified corners that we have in the county does not make that any easier. So, we have uh several areas throughout the county that have what we call red corners, which means they're not verified. Uh, there's no coordinates on them. So, those are not usable by surveyors right now. So, they have to find a good corner. So, this is this is one way that we thought um we could advance some of that and get get some return on these developments that are that are going on within the county. So, um they'll have two options uh for funding that they can use their licensed surveyor, which is what I anticipate uh several developments um will do. Uh they're already on site doing the survey work. They can locate any of the corners and perpetuate them. That will all need to be uh submitted for approval to our office. Right now uh for our cornerstone program, we work with DACA DA Brown um as our uh program coordinator because we do not currently have a licensed surveyor in our office because Glenn is not a licensed surveyor. So in order to perpetuate those corners, you have to be a licensed surveyor. So, it'll be submitted and DA Brown will review those submissions for us and um verify if if it's a usable usable information and a usable corner. The other option uh is that they can just opt for us to send uh one of our contractors there to uh perpetuate the

corner and we gave a limit on that not to exceed $5,000 in case it is a an obliterated corner and it takes a lot of work. We want to put a cap there so the developer doesn't feel like they're going to get stuck with some outrageous uh bill for no reason. So up to that $5,000 mark. And if it goes beyond that because it's a really difficult corner, then that would go into our corner some perpetuation fund, we would cover the rest of that uh cost. And that's on a per corner basis. So some larger developments could have more than one corner, some could have none that need perpetuated. So, um, and our, uh, our one thing that we had changed here when Andrew looked through this ordinance, um, was about the fine, and it wasn't intended to be a fine. It was more, uh, if this is ignored through a through a plan approval process that um, we will go conduct the perpetuation of the corner and then uh, submit that expense to the contractor or person uh responsible for it. And that is up to not to exceed $10,000 per corner. So that way um if they don't do it, they choose to be negligent and come into coordinates with ordinance, then we can go still establish those corners and

but instead of a cap of 5,000, it's a cap of 10. Yep. Cap of 10,000. So, we're not going to be as quick to pick up the rest of the bill form there if they're not willing to be compliant with us. So, it should give because it's not a fine, it doesn't have to be capped by the whatever the $2,500. Yep, that's exactly right. Yeah, it's not really meant to be a fine. It's a service that's being provided. They're just responsible for the cost. Okay. Questions, comments?

I think it's a great idea to go forward. Um, the surveys are already out there. they're doing a lot of this work anyways. You got to go off these corners. So, it does two things in my opinion. One, it makes the um the projects verify these corners and it also makes sure that the surveyor's office is taking these corners and verifying them in into the system because there was some discussion that sometimes they were getting sent in and nothing was happening at the surveyor's office with them and then it was just being dropped. And so this is putting it kind of on both sides of the of the table here to make sure that they're both being held accountable for these corners to be established and rectified. So my only question is if DB uh Brown does the survey, who do you have backup that's going to verify their work?

So we have we have three firms uh right now that are working with us on the cornerstone project. Uh there's Dbeck, there's EVI which is ran by Mark Strong who was uh a surveyor for the county previously and then uh foresight who is uh coordinating Allen County's cornerstone perpetuation program. So Allen count Allen County just got a similar program uh up and running to try to get up to date on their cornerstones and foresight is doing that. And so the way the state law works is you have to offer uh you have to offer it to a licensed surveyor who resides in your county first, then you can offer outside of your county. And so DA Brown is one of the only licensed surveyors that resides in Decal County. And they were happy to uh jump on board and do it and something they have a strong passion for. And so it's been really it's been really good working with them so far. And Glenn and I have learned a lot from them and

Okay. and they're they're excited about getting it done. If I could ask just for the public that might be listening in the word perpetuate, can you give just like a short little definition of that?

Yeah, perpetuates where we're going to go out. We're going to verify uh that corner. Make sure there is a monument or a marker of some sort there. Uh we we plan to try to get Harrison markers at a substantial amount of the corners. Obviously, that adds cost, which is always always an issue with these type of things. So um we also get coordinates on that. So this license surveyor will GPS the the location of the corner. It will get uploaded into a public database that all licensed surveyors will have access. We're currently working with the GIS department on on how that will all be submitted. So everything gets submitted to DA Brown to review right from EVI and from foresight and then they uh are working with the GIS department on how they want that data transferred what kind of files work best and the GIS department will upload that information and it will all be on the Indiana state coordinate plane that they'll have access to. So

thank you Taylor. Yeah. What would be the cost county? What's that? What would what would be the cost to the county for this ordinance? Yes. Cost for us?

I don't I don't think anything. No, that's I think that's kind of the idea is it is uh you know if a developer wants to develop an area um for profit then this is this is kind of the responsibility to to maintain the infrastructure of our county before it all disappears. if you know subdivisions developments occur uh sometimes those those monuments can be overlooked and destroyed during the construction and that's really the worst case scenario is when a corner is obliterated and there's no GPS coordinates on it it's it's really expensive to to relocate that corner reestablish it so and how far back are you making them reestablished so if it was reestablished like 10 years ago are you making the

development that's that's what we'd like if it's within that decade timeline time. There's no reason to spend extra money to reperpetuate it. Um, so we want to make sure that it has GPS coordinates and it's updated and it's viable. And then, uh, if it's beyond that decade mark, then we'll go ahead and reperpetuate it. But it should be a fairly easy process for them. Like I said, those easy ones that have coordinates and a monument set, like $250, $300 for a for a licensed surveyor to to verify that. So once we have them caught up, which is a big undertaking, then it it should be pretty routine uh upkeep on it. That will be convenient.

Will the new ones be the uh iron steel? It looks like cast iron. Yeah, that's the type you're using.

Yep. Yep. It's called a Harrison marker is what it is. So, uh, they're designed, they kind of have plates that stack on each other with a with a, uh, round head on the top that says county surveyor on it. Uh, so nobody's supposed to mess with them, but they're designed to, if they do get hit by a dozer or anything like that, they'll break off. So, the top will break off, but the bottom will remain in place so that way it's still locatable in the ground. So, that's the idea. They're typically between 18 in to 36 in in height. And there's some different styles. We we just placed an order uh for several of them to to be utilized as part of our our program. So

So the monuments themselves will be charged to the that'll be part of that uh that'll be part of that cost. We'll also uh try to have an inventory of them. Well, that way there's consistency if nothing else. And Andrew, you're okay with the ordinance as presented? Yes. Okay, read a motion first reading. I'll make the motion. I'll second motion and second on the first reading. Any additional comments, comments from the public. All those in favor signify by saying I. I

I oppose. Motion carries. I have

problem with it either. I mean, it doesn't bother me one either, but I would lean more towards just waiting till the next meeting to do it. Let's wait. That way, if anybody has any more questions, they can look at it. Let's do that. Thank you. I have two I have two more things for you. Do you want me to wait until after they give their part? It'll be a while. Quick. How quick? Huh? Not that quick, I don't think. Not that quick. I I'll wait for them to go and I can come back up. We got them five minutes late now. Let's Let's get them in there. Okay. Thank you, Tyler.

Yeah. Apex, you are up. Good morning. Make sure the lights are on on your microphones, please. Thank you very Watch those. We got to come. Good morning everybody.

Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Good.

All right. So, today is our annual review and this is where we are going to be taking a look at the last calendar year performance. um of the plan. So July 1st of 2024 through June 30th of 2025 um and seeing how that stacked up against the year before that. So we'll look at we'll be looking at both of those things. If you open up your book um we have our I wanted to do a couple of introductions since I have a couple teammates that you may not have met yet, at least not in person for some of you. Um then we're going to debrief on open enrollment, talk a little bit about the current state of the marketplace. Uh and then go into our renewal summary. So the summary how we renewed everything last year and then just touching on the financial plan review and then Sage will go into the clinical um review for the last plan year. And then we'll we'll briefly talk about some of the strategies um for the upcoming plan year. But when we really dig into that, we'll be in a few months when we have our pre-renal strategy meeting. Does all that sound good?

Far. All right. Anything that you had wanted to discuss outside of that or more as it as it comes up, just let us know. Okay. All right. Um, so you guys know me. I'm Lauren. Um, senior account executive and a principal at Apex. Um, but I'll let my teammates introduce themselves as well. Um, my name is Sage Men. I'm a kinetic health program manager. I've been at Apex for about two years now. Um, I also have a background working as a registered dietitian. Um, so I look at your guys's clinical data, um, claims and then we use that for renewals and negotiations.

My name is Andy May. I am our director of client engagement at Apex. I manage our team of account executives. I'm just uh here to help lend support and help answer any questions that you might have. Thank you.

All right. So, first discussion love to touch on open enrollment. Um I know that we only did the medical dental envision u piece of open enrollment. We are waiting on the steel to be fully implemented um to do the voluntary lines and introduce some of those new products. Um but wanted to talk about what went well this year. Um, did you have any feedback from your employees on the meetings? Uh, how how did you think how did you feel like it went? Any commissioners? How did you guys get any feedback? Okay. Well, from HR, um, it really seemed to go very well. We were able to have a big meeting out at the highway department so that because they're kind of a, um, captive audience. Um, unfortunately, I wish that we could do the same with central communications or with the sheriff's office, but as you know, they work 24/7 and they have teen people on each shift, so it's hard to get one. So, I think we had plenty of open meeting times to capture just about everybody uh to come in for a meeting and to get their information so that then they could make their educated decision what they wanted to enroll in. Great. Is there anything that we could have done better or enhanced or anything that you would have liked to see outside of what was done knowing that we have some enhancements coming down the pike with steel being able to enroll. All right, that's good. Hey, you don't have to complain. We're good with it. All right, beautiful. Um so looking at page five, we're just going to walk through uh how we ended up renewing last or this year. Um sorry, so 471.

Um so on our renewal um the proposed renewal for admin was a minus6.5% or $2,000 um that would have been with shurist and we ended up making the move over um to um EHP and were able to save on the admin side 29%. So, uh, that's $10,000 on the admin fees and reinsurance is where we were really able to get a great contract in place. Um, so the initial proposed renewal for Shurest UHC stop-loss was 38.6% in fixed costs, which would have been a $244,000 increase um to Decau County just on those fixed stop-loss costs. um that on we were able to get a minus 12 and a half um through reinsurance that we went out with with PHP. So we are with companion life and that was a savings of 12 and a half% or 79,000. Um so total we able to from the renewal save 323,000 in those fixed costs. So those those fees that you're paying out that that we know are going to occur. And then on the maximum liability side, um, UHC had proposed a 26.7% increase, which was a 1.38 million increase in maximum liability. Um, that is obviously something that we didn't want to take on as a county. Um, so when we did negotiate that contract, we were able to come in at 5.8% over current, um, or $238,000 increase in that overall worst case scenario, max liability. Um, so saved 1.14 million from the proposed renewal from UHC. Any questions on that piece? Okay. On the pharmacy side, um, we were with

Optum, which was the shest preferred PBM. We were not able to move to a uh carved out or external pharmacy benefit manager, which is what that PBM stands for. Um, so they were on a uh admin fee credit of $50 uh per employee per month. So that offset your admin fees. Um, and then there were also some rebates uh that were negotiated in as well. We moved that from Optum over to Prime Therapeutics and that is now a full pass through rebate contract. Um, so we'll talk about that, you know, a couple times as as the meeting goes on. But rather than getting that immediate credit, we're gathering all the rebates that you're uh that your pharmacy benefits are earning and it's going back to Dec County. So that contract was negotiated by Innovative RX, which is owned by Apex. Um, so we know that we have a really strong contract in place with pharmacy and we're looking forward to seeing how that's impacting the plan in this next year.

That $50 a administration fee. Is that is that part of the 323,000 day that you fixed cost that we saved? So that would have been part of it on the admin side, not on the stop-loss side. Um, so when we look at the it's the administration piece up there. Yeah. You said there was 3,200 I mean 323k in fixed cost savings. Is that part of that fixed cost savings is the administration fee of the $50? No.

Okay. Um, on the organ transplant side, that is a fully insured policy. Uh, so if you did have an organ transplant on the plan, um, you wouldn't pay those claims. They would run through that fully insured policy. Uh, previously, um, shurist did not allow us to put in that that organ transplant policy. Um, but we were able to get that in place with PHP. Um, so that is going to cost us $33,000 per year. Uh, however, if there is an organ transplant that hits the plan, again, there would be no cost to the plan. It would go all through that policy. On the dental side, um, we did make a change overall on our ancillary coverages, moving from the standard over to Lincoln. um we were having significant billing issues um significant service issues with the standard. So we took their renewal and we went out to market and made that change over to Lincoln. Um dental was originally proposed a 22% increase or $29,000 to your employees. And with Lincoln, we were able to get to a minus5. So an overall $7,000 savings for your employees on the dental side. And then vision the renewal was coming in at 9.6. at 7% overcurren. Um we we landed with Lincoln at 7.9% overcurren. So similar to the renewal but saved a little bit. Life insurance um we saved on the basic life side uh 8% or $465 savings for the county. Um and then on the voluntary life insurance they matched the rates. Lincoln matched the rates so no changes to the employees. no changes to the uh self-funded short-term disability administrative

costs. And then on the long-term disability side, um that was a proposed 45% increase or $2,000. Um with Lincoln, we and it landed at a minus 10%. Uh we do have accident critical illness and hospital indemnity that will be going into place when we do that voluntary open enrollment. Um, so once we have those enrollers ready and everything set up, we will be enrolling in those products.

Any other questions on the renewal? As a reminder to the commissioners, the uh the life insurance policy is something that the county pays for. The employees do not on this one. It is a $10,000 uh life accidental death and dismemberment policy for almost all the departments. Uh the only exception is the sheriff's office and they have a $20,000 policy. Then on the short-term disability, that is a county paid benefit to all of our employees. And then on the long-term disability, that is a voluntary disability that um employees pay for that themselves if they chose to get it.

Thank you.

Um wanted to touch on the marketplace and what is coming up um what we're looking for for the next year just in general in the market. uh you should have a one pager that shows the one big beautiful bill act. Essentially we just wanted to discuss about trend. Um so this is a bulletin that went out from Apex. Uh but there is an expectation that medical costs will go up trend up 8.5% in 2026. Um this is starting to go up from when we were in COVID the that trend had kind of flattened out a little bit. Um but we are seeing it expect to go up. Uh we are as Apex benefits our employ our uh clients run at a 5.5% trend on average. So we are beating that by about 3% from 2022 to 2024 time frame. That's how our clients performed. Um when our carriers are calculating trend they are sometimes looking up 10 to 13% as well. Um, so that's something that we keep a close eye on. That's why we take those uh large fixed cost benefits like stop-loss out to market every year. So we make sure that we are staying on top of that and managing the market and ensuring that you guys are in the right spot.

So you said Apex was what was your numbers? We are from 2022 to 2024 our book of business performed at 5.5% uh blended trend. So that's medical and pharmacy. and others are above 10%. So what we're looking at what they're tren looking at for the upcoming plan year or the upcoming year is about 8.5% trend. Andy, anything to add on the trend side?

Um there have been an article recently in the Wall Street Journal, when I say recently, I think last week that talked about the exploding cost of health care. Um, personally for our book of business, so not to date myself, but when I first got into insurance a long time ago, if you saw a $1 million claim, you'd see one every six years across everything. In 2024, I saw the largest number of million-doll claims, period, that I've seen in my entire career. And in 25, that trend has continued. So a lot of this is has to do with there, you know, on the pharmacy side, you see all the advertisements. Pharmacy spend has gone up considerably. They spend a lot of time advertising. They have what are called gene and cell therapy drugs, which are wonderful drugs to have and they fix a lot of issues, but they can cost up to a million dollars. Um, just medical expenses have have increased significantly. medical inflation, the cost of hospital care has uh has risen a significant amount and a lot of that has led to this trend uh increase.

Thank you.

Um some changes that are coming down the pike for 2026 with the one beautiful bill act. Um previously if you had a direct primary care arrangement um you were not able to cover that with HSA. you're not able to make HSA contributions if you had that arrangement set up if you were on a high deductible health plan or an HSA plan. Um the reason for that is that they were looking at that direct primary care arrangement as first dollar coverage which is not allowable uh for the IRS on an HSA account. Um, so that has changed. As long as your direct primary care fees are $150 or less uh per or sorry per month or $300 or less per month for a family, you can still make HSA contributions and you're still eligible to do so. Um, so I actually had this come up several times because some employees prefer to have that direct primary care relationship. They pay a fee to their physician and they're able to see them as many times as they want. um they have that that more established relationship. Um if you've ever heard of direct care in Fort Wayne, they they do that where you pay a fee, a monthly fee rather than paying to actually go and pay for the visit. So that's something that is now going to be allowable um under a high deductible plan to make those HSA contributions

question. Yeah, actually two. Uh when does this is this already taken effect? It's 1126. Okay, second question. Uh, it says the $150 that is just a person that is an employee. Uh, $300 for family. Is that if it's just a husband and wife, that's still a family? Yes. Any dependent here would be considered a family. Great question. Okay. Thank you.

No, that's a very good question. Um they also have permanently extended the teleaalth exception uh for high deductible health plans. So you can have a teleaalth visit um under the high deductible plan right away at no cost. Previously again if you did have a telealth visit you had to pay the full cost of the visit until you got to the IRS minimum deductible. So, I think that is a huge and great change um for for the plans because we're going to be able to, if we choose, extend that free virtual care um to all of your plan members rather than just the PO plan members at no cost. I was like, is somebody crawling?

It's fine. I love it. Um, it will also allow employers to help pay employee student loans um to adjust for the cost of living. So, that was previously capped at $5,250. Uh there is also going to be a new account type, a new tax sheltered account type called a Trump account that is going to allow employees to contribute $5,000 per child and employers to contribute up to $2,500. Essentially how that works is like a Roth IRA. Um so you'll be able to deposit after tax funds into this account. Um after the child turns 18, they're able to utilize that for several purposes. um things like uh student any type of student activities, so student loans, um tuition, uh and there are several other things in that firsttime home buyer. Uh there are first-time home buyer exceptions. Um so that's kind of how it operates like a Roth. It is uh it is deducted from your gross pay. So you don't pay uh taxes on that portion for the employee or sorry lowers your adjusted gross income rather. Um then it also increases the maximum annual limit for dependent care um flexible spending accounts up to 7500 uh for single individuals and married couples filing jointly and 3750 for married filing separately. Um so that's gone up and you're able to contribute more tax-free dollars to the dependent care accounts which if you've ever paid for daycare uh I think I went through that $5,000 in the first quarter. So that that's a nice change as well.

For the commissioners, we do not have a flexible spending account for um uh dependent care. Uh nor do we have that for our health care because we have a health savings account. Um and so really there are only really two of those that apply to our plan. Um the teleaalth and um really the um primary care. Although we don't know of any employee that has made, you know, that kind of, you know,

reached out to a, you know, to have that sort of a relationship with a um a a physician's company. So, it might apply to us. There may be an employee out there that has that, but we don't know of them.

In several areas, it's really popular, and then in a lot of areas, no one's ever heard of that. So, yeah, it really just depends on where you're at geographically. Great. All right. If we're ready, I would like to look at the financial plan review. Um, so this is from again July 1st of 2024 through June 30th of 2025. So I'm going to go through the financial piece and then Sage will do a deep dive into the clinical analysis, which is really what we're here to talk about. Um so on the total premium equivalents um we budgeted to that maximum liability so that worst case scenario um which was 4,320,170. So that was the quote budget for the year. Uh and we landed at the end of the plan year at 447,525,000 or sorry $525. Um so we ran at $87,355 deficit. Um we will be looking at on since we do budget to maximum liability. Um there is the potential of having an aggregate uh an aggregate reimbursement to the plan since we did go over that. What we have to wait for are things to come in uh like your pharmacy rebates because that would offset um and if it gets us below that maximum liability then we wouldn't get an aggregate reimbursement. So, we wait on the rebates. Um, then they will tell us how much they think that we deserve back and then we'll have our actuarial team validate that. If you look at the next page, page 12, um this is the financial dashboard and this is comparing your 20 uh sorry the dates actually are incorrect on here, the 2024 2025 plan year um to the previous 2324 plan year.

So our enrollment um average was 214 employees on the plan. Uh the previous plan year we averaged 204. Um, so we did have an uptick in enrollment by 10 employees on the plan. Medical gross medical claims, so all the claims that were paid um on the medical side ended at 2.68 million and that was 67% of your total spend. The prior year, uh, we landed at 2.7 million. Um, and the total spend was, sorry, the medical was 74% of your total spend. So, this is where we're starting to see that pharmacy is going up. Um, your medical really stayed very consistent year-toear and your pharmacy uptick significantly. So, you're looking at 1.3 million um at the end of this plan year. At the end of the last plan year, we were at 944,000. So, we're seeing um a high portion of your costs are on the pharmacy side. um which we were seeing prior to renewal, which is why we made that pharmacy contract change over to uh a contract that we had negotiated. So, on the reimbursement and rebate side, um for stop-loss reimbursements, we received $171,000 back to the plan in those stop-loss reimbursements. And then on the pharmacy side, that is what they're still calculating. Um so, that is a to be determined number. Um and we should have that in the next few months. The previous year, um, we had more high claimments, so more of those shock claims, and we landed at 511,000 in stop-loss reimbursements. Uh, so more reimbursements to the plan last year. Uh, and pharmacy rebates ended at three $232,000 coming back to the plan. On the fixed cost side, uh, 600,000

total in fixed cost. So that's your stop loss, your administrative fees, your aggregate coverage, all rolled into those fixed costs. The prior year we were at 551,000. Um pretty much all of that was accounted for the increase in our stop-loss costs uh for the plan year um due to those large claimments the year before on that RX rebate. Would you anticipate a a larger amount or or a lesser amount?

I would anticipate a larger amount. um we had more more pharmacy claims and a lot of them were specialty uh which is where the higher rebates are. So I would expect to see that that be up a little bit and then if we do have the same drug mix going into this next plan year I would expect to see it increase again due to the fact that we negotiated a stronger rebate agreement. Yeah, good question. When you said a few months so what the end of the year before you really know?

Yeah, so we um It's only about 3 months after the plan year that they'll have their calculations. But what they're going to want to wait on are the pharmacy rebates and that lags uh anywhere from four to six months um from the time that the that the claim occurs. So that's what we're going to be waiting on more than it is you know any other calculation. So I would say the end of the year is probably exactly when we'll get all that information. Thank you. Yeah. So you're saying we got 232,000 back last year on rebates from the drugs? Yes, that's correct. So then this 8735 555 I should say deficit that could go back into a surplus. Correct. Okay. Yep. Thank you. You're welcome.

Um so again total cost that was on that front page dashboard. Um 4.4 million. The previous year we were at 3.4 million. Um we had more high claimments last year. Uh but this year we had more overall um claimments. So more people accumulating more costs. The year before we had fewer people that accumulated really high costs. Um then on the premium equivalent side against maximum liability. Um this year we were set at 4.32 million. The year before we were at 3.2. Um so currently at an $87,000 um deficit. The year prior uh we ended at a $290,000 deficit. That 290,000 was after the reimbursements.

That's correct. And I actually have that question out to the carrier. Um, how much was reimbursed um back to the plan? So, I I'll get that out to you as soon as I get it from UHC. 3 to 20. Yes. Correct.

Yep. Then on the reinsurance side, um 523,000 is what you paid for your specific stop-loss coverage. Um again, we had $171,000 reimbured back. So our loss ratio on the stop-loss side is 33%. So that is just purely how much did we pay out in claims, how much did they reimburse back to us. The prior year, um we had sorry $496,000 in reinsurance specific premiums. Um, and our reimbursements were 510,000. So, we actually made more than we paid out in premiums for the 2324 plan year. Um, and we ran at 103% loss ratio, which is why we took that um, large increase last year on the stop-loss coverage side. Okay. Um, the next page shows your just year end financial summary. I just like this graph. It really shows how much you paid on the gross claim side, medical claims and then pharmacy. So, this just really illustrates that that RX amount is taking up a big piece of the pie. Um, we like to see that more at 20% of your overall cost and it's sitting at 33%. So, that's why we made the change that we did. So, a percentage of expected claims, um, we are at 129%. uh that 125% was the maximum liability. Uh so that's where the question to HC was how much was reimbured or how much will be reimbursed back after we get those rebates in. Any financial questions before Sage goes into the clinical side?

I did just look I'm sorry. No, go ahead. I looked and it was August that we um when we got the last pharmacy, whatever. Oh, rebate. Perfect. I receded it in August. Okay. So, we should It shouldn't be too much longer. They are paid out quarterly. So, um Well, I'll have to see. No, I meant the 232,000. Gotcha. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. Perfect. They must have paid it out all at once, son. Yeah, they held it last year for some reason. Unique. They were unique the shest. We loved We love to love them. Good word.

All right.

Okay. Well, this is your annual clinical review. So, this is where we look at your um medical and pharmacy claims throughout the plan year. So, this is looking again at July through June of 2025. So, we'll just go ahead and skip right to page 16. Um this is kind of a highle overview of your health plan summary. you can see um the amount spent in the prior period up at the top and then in the current period. So um right around 4 million uh in paid medical and pharmacy claims. Um you can also see down at the bottom your top five therapeutic groups for your medical claims. So muscular skeletal was the highest. Um things like knee replacements, hip replacements, joint type conditions, those fall into those categories. you did have a couple of highcost joint replacements that hit the plan. There was also a pretty big spinal procedure. Um, all of that falls into that category. Um, so it looks like there's a lot of unique claimments in there. Um, 131, but just know that a lot of those are just going to be office visits, therapy, things like that. There's just a couple that really kind of drive that cost of that category. Same thing with the other categories. um cardiovascular things like heart attacks. There was a defibrillator replacement, an aortic aneurysm, things like that really drove the cost in that category. Cancer, I always like to point this one out because people see 45 unique claimments in cancer and they're like, "Oh my gosh, that's a lot." Um, but that includes anybody who's had like screenings for cancer. So, if you're getting your colonoscopies, benign neoplasms fall into that category, too. Um, so you only have three members with active cancer management right now on the plan. Those are all breast cancer. Um, and only two have significant spend. Um, and then on the bottom right hand side is your top five RX. So Lauren kind of already alluded to this, but a lot of specialty medications were on the plan this year, which is what drove a lot of

this pharmacy spend increase. Um, so embil sure was your highest uh drug this this past year, which was for rheumatoid arthritis. There were two claimments on that. Um, Mangaro is actually a GLP-1. So, that's been a big topic lately, the GLP-1 medications. Um, that is for diabetes. So, your members do have to have a diagnosis of diabetes to have Munjaro. Um, 18 claimments for that. Humumera, um, Skyrizzy and then there's actually two Skyrizzy on there. Um, one of the members just switched to a different type of Skyrizzy. Both of those are for psoriasis though. Age 17 shows your population overview. So, I want to point out the unique members enrolled at the top. That's different than your average enrollment. Um, the 445 is just the amount of people who were enrolled at some point in the plan year. You had 445 people enrolled at some point. Um, that includes all what we call belly buttons on the plan. So, your employees, your spouses, and your dependents, everybody. Um, your average member age is 43 and then your average employee age is 45. So, um, it's I don't want to say it's like a a young number because it's what we want. It's around the time that people could be getting, you know, serious diagnoses. We want them to be seeing their PCP. Um, but overall, I wouldn't say that, you know, that age risk is a super high risk um, for the plan.

And then from it is a high risk or is not?

I would say it's not a high risk. No. If you if we saw a little bit higher, then we would be a little bit more concerned. Um, but still definitely an age that we want to be um encouraging your people to go to the doctor, get those screenings done. Um, because that's when we could see those those big diagnoses hit. Um, and then from there, you can just see members of your age group, male versus female enrollment. You guys are pretty much split 50/50 there. coverage tier breakdown. So, how many people are on the plan is just an employee versus employee children, employee spouse, and so forth. Um, but yeah, that's kind of your population overview. Page 18 is your paid claims trend. So, this is looking at medical and RX. You can see the spend throughout each month of the plan year. Um, October of 2024 was your highest spend. There was the spinal surgery that hit. Um the defibrillator also hit that month. And then there were some um injections for u a diagnosis that also hit. So that kind of drove that cost that month. April of 2025 was not far behind. Um there were some factor 9 injections for a member as well as some claims for just um a condition with the kidneys. And then hip replacement and heria repair hit that month as well. So kind of drives that cost. What a fluctuation.

Yeah. Yeah. Any questions so far?

Um, page 19 shows your paid claims by relationship. So, this is where you can kind of compare what uh employees are costing the plan versus spouses and children. Um if you look all the way to the right hand side percent of total spend you can see that employees um 65% of total spend was just from employees. Um 26% from spouses and then 9% from children. So children are obviously a good risk to have on the plan. They're young. They're not hopefully going to cost us a lot of money. Um three out of five of your top highcost claimants were spouses. Um that did increase from the prior year. So the prior year it was only they they made up 15% of your total spend. This year it increased to 26%.

I see the cost per claimment is quite a bit almost twice. Yes. Yeah. That's typical. We we definitely see the spouses having a much higher um per perm than our employees.

Any explanation why that is? Um I mean typically the person who's actively at work is healthier and we see somebody who especially with your group having the spousal carveout in place. Um if people are actively at work they aren't able to be on the DAP county plan. So we're only looking at spouses that are not employed just naturally that's going to that will capture those who are sick and unable to work. Um, so that's why we see that going up so much significant over the employee. Great question. Age 20 is your paid amount by therapeutic group. So on that highle summary page, we talked about therapeutic groups on a high level. This is kind of breaking them down more um specific. So, we talked about muscularkeeletal being your highest therapeutic group, but if we look at that more closely, it's specifically degenerative arthritis. Um, so again, those joint replacements and that spinal surgery are really driving the cost in that category. Um, the dark blue is medical spend and then the light blue is your RX spend. So, you can see diabetes is mainly made up of your pharmacy spend, which is not uncommon. We see that across our book of business. Um, I also want to point out it's not necessarily a bad thing. Um, we want people to be taking their diabetes medications. If they're not, if they're not compliant with that, we can easily see much much higher than that medical spend. Um, not taking your diabetes medications can lead to things like wounds, um, amputations, and things like that. So, it's it looks like a lot of spend from diabetes medications. I just want to point out that that's not always a bad thing. Um, you'll see that bone bone, joint, and muscle diseases is also mostly made up of RX spend. That's your specialty medications. Embberil and humit that category. Um, and then the medical spend

is just from things like infections of different tissues. Um, MRIs for tissues fall into that category. Tissue exams, chiropractic care, um, that would be the medical spend for that category. And then same thing if you look at the major skin diseases category, Skyrizzy makes up all of that RX spend. Like there's a a hair of medical. Yeah. Yeah. Just a tiny bit a bar that small

otherwise it is all skyriszy. Um so any questions on maybe some other things that fall into these categories? I will add that on the specialty medication side like the drug you see hum on there they've created what's called a bioimilar or humra which is essentially a generic but they always call it a bioimilar because this has active biological ingredients in it that saves a significant amount of money over the brand name drug of hum produced by Abby however you lose the rebates associated with Humera when you go to to the bio similar but we do anticipate that it will lead to reduced costs and I believe your new contract does have a bioimilar strategy associated with it. Unfortunately a lot of the other drugs on there like skyrizzy in particular does not have a bioimilar in the marketplace but as soon as those drugs come out you get those again biosimilars equals generic that does reduce cost significantly. question. So any one drug uh if you go uh with the brand name and you get the rebate and you go with the generic and no rebate, what is that cost difference? Typically

it it ultimately ends up still saving you money doing the generic, but I don't have the cost difference available to me. We'll look into that. Yeah, absolutely. Average cost on that as it relates to cost of the county.

Yeah. when we're looking at our of our pre-renneal strategy meeting going into the next year, um we'll make sure we have prime therapeutics biosimilar strategy um how they're utilizing it and how we can take advantage of that. Um overall, as Andy said, the net cost is going to be lower. Uh the advantage to the employee uh and the plan is that for the plan that cost will be lower for the employee they're getting the benefit of having that lower cost at the point of sale um rather than the rebate coming back to the plan. So they're paying less right away. And I want also want to point out that um that's part of my role at Apex too is just monitoring these drugs when they do hit your plan and working with our innovative RX team and just making sure that price that you guys are seeing is um the best possible price.

Okay, you're welcome.

Um page 21 is your top chronic conditions. Um, I really like the lefth hand side of this report just because up until now we've talked about how your high-cost claimments really kind of drive these therapeutic groups, but this one shows you how many people um or I guess what is most common by number of members. So, I want to point out that your top six are pretty common um top chronic conditions for what we see across our book of business. Um, hypertension, it's a common condition, but luckily if it's well managed, it's not going to be a high cost. Um it's just really maintenance medications and hopefully lifestyle changes. Um we also have been seeing more depression and anxiety in the last couple of years hit these high numbers as far as most common. Um again, not a bad thing because it it shows that people are more comfortable getting care for u mental health conditions and hopefully are seeing their PCP and and having medications to to manage it. if not um sometimes if it's not well managed then we're seeing inpatient care for that and that that can be high cost too. So again, not a bad thing that people are getting seen for mental health. And then on the left hand side or sorry the right hand side, you can also see your top chronic conditions by per member per month. But again, this is highly influenced by your high-cost claimments and then also those medications.

Page 22 is where we start talking more specific. Question, a quick question. Mood disorder, depression. you come on down to anxiety disorder mobiles, but those kind of a little bit the same. Um, if you combine them, it's a pretty big pretty big number. I just What is the difference between? Are you talking about mood disorder and anxiety disorder? Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Are you talking about on the most common by number of members?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, if you do combine them, it's it's quite a bit, but again, not necessarily a bad thing that they're getting the care for that. Anxiety and depression are pretty different, though. Um, the medication management and maybe the the therapy for it is also different. The care for it, but you are correct. When you do combine them, it is a large amount of spend. You're absolutely right about that. Very large. A lot of times we see that people will end up having a diagnosis of both, too. So, some of those numbers might overlap. Yeah.

Um, so your pharmacy overview, I think we've already kind of hit on this quite a bit as far as looking at the specialty spend. Um, this report just kind of outlines that 52% of your pharmacy spend was from specialty. Most of that is Skyreszi, Ember, Cumra, and Cosentics. Um, the unclassified category is just diabetes supplies. So, um, people who maybe have like a continuous glucose monitor or supplies to check their blood glucose regularly falls into that category. Um, but overall, you can see why we definitely want to keep an eye on specialty spend and make sure that um, when those biosimilars, like Andy mentioned, are coming out that we're we're on top of that and making sure that you guys are getting the best price for that. And 23 is kind of a repeat. Um, so I won't go into a lot of details there, but you can just see your top 10 RX by paid amount. Um, five out of 10 are specialty. I did look at the prior year. Eight out of 10 of these were on your reports last year as far as um your top meds. So page 24 is your medical spend by encounter type. Um, so you can just see the amount spent for outpatient care, inpatient care, emergency care is something that we really like to look at. Just make sure that um your members are educated on when the ER is appropriate to be using. Um, I did look at your top diagnosis categories for ER claims. Um, top was chest pain, which I would say is definitely indicative of an ER visit. Um, some other high I guess diagnoses that were often for the ER were acute upper respiratory infection, abdominal pain, and AIB. So, again, we don't know the whole story, just looking at diagnosis codes, but just kind of um

thinking about ways to educate your members on when they can be using the ER versus the urgent care or when they should just be going to their primary care physician. Yeah. One of our goals was to reduce that. Yeah. Yeah. See, it's went up instead. So it's you've not did Yeah. And er SP er spend in general is more costly. Like we're seeing that increase too each year after year. So part of that could be that. Um but yeah, I would say that's a that's a goal for a lot of people because ER spend can be can be pretty rough. Any any Go ahead.

I was just going to say any other questions on this page. Yeah, the home doicile. Uh, that's a significant increase. Um, well, number one, can you explain what that home doicile is? Uh, and number two, do you have a reason why that's basically three times as high?

Yeah. So, that's a great question and I did go back and look um compared to your prior period and really it just comes down to more claims fell into that category. So there were claims for obstructive sleep apnea. So maybe some people had some um therapeutic care that was done at their home for that diagnosis. Um there was some ilostomy care which has to do with um an abdominal diagnosis and pretty extensive care that you have to do for that. Um that's usually done at the home. Um there is some claims for developmental disorders of speech and language which was for a child. So that was also therapy done at the home. So it really just comes down to there were just overall more claims that fell into that category this year compared to prior years.

So basically it's a change in categories, not necessarily more people.

Well, it is a a ch or an increase in claims that fell into that category. So not not necessarily a category change because it's just claims or it's it's care that's being done at the home. So more claims fell into that this year than prior years. Typically we don't see a a lot of spend in home or doicile but with these specific things diagnosis codes for your group those typically do fall into that category. The sleep apnnea could be like home sleep test. Uh the sleep apnnea, the actual machines, things of that nature. It's showing 41 claims, correct? And then it's up to 47. Yeah.

Yeah. So more claims, but only a handful more claimants. So maybe they had significantly more than the prior year. Great question. Lactation specialist also falls into that category. So after women have children and they need some help with breastfeeding into that category too. All things that you would want done at home. Yes. Still seems like a significant increase. Yeah.

If you want we can look more into that and get a little bit more detail on what exactly the claims were, why they were more expensive and get and send that on. So, so we had different claims that would fall in that category. We didn't have the same claims, but they were just in a different category the entire year. You're saying these were different claims that fell in this category. I think that was maybe Jim's question. Were these claims also last year, but in a different category? Yeah. Well, I don't know if that was No, it would be the same. Yeah, same category. The same claims fall into that C. Exactly. new claims um maybe higher for the one person last year spent 50,000 this year they spent 100,000 um something like that. Okay.

So I guess the big question is why such a huge increase. Yeah, we can do that. Yeah, we we'll send you a breakdown more specifically of the diagnosis codes and how much was paid to that amount. Well, I was wondering if maybe something has changed where it can happen at home as opposed to either outpatient or inpatient. Exactly. And the sleeping test was one of the ones that typically used to be done in a hospital setting. So that's a great example and now we can do at home. One thing that comes to my mind is a teleaalth meeting. Does that count as doile? Tele medicine is a is a different

got it own category it own category that's a great question that is a good question well I I did a a couple of tele meetings with a nutritionist and I didn't know if that fell into home because I could do it from home or if that fell into teleah health maybe it would be tele health most likely tellah health okay y those are also the teleahalth are are much much lower cost too so that wouldn't accumulate like the some of the services done in the home okay yeah but that's a good question yeah good

yeah because take a look at that we had uh last year we had 61 claimments for 237 whereas then the following year it was 83 claimments with only you know 20,000.

So you know it was more people but it was actually less cost for the teleaalth. Yeah, and that's something that I'd really like to push again when we do that steel open enrollment is the nocost telealth uh that we have with PHP. Um to make sure it's through Park View. Uh so we want to make sure that employees are utilizing that particularly over the winter cold, flu, sinus infection season. Um that can be a great way to increase your employees uh satisfaction with not having to go to the doctor um in person and also help us keep spend down. Is this maybe a good time um if the county were to enter into some sort of a clinic situation? Well, how would I mean is it possible to figure out how that would affect these numbers here?

So, it's hard to determine the ROI of a clinic, but I'm sure that Jim would love to talk about that. Do you want to chat? Do you want to talk about Parkview Clinic at all? We have about five, just so you know, we have about five minutes and then we'll have to break for the PL. Okay. I think that I think that we'll probably move that into our pre-renewal strategy meeting if that works for everyone. Um because that'd be something that we would employ or deploy as a strategy for the upcoming plan year anyway. So, I think that's a good point.

Okay, I will hurry. Um page 25, I did want to point this out. So, this is looking at your annual preventive screenings. Um, the green is the percentage of your members who had an annual preventive visit and then the yellow is no preventive visit. Um, I do know that you guys do on-site biometric screenings with Parkview, so that's not going to be taken into this number. But I also wanted to point out that just looking at your prior period compared to these numbers, last year you had 34% who did not have an annual preventive visit. And I know that you um kind of rolled out a formal wellness program in 2025 that's going to be continuing or we're going to talk about it for 2026. Um and so I do think that made a huge difference because to see over 10% increase in preventive screenings in a single year is wonderful and not something I see a lot. So I did want to point that out.

Yeah. And that 10% doesn't even take into account the additional people who attended the biometric screenings. So the wellness program had a really nice impact on employees going out and getting those screenings. Um the feedback at open enrollment was very positive about it. Uh there specifically the highway department uh we had a good laugh because they said that none of them had anything wrong with them until they had their wellness screening. Um, so yeah, we we joked about that, but it is important that we're we're bringing these conditions and and these things to light so that your employees are treating them before they're a high claim and a shot claim to the plan. Um, so I think that was a a great program that you that you all put in place for your employees.

Um, lastly, these last couple of pages just kind of highlight your high-cost claimments. We've we've talked quite a bit about each of these members already. Um, but I do want to talk about this clinical dashboard on page 27. So, this is based off of your monthly clinical report. Um, so that's the report that I'm um working on each month that shows anybody who's had 10,000 spend in a month and we just kind of monitor them from there. Um, so at the end of your plan year, you ended with 10 high-risisk members. So, these are members that we would anticipate to see ongoing claims from um because of their diagnosis or their condition. Six are medium risk. So, these are things that we might we anticipate might see more claims from, but we don't know for sure and we'll just kind of keep an eye on them. And then lowrisk um 27. So that's great. We want to see more low-risisk members. Those are going to be things like joint replacements that shouldn't be an ongoing risk to the plan. Pregnancies um that should be kind of one and done. So that's kind of where we ended for the year. Um 28 and 29 just kind of show you uh those high-risisk members. Obviously no PHI there. Um, and then also medium risk numbers.

You want me? Um, yeah, I think we can just high level go over what we're we're thinking to bring to our next meeting, which will be our pre-renal strategy meeting, but Sage has a few recommendations that we'll go much more in depth on at our next meeting.

Um, yeah. So, obviously that's a lot of information as far as your clinical review. Um, so some recommendations we have are first of all, our second opinion program. This is a program that's unique to Apex. Um it's kind of an enhancement to the benefits that you offer your members. Um we partner with Mayo Clinic and MD Anderson Cancer Center. Um so these are basically programs for your members who might have a new daunting diagnosis for cancer. Um or maybe they have something going on that they aren't getting a clear diagnosis on. And so we keep seeing high spend. They have to keep going to different doctors and they don't have a clear diagnosis. Um, this is a program that you can opt into um, to offer your members that they can basically get in touch with one of our nurse navigators at Apex and we can help determine if they're a good candidate for a second opinion um, either through Mayo Clinic which does have an additional charge to it or MD Anderson which is for cancer specifically that does not ever have an additional charge. Um, there's no PE PM PMP cost to this. It's just something that you kind of have on the back end and if somebody were to come um to DIY or or anybody their department and they you know say I have a new cancer diagnosis or maybe um they think I might have cancer but I have to wait forever to get into a doctor. Um we can help them hopefully see somebody much quicker. So for MD Anderson Cancer Center specifically um we get them into see a doctor there within um is it 48 hours? Yes. 48 hours. So,

is there anything with Cleveland Clinic? Uh, we we don't Yeah, we don't partner with them specifically. Um, uh, but like I said, MD Anderson does not have any extra charges to it. It's just, um, they talk to our nurses and we direct them over there. Mayo Clinic does have an additional charge. So, I do have, um, some flyers on that. I'm sorry. I'll get these passed around. I should have done that earlier. Um, we need a real quick. Yeah. Okay. We can come back for 10. We'll come back. Okay. Perfect.

Would you like Do you want them to be done in the next five minutes or how long do you want them to have? Oh, we do 10 minutes. 10 minutes. Yeah, we do 10 minutes. 10 minutes when they start the meeting. How much of the

All right, we're back. Sorry, Bill. All right. Sorry. All right. Okay, we will continue.

All right. Well, I passed out um a second opinion flyer for everybody. It outlines um just the program in general. Um if you have any questions, please let us know. Um typically we just ask that you sign a contract. Again, there's no ongoing cost for this each month. Um it just kind of sits and then sits until you use it. So, um the second thing I want to discuss as far as recommendations is just wellness programming like I outlined earlier. Um, I think having the formal wellness program this last year really made a difference in driving preventive screenings and hopefully getting your people in to see their doctor and being good healthcare consumers. Um, so I would just um encourage you to maybe consider, you know, having that in the 2026 plan year too. Um, I think it's a again a great program. I think you had a really great um turnout. Do correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you had quite a few people who participated. Yeah. So, um and then lastly, um we just uh have Apex programs to promote total well-being. This is more for Doie if she wants to share um our Apex webinars, blog posts. Um we do this monthly, weekly even. Um that they're basically just different health and wellness topics that you can share with your employees. Um popular topics that we're seeing in the health industry right now, but also insurance topics, too. we've kind of um increased our reach to that as well for your members. Any clinical questions?

Um just discussing a few benefit trends that are in the marketplace and we will absolutely be digging into these more uh in our strategy meeting. Um but a few things that I'd love to hit on in our strategy meeting would be high performing networks. Uh right now you're in a network uh that has all of the hospital systems in the area in place. You can put in place a high performance network uh that will narrow that down to uh essentially one hospital system or the other. That is probably not something that we want to look at for the upcoming year because we would like to see what our current contract does to overall spend before we would make a change like that. Um but we'll just discuss what that looks like um and what our options could be. uh RAS or individual coverage uh healthcare reimbursement accounts. Those are a big topic right now out in the marketplace. Uh essentially how that works is you would give your employees a certain amount of money, a set amount into their own individual coverage account and they would go to the marketplace on their own and and make those uh choices. So they would choose their own healthcare plan off the marketplace. Um it is a big cost-savings tool. It's also a very disruptive tool. Um you can no longer assist your employees with the management of the plans. Um they are really truly out on their own uh in that way. However, it is something that we can work with partners to minimize that disruption. Um if we are in a position where we need to make a really large change. um reference-based alternatives, those are not something that work fantastic in this market. Um Park View and Lutheran, neither of them will play with the reference-based alternatives. Um but just so you know, if you hear it mentioned in the marketplace, um that is something that is a set amount,

negotiated amount over the cost of what the Medicare reimbursement is. Um so we would get with get any program um that would manage that process for your employees but essentially they would negotiate the cost of a service upfront with the hospital systems maybe saying 220% of Medicare is what they will pay and and that's the maximum. Um so that again can be very disruptive to employees if balanced bills are received um from the hospital systems because again Parkview and Lutheran do not play well in that area and in that space. Um so those are more for markets where there are a lot of competitive health care systems uh that will play those games um to get the population in their in their doors. um Ben admin solution. So we are putting one in place now uh with steel they utilize solar. So that will be a great lift off of Doy and Morgan once we have that up and running um until that point will be uh a lift for them um on the HR side. Then those voluntary benefits that we're putting in place accident critical illness and hospital indemnity. Uh and then the last piece that we actually would want to know now if there is interest in is called the Samaritan fund. Uh so the Samaritan fund kind of like the individual coverage HRA. Uh you pay a one-time fee to this fund called the Samaritan fund. Um the difference is they take the employee and they help them go out onto the marketplace and get coverage. um they'll ensure that all of their medications, all their doctors and their treatment plan would be able to remain in place. The risk would then come off of the decal plan and they would be on the individual marketplace. Um so in this case, you do have the support of the Samaritan Fund to work with those uh employees and dependents. They would have a case manager um who

would help them through every step of the way. Very white glove service. We have had a lot of positive feedback so far. Um, this is for your high cost claimments. So, they need to have over $55,000 in spend for the upcoming calendar year. So, if they're looking at 2026, they're going to go to the Samaritan Fund to see if they qualify. If they do, and they believe they'll have over 55,000 in spend for that year, um, they actually will come off the plan. Um, it costs you guys $55,000 one time to the Samaritan Fund for that individual. per employee

per employee. If that employee comes with dependence that would want to come over, um it's an additional 15,000 per dependent with a cap of $100,000. Um so the max that you would pay out per family is that $100,000. The benefit for the employee, their healthcare becomes free. They no longer have to pay premiums and they do not have to pay their deductible or their out-of- pocket costs because they get a debit card from the Samaritan Fund to utilize for all of their expenses. Um, so they have that benefit of going over uh to the marketplace and having no costs remaining. Um, so the reason that we have to discuss this now rather than waiting um is that the uh marketplace open enrollment is when they would need to make that change. That would be if they do qualify, they go to the Samaritan Fund. The employee still is the one who has the last say, "Hey, we found you this plan. We think it's going to fit you. It covers all your medications. It covers all your doctors." The employee still has to be the one that says, "Yes, I want to move forward with this." It has to be employee driven. And you must educate all employees uh the same. So, we can't say, "Joe Smith, you have $200,000 in claims every year. uh you need to go into the Samaritan plan. Can't be like that. It has to be voluntary and we have to educate to all.

But what if they can't find? Then they would just remain on the decal plan and we would be out the 55,000. No, you only pay the 55,000 if they qualify and enroll. Okay. So, I missed that.

No, that's okay. I'd like to add a little bit of context to this as well. Lauren got it right. You have to offer to all and no targeting. So the first part is providing the medical records to the Samaritan fund where they identify if you qualify. Step one, you cannot identify the plans they are eligible for in the individual marketplace until November. So step two is you you step one you qualify. Step two is all right, who are your doctors and what prescriptions are you taking? Which they'll already know. And they'll say, okay, we have a plan for you. or they'll say, "We don't have a plan for you because your doctors aren't in one of these individual policies." At which point the member can say, "Well, I'll do a different doctor." Or the member can say, "No, I want to stay on to Calb's plan." The uh they have to reenroll every year. So, it is only a year-to-year contract basis. The biggest got you with this program is you could have somebody who signs up and qualifies. You pay the big lump sum and they leave employment to Calvin and there's nothing that can be done about it.

calendar year with a lot of uh clients that have evaluated this have still thought the risk was worth doing because they're removing the high risk for it. But that is a gotcha with this. You would have to swallow that pill, so to speak. No pun intended.

Yeah. Um if you look at page 28, you can see your high-risk high cost claimments. These are the ongoing claims, ongoing spend. Um, so these would be the individuals who when we are marketing this, we would want to market to if you have large claims, if you meet your maximum out of pocket every year, this is a meeting you're going to want to attend. Um, you know, if you maybe get close to your deductible or you sometimes have expenses, it that will not be, you know, a program that would be appropriate for those those individuals. So would these meetings be individual though because other employees might So we could do one of those I might not want.

No. So we we would do our education meetings. Um for example like a Samaritan Fund webinar. Um you wouldn't be able to see like who else was on. Yeah. And Yeah. It would cost us say one employee cost us 50k. Yep. How much is it going to cost that employee if they change plans? Nothing. So they qualify then we pay the 50 grand and they have they're good. Yep. their premiums covered and their deductible and out of pockets covered at 100%. And if they have an HSA, then are they still be able to put into the HSA or no? That's a great question that came up the other day. So technically, because you're giving them first dollar coverage, they cannot contribute to the HSA any longer.

What happens if they're on the HSA plan now? Do we How does that work? Because it goes calendar year and ours is from July to July. So if they when they re-qualify the next year, so if they qualify, it's a qualifying event for them to come off the decal plan. Okay. Then next year if they don't re-qualify, they lose coverage and that's a qualifying event to come back to the cow plan. So it works. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, it works both ways. So it works well in that way. So this period they cannot contribute at all or can they contribute and the county just doesn't put their match?

So it would be they couldn't contribute at all. Now, if they still have a balance in that health savings account, they can still spend it down. Um, what it's just a contribution thing until they come back off the first dollar coverage. So quickly, um, if the county puts in the 50 plus grand and the employee is on it for one year and then all of a sudden something changes and they're not eligible anymore, is it 55,000 gone?

Um, so they would be eligible for the year and they that's when the plan is approved and they enroll. So from that point on, there's nothing that the marketplace can't say you have to, you know, come off the plan. We're good for a year and then they would re-qualify. So you wouldn't pay the money and then they'd have to get kicked off the plan. So they would be good for say January to December. Yep. Exactly. So come the end of December, if they don't re-qualify, then even though it's mid Yep.

our year, they can still come back to our because the loss of coverage on the individual marketplace is the qualifying event to come back. Yep. You got it. Um, so if this is of interest, Sage will help us set up someformational webinars that you can watch uh and we can get an education plan in place uh for your employees. Uh just to level set expectations, you all we've also learned that sometimes people with these high dollar costs, even though this is great for them, are comfortable with where they're at and it doesn't always lead to people coming off your plan and going to this individual marketplace. That's why it's still important that you just here's the information that Cal is making you aware of this program, make the decision that's best for you.

Yeah, we do see this as a shorter term program. Um they I'm going to say that they found a loophole. Uh and we we could and should probably take advantage of that. Um, however, as we're shifting more of this risk to the marketplace, uh, the marketplace is essentially going to start taking, you know, really big hits and it's going to become either unaffordable or they'll find a way to shut that down. Kind of with, um, if you're familiar with how the patient assistant programs used to work on the pharmacy side, um, where we were getting all of these things from the the manufacturers of the pharmacy and and applying them to our employees and giving them those benefits. Um, as they figured that out, uh, they started to to narrow those dollars down and shut those programs down. Um, so we see something probably happening in the next few years, but certainly something that we could take advantage of while it exists. Yeah, I think we are at time. So, yep. Let let us know if you have questions. Um, otherwise, would you guys like more information on the webinars and the strategy uh just to make an informed decision? Okay.

I would want to have more information on the Samaritan fund. Okay. Great. Yeah. Well, we'll make sure to get that out. Thank you all so much for your time. Thank you very much. Yes. Appreciate it. Oh, my water bottle. I seriously was going to do the same thing. Husband would love [Music] my husband. Did you see her water bottle like with all the feel like or Melissa would like that. I was looking at it. It was my birthday present.

I don't know. was outside. They should be coming.

Oh well. up.

He has to wait. Well, we we got an hour. Just kidding. We just shut the clock off, right? Go forever. How's everybody today? We're good. Mr. Parker, busy. What's that? Are you busy? That's an understatement. Have a question. Yes, it's been very busy. your right-hand man back to work?

Yes, he is. Yep, he's back and he's out and we got a lot going on. So, weather's nice and we're going to stay busy and take advantage of it. So, I've got just a few things for you guys today. For one, uh we went and looked at a trailer we'd like to see about purchasing Low Boy trailer. one of those passed down. That's There's two different quotes on there. So, Mark and Dusty went to Tri-State Trailers last week, looked at the one that we was really interested in. That's the one I got highlighted there. It's a 2025 leftover trailer. be a low boy that go on a new tractor we bought. We looked for a used one for quite a while actually since we bought the tractor. We can't find anything that's a reasonable price that's got the setup that we want. Um, this has got I'll show you a couple pictures of it. What we was looking for, we was looking for a solid deck like this one's got. That's one we looked at got. And then we wanted one with a low boy. I mean, a real low boy. So, this is what they call a PA special. This is the trailer we're looking at. This is one actually sitting right next to it. And you can see the the high point the breakover of the ramps. So the paver goes up on on them nicer. Then also if I have a truck or something that goes down, we can put the trucks on those with the underbodies and get up there and not hit the breaking point because the underbodies won't go up on a regular low boy. There's

a couple pictures there I can show you. That being a the grater blade of course,

right? And all of them's got a Uh they they do have this trailer in stock at $75,650. It's brand new. Uh the other price that we got was a Fontaine trailer that was similar. Uh that one was $89,9950. And then I got a price from Westside Tractor Sales on the Talbert on what they had that was um comparable. And that one's 90,350. So you have 75, the other one's 89, and the other one's 90. That's the three quotes you got. Okay.

Yep.

The price here for the tri-state includes optional delivery, $550. That'd be nice, but I'd like to pick that up. They will set that trailer to our truck and then if our wet kit fittings need changed on our tractor to match the trailer, they'll change them. Well, that cost could go away, but we'll have the $75 title transfer and temporary tag cost on there. Uh, money's in the budget. I also have a diaphragm of that trailer. Amy wanted to see it, the specs of it. I didn't get any on the other ones, or at least I didn't print them off. kind of com. I never really heard of that model, so that's why I wanted you guys to go down and look at it, and I was real pleased with the build of it. They went down last week and looked at it. I don't have any questions for me. He's budgeted.

It should pretty much haul everything we plan to haul. That 35 ton. Is that what I'm seeing? I believe so. Yes. 75,000. Yep. Yeah, I do see it there. Yep. That's 70,000 pounds at all. We don't have anything close to that, do we? Probably not that I'm going to put on there. No. Okay. Entertain a motion. The general prefer I'll make the motion to buy the 2025 Eager Beaver 35 GSL PT 47 time by 102 lowboy trailer. Second.

Motion and second on the floor. Additional comments. comments from the public. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I opposed. You got your trailer. Okay. I'll make the guys very happy. When are you going to be able to pick that up? Uh I'm assuming it's ready to go now. Yeah, I think I I think they'll let us. Um I know they rather have a check when we pick it up, but we're going to be a little while on the check. I'll have to I'll have to find out with them. What was the question when we could pick that up? I said, "Well, I have to see if they want a check right away or Oh, yeah. It'd be up to them and when we or through processing,

can you get us a check fairly soon for that or would we have to? If they if they want it upfront, um, yeah, I would just have to look. I mean, if I do it as a bookkeeping claim, then we can get it relatively quickly. Okay. All right. I'll I'll get with you. Okay. What else, Ben? Uh, the only other thing I had was just a a question on the county road 17 project with Wester.

I know email went out last week for the contract. I didn't know if you guys was okay with that contract, the verbiage, and ready to approve that contract and then I can take that to Wester or if you wanted some more amendments done to it. I didn't know just following up for I can stay on top of it. It's all I do. So, well, as I understand it, the they would pay the fee that we listed in the contract, right? And then we would provide service but their fee would pay for all the the cost of the materials basically. Right.

But we would provide the labor and the equipment. Correct. Right. The fee is not that's how I worded it. The fee is not to exceed 157. That's right. That's fine. I mean they're paying for majority of it if it our cost will probably go up next year if we don't get it complete. But yeah, still their costs are capped at the 157 amount currently. That's all they have to pay. We can change that if you wanted to, but that's the sounds like that was the agreed upon amount or something that had been discussed. I mean, I wouldn't know what to change it. It would just have to go off our annual bid price, but they're paying for our road. Yeah. A little bit. It might be a couple thousand off, but they're paying for the majority of it,

right? Will there be some kind of maintenance or performance bond with this? No. No. No. We're doing the work, right? Potentially. It's already our road. They're just wanting to turn gravel to chip seal. Okay. They don't have any control of it. Good question. That's fine. It's all over my head. No, no. But if they were controlling it and doing the work, we might want to bond it. So, if you guys are in agreement with the the contract and want to approve that contract today, I can get that from Andrew. So, I can present that to Wester. I'm sure they're going to want to review it and then if they're okay with it, I would prefer that they sign the contract. I'll bring it back to you guys next meeting and then you guys will sign it and then it will be

done deal. A done deal. But I think first of all, you guys need to if you approve that contract, you need to accept that, make a motion, accept that and have me present it to Wester. But I didn't know if there's any more amendments that you wanted for the draft that he submitted. Did somebody send it to me? So I know what we're talking about. You're not I don't know. You didn't get it out of I didn't like I lost it. We were with it. I'm good with it. I can try to send you one right to you, Susan. Okay. Thanks. And my only concern was getting it done next year. Just want to make sure that you're okay with I'll get it done.

Okay. Well, it needs to go at the top of the list because it's paid for by Well, and so it's got to go at the top of the list. The only thing we could put in that contract if you'd like would be just to protect this unforeseen circumstance act of God or something like that. I think they would understand it, but it might not hurt to have that in there because I mean, if you just never know. Things happen. Things happen. I know it. talking about a whole summer act to god is well you just never know never say never but

we we would like to think that I just hate to exclude something and and we're and we're talking $157,000 too it's not I mean it's a lot of money but it's not a substantial amount that that's up to you guys personally I would like to include just a clause that says uh some act of god We call a force majure clause. I'll add one. That's just my opinion. Can we Yeah, I was going to say can we a motion with that amendment and then move forward? Yeah. Why don't you make the motion? Yes. I would so move we add that language as presented.

I'll second motion second on the floor. Additional comments. We are approving the dollar amount and the proposed contract language with the amendment for the force mature act of god clause. Yes. Okay. And what did you call that? Horse majour. Uh oh my god, the word. Okay, I'll check the spelling on it to be sure. I took French. I'll figure it out.

We Okay, we have a motion and a second and a force of majour. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I opposed. Motion carries. Okay. Well, then when I get that updated from him, I will pass that off to Wester LLC and let you know if they have any comments back or if they're happy with it. Um, that's all I have for you guys today. Okay. Anything for Ben? Good. Thank you. Nothing. Okay.

Have a good one. Yeah. Get out there and get back to work. Yeah. That was a quick hour, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. Okay, Mr. Grab, you are up. Oh, who is this? Oh, I didn't see him come in. You can come on up a little closer if you want, Patrick. Oh, you're okay.

Everyone, this is Patrick Grant. He's our weights and man. I take your hand, but I got a bad cold. Bad cold. Okay. That's kind of why I was sitting down there. This is John Douly here and Jim Miller. Nice to meet you. Glad to meet you. I know either called you. Do you have any requests or problems or anything? Well, you know, Bill, when I sold that system two years ago to you and the council, I told you it was a system for life, and it is. I mean, as long as we maintain it, we shouldn't have to put any money into it. I'm more concerned about the truck, you know, what might come down the road. Closer. Yeah, a little closer.

What might come down the road as far as the truck goes because we've, you know, we bought that with 40 some thousand miles on it. And it was a delivery truck. So, it it was probably, you know, beat up pretty good. But as far as, you know, the equipment for doing the actual testing, we're in good shape for many, many years. Yeah. I think we put an extended warranty on that, didn't we? On the truck. Yes. I have no idea. I pretty sure we did. That was Todd's baby. Warranty on it. Yeah. How many miles you got on now? 46. Oh, what? It's still a baby, but a long way.

We got 10 more years. on the truck. Anything else? Anything you need? I I do have a question. Is the truck the same thing as the van that we put that thing in? Yes. Yes, it's the van. Right. All right. I was just making sure I was on the same track here. The only thing is I need permission to take the truck out of the county Thursday. Indianapolis has pulled my number out of the hat. Oh. To do the inspection on all of the weights. So, I'm probably going to have to go down two days because they're not going to get it all done in one day. Uh, I told them to do the prover in the van first so I have a way of getting home and then whenever they get the rest done I can go down and pick it up problem.

I don't really think so because he won't have to claim mileage because it's our vehicle. So yeah, the most I might have to do is throw in a receipt for gas because I don't know if tank will get us right and back, which is fine. Okay. Okay. Besides out everything else is going well. I got something for you. Five year. Congratulations. Thank you very much. I wasn't going to shake your hand. Five more. You get a plaque.

I get a plaque in five. When do I get the gold watch? 25. [Laughter] I I could make a comment, but I'll just I'll stay away from that one. No, glad to have you on board.

Well, I mean, just to make it short and sweet five years ago when I came in here, and I I guess they're tired of hearing me say this, but we were working in the stone age. Everything was handwritten and it was handwritten poorly. I brought examples, but now everything's computerized. It's got our logo on it as you know Cal County, you know, they know. Got my phone number on it so they can get in touch with us where before it was just Yeah, Dave did a great job inspecting, but he did a lousy job on the paperwork bookkeeping and he was quite behind as as I remember at that point. hadn't been previously, but no health reasons. Yeah.

He got way. He was still using a flip phone while I met him. How do you get text? I don't get texts. So, we appreciate we've brought that program and it's a good job done. All right. Well, thank you for this and you guys have a nice day. Okay. Take care. Go read the code. Off to 4. Off to 4. I guess the fair is coming up in a week or so. Oh yeah, I've got to go inspect all the weights for the hogs and pigs and cattle and all that good stuff. Okay. Hey, have a good day. Thank you, sir. Patrick, thanks for coming in.

Let's get back down to miscellaneous, I guess. What do we got left? Uh, we started with Sunny Meadow. Tyler, do you want to have Tyler come back up? Oh, yeah. Yes. Get him back to work. Somebody wake him up.

All right, we're back. Um, I have two more items I wanted to discuss with you guys. Um, one of them I haven't talked to Bill about yet. So, I'm going to start with the other one that I know will make him happy. Uh, and that's the county pond. So, we've discussed this at drainage board, but I want to bring up to the commissioners that way we could make a an action plan for it and get some direction um from you all. So, uh, we had discussed as part of the drainage board, um, the county pond water level being down, getting fish killed, not being as appealing, um, because it was reconstructed on the southwest side of the county pond. Reconstructed that, installed a new tile about three years ago and, uh, the outlet was lowered from what it was previously. Uh the previous outlet exited on the east side of the county pond, went under I 69 and through the uh current Auburn crossing development over there. That has been uh blocked off and so it is no longer an outlet that direction. It goes to the southwest. Uh the water level once that was installed went down. Um and so I'd been asked about raising that back up to uh help with our assess value of the pond and uh make it a little more appealing. uh as people drive by on I69 and they don't see a big muck mess. Um so uh anyway, we went and got elevation shots on that and the old outlet was about 1.2 feet above our current outlet. So if we want to take that back to about where it was existing, we can go lift that structure, reset it, um and try to raise that water level some just over but if we think that will help. I explored other ideas to try to raise it even more than that. Uh but it's pretty difficult because there's a tile that comes in from the north that that outlet uh is

only 3T higher than that old outlet. So if we raise our new outlet 1.2 feet, we'll be uh just about.3 feet below the inlet coming from the north. I wouldn't I would be hesitant to raise it any further above that and uh cover that current inlet up. So, um did you say raise it how much? What's that? Where? What? Raises it how much?

1.2 ft. Yep. Uh we looked at some options of trying to reconstruct that north tile just so we can try to get uh a little bit higher water level, but it connects to another wetlands uh that is along I 69 further north. Uh and there's just not a lot of fall in that system right now. So I don't think it's a viable solution to to explore. So uh the the best proposal I can really make for now is to raise our current outlet structure to bring that water level up. Beyond that, I think it would be more of a a dredging process to to deepen that uh which I don't I'm not sure what the cost would be on that. For for us to go in and and raise that outlet 1.2 ft, I would not imagine it would be very substantial. somewhere around $3,500 probably to have a contractor out there

uh with a hoe and I'm I think we could have it done in under a day be taken care of. So, um I had talked to you each kind of separately about it about the commissioners funding that since it's mostly uh for our county pond. So, um just looking for a yes, do it or no, don't do it. comments, questions, but it enhances the property value then I think long-term investment it's best that we raise it to 1.2 ft with me. Motion.

So move to accept as presented to uh raise the tile on that pond 1.2 ft out. You want to put that in there? You know how much? 3500. What do you want to go? I don't know if you want to put a not to exceed on it. I mean, I don't think it's not going to go crazy over that, but it would be unfortunate. Well, 4,000 should cover it. I hope so. Let's go five. Go five. Yeah, if it goes higher than that, then you come back to us. I just want to make sure if it's going to come over five, we'll come back. If we run into issues, come back to you. And is your motion that you're paying for it out of commissioner fun?

Okay, there you go. Susan. Yeah. So, I'll amend the motion to pay for the up to amount of 5,000 to raise the structure 1.2 ft on the county property as presented. Does that work? Got it. I'll second a second on the floor. Additional comments, comments from the public. All those in favor signify by saying I.

I oppose. Motion carries. Hey, that's done. All right. Uh, the last item I have for you is back to our cornerstones. Uh, so I already discussed a little bit earlier when we were talking about the ordinance. Uh, the 5% of corners that we were supposed to perpetuate, uh, each year under the authority of the surveyor. Um, so we are we're trying to get caught up on that. We have a program established uh that we're pretty proud of that we put together a really good team uh of licensed surveyors as well as working with the GIS department from de developmental services uh to to get this up and rolling. Uh for the start of this we had just around $200,000 to get going. I think maybe it was $223,000 uh somewhere in that vicinity. Uh I talked a little bit about pricing of corners. Prices of corners can fluctuate greatly depending on the difficulty level of perpetuating them. Uh so on on the lower end, corners that are located in a road uh that we're getting coordinates on that already have a monument established, we're looking at $250 to $300. We have started um with our program to go find those and get those turned green to begin with. So I think we're somewhere right now. We still haven't there's going to be another batch coming in for update, but I think we're around 180 corners that we uh have done so far on the program this year. So, it's probably been in the last six to seven months since we really got that program finalized and up and running. Um, which is really good. Total in the uh in the county, we have 1,692 corners. So, of those 1,692, uh, around 860 of them, uh, are supposedly marked with Harrison markers currently. Um, there are 821

corners that do not have a marker or coordinates. So, uh, roughly half of the corners throughout the county are red corners that are not usable currently. So uh these corners are used for uh private surveys mostly to establish uh viable property lines uh as well as uh mapping out developments uh primary plat secondary plat um all of those going into it. So, it's a resource that many people don't uh know is important, but but it is uh and really it's a it's a matter of time is of the essence to get those done. Uh the longer we wait, the more uh development, construction occurs, the more farmers are removing tree lines. Um those just lead to obliterated evidence uh that's no longer viable. So it's something that uh has kind of been neglected in the past that we are trying to get caught up on. So as part of that um the funding for that has been since mostly diminished. Uh our funding right now currently uh comes from recorded documents in the recorder's office. So I think it's $5 from every recorded document goes towards our cornerstone perpetuation fund. uh and that is the only source of funding that it currently has. So typically uh you can figure for around $30,000 uh annually that that comes to that cornerstone perpetuation fund. Um which is not a real substantial amount. Um so far all of those corners we've done, the 180 to 200 corners that we've done were all in the road. So it's uh fairly easy for the surveyors to drive to it. um they know a roundabout area where it's supposed to be and then they can start

doing the survey work to locate it and do that. Um as we start getting off the road back into fields and woods and swamps and everywhere else to perpetuate these corners, uh the price will increase. Um you know, kind of discussing with Allen County, a lot a lot of their corners are around like the thousand range uh when they're getting a little more difficult. So, uh, if we got around that thousand range and we're only bringing in $30,000 a year, quick math, that's only around 30 corners. Uh, and to be compliant with, uh, the duties of the surveyor, perpetuate 5% of the corners, that's 85 corners a year. So, uh, you know, we we've done our we've done more than our 5% this year, which is is intentional, uh, because we're trying to get caught back up and turn these corners green. Um, but I think it shows the lack of funding that we have for that program. Probably why it's been ignored for some while, um, because there's just not there's not a lot there to work with. So, um, you know, to maintain that evidence, we're trying to gather as much evidence as quickly as we can. so that way it's not obliterated. Uh we've started with areas of highest priority. Uh so working with our our team of licensed surveyors. Uh we've picked a few townships to begin in uh where development is occurring and spreading so we can get those taken care of before it spreads to them. Um and then moving throughout the townships uh to other areas. We also have a couple areas of the county that have several several red corners. There's hardly any viable corners in the townships. So those are are our uh next targets that we we'll get to to start turning some of those green so surveyors have uh something adequate to work with. Right now we're trying to avoid excavating uh any roads that we can. So uh basically right now our process is to

locate those corners and if a new monument set we'll core drill the road set our monument in a in a concrete collar and then cold patch over the top of it. Uh, so the monument, you won't see the face sitting on the road because it'll they'll wear down, but it'll be under just a thin layer of of cold patch on the top. So it doesn't it doesn't get deteriorated or caught on like a snow plow blade, those types of things to break them off. So we uh we're working on that in the roads. Uh, and then the idea is we're waiting for crops to come off to move off of the roads. So during the summertime is a difficult time. The vegetation is pretty thick as well as crops are in the fields. Uh so a a prime time to do that will be during the winter when uh everything's a little bit easier to see and work with and as well as we can go out in the fields. Um we part of our 220,000 that we had went to an order of monuments. So, we ordered 200 monuments uh for replacement of obliterated monuments or replacement where non-existing monuments are uh and that will that will obviously have to grow. We will we'll order more, but that's the inventory we wanted to have in place. Now, it hasn't been delivered yet, but we have placed the order. So, we're excited to get those in and keep working with our team to establish those corners. Um, and I guess really I just brings us to my funding question is we're seeking ways to get funding. Uh, so I wanted to discuss commissioners for uh your guys's funding that you have that you can expend to different uh programs as you see fit. Um, if we just gave a dollar amount of $800 per corner, maybe a little bit on the low side, but I think a fair fair value to these uh or 1,692 corners, that would take us to a total amount of $1,353,600.

Right? So, our estimate is that would get us close to uh finishing the program to turn these corners green. Um, there'll probably be hidden expenses in there. Corners are going to be more than $800, but right now we're doing them for $3 to $400 in the road. So, kind of with the You're saying 800 per quarter or corner? Corner. Quarter. Corner. Corner. RN. Yeah. All right. Yep. And what was that amount again? 1 million.

1,353,600. So you can see how if we're only bringing in around 30,000 a year going to take a little while to get to be able to fund the program. So while we have the whole team put together, I guess is really the urgency of this. We have our team put together that um they're all passionate about the the cornerstones and they understand the value and the importance of them. Uh so they're not none of those companies are trying to make a lot of money on this. They're doing it all on time and material as efficiently as they can uh to get it taken care of because it makes uh life a lot easier for them as well as for uh the citizens of Decal County. Anytime that a property line survey needs to be done, if they have viable corners that are nearby, uh it makes it a lot quicker and cheaper process for the surveyor. Uh right now there can it can be a long distance to a viable corner. Um and so it'll it'll make it cheaper for them as well as more accurate. Um we have some ongoing situations in the county to where corners weren't perpetuated. There were red corners and uh surveys or for private properties got misaligned and then uh you get into property disputes because one owner land owner thinks that they own to a certain spot and the other one disagrees with that and it uh it can create problems. So had had those corners been properly perpetuated, the surveys would have been um more accurate and based on a on a true corner and we wouldn't be running into that situation. So u at this point, you know, we're we're appreciative of anything the commissioners are considering to do to help fund that. Uh the more we have, the more efficiently we can work and the faster we can we can get caught up.

Comments, questions? Well, the council still has to meet to finalize our budget for next year, right? They have they still have second and second finalize it. Um well, if we're looking at 2026, I would be hesitant until we see that they've made no corrections or changes before we start allocating money for 2026. I don't know about the 2025 funds if they're available. Probably not to that amount of 1.3, but um we have we have it in our lids.

You have lighted funds? Yeah. We have lighted funds that are would be available. I mean, it would just be a matter of what how much you're wanting. What if what if we did one year 26 out of our lighted and then having take it to council with additional years or or lump at that point maybe is that something we entertain? My idea is to give them So you're saying 1.3 at average of 600 $800? 800. Sorry. Y there's 1,692 quarters. How many would you anticipate getting done in a year?

Well, right now we're kind of like pulling the reinss back on them because we're going to we're going to our fund will be pretty much empty at the end of the year right now. We started by giving uh each each team uh $30,000 uh and they we split them up into different townships that they agreed upon. Maybe they're already doing work so it fit in nicely and they're already in that area uh as well as a couple special circumstances to go get taken care of. Um so they completed that part of it 90,000 replaced our order for our monuments and then we gave each team an additional $20,000 to continue their work. um because at that point they had all ran out of their $30,000. So that was another $60,000 there that we're taking up until November or December, but they're not out there right now getting through them as fast as they can. It's I I don't really know how many you could get done a year. If you have enough funding and we set them loose on it, I don't really know and I don't I don't It's hard

probably to get that information just because it's not really been done. It's something that's kind of been ignored. A lot of counties are in a a bad spot with because of the the funding issue that goes into it. Um I know Allen County uh in their first year uh I don't want to say number to lie about it, but I think in their first year they spent well over a million dollars in their program, which was in 2024, I think was their first year. Yep. So, we've we've had uh some discussion with Mike Fucci, who's a surveyor in Al County, um asking about their program. Four sites gave us a lot of feedback on their program.

I would think we could get a lot of corners done if we really wanted to. Is there a timeline goal to have them all done far as years? Not not as fast as 5% every year, but we have so many that are in the red. We have 821. That's pretty much close to half of them are in red. It can't be used basically. Yeah. Um how I was looking at it was you spent about 220 230 this year. Yeah. Correct. Easily. Easily. So I would like to fund it for two years and then they can talk to the council kind of see where we're going with the new fee structure they have. That will help perpetuate. That was the point.

Also the other ordinance now that it's developments come in. to see how that helps perpetuate some of these and then that'll give them funding for two years and then we can get some data on how many of these fees money are coming in and it also gives us data of how many of these developments are perpetuating and then we can kind of see in two years from now see what we still have left on the red and then we can talk to the council about finishing it up and stuff. So my thought was give them about uh $500,000 to continue to keep working on it because they have the team put together, they're working on it. Um it's not quite 500 if you take the two years, but then to give them a little extra because they're going to need more markers.

You only have 200 Harrison markers now. You're going to probably if we if they really ramp up and they do a good job, you're going to have to buy more of these markers, right?

So my thought was to give them 500,000. I give you plenty of money for the next two years to try to get some of these reds back up because as a government entity, infrastructure is one of our main things. And we have corners that are who knows? I mean, I've seen the map. He showed it to me. And some of these corners, last time they've ever been perpetuated was hundreds of years ago. Like, this isn't like 20 year old perpetuated corners. These are like 1915 or 1892. like as a county we really should be making sure that these are up and ready to go and that way properties lines are well defined and then it doesn't have an issue that we have hey I got seven red corners I'm trying to get my property line off of that that we should have been perpetuating for I mean back in the 60s the law was we had to do at 5% every year obviously that didn't happen and now we're kind of where we're at so that's my thought was to do 500,000 out of the lighted And my office sees a lot of the arguments. We get a lot of property line arguments on my transfer side. I mean, many every day that we try and help figure out.

So, is the map available? Like, is it a public map that people can find? Chris says, "Yes." On Yeah. On Beacon um if you go to our county GIS site there. Um over on the filter side, I think it's plss, right? If you just if you turn that on,

uh yeah, it it'll show up um red or green, I believe, on all the corners. It shows up on there. If you click that again that says PLSS after you click it, uh so they show up and you turn it on. If you click the little eye that's beside it, that will give you information on those corners. So, when you select those corners, it will pull up information about them. It'll give you uh the GPS coordinates. So, it give you the last time that it was perpetuated, what it is, if it's a Harrison marker or if it's a fence post or a PK nail. Any information that the GIS department has on it is on there. Um, so that is like kind of the public's access to it. Licensed surveyors will have a little bit better access program using the Indiana State Plan where it can communicate with their GPS devices. So when they're out in the field, it will take them within I I think uh Dwayne Brown said like an inch and a half of the monument. That's like the air on it. Maybe that might even be more than what it is. So it'll take them pretty much right to it once we have those GPS coordinates in. Um and work really well. And then everybody everybody knows.

I think so. You said two years. So are you talking about 2025 2026? point. I I'm I mean I'm not looking at funding those particular years just to give them the 500,000 into that account which is roughly about two years depending on what they've spent already on this year to continue to move forward. It's not that we're going to keep funding them for two years. We just give them the 500,000 in a lump sum. They see what they can get out what they can get done and we can see what those other two the fees how much that collects. They also will still get the recording fees and then we'll also get to see how many stone corners are perpetuated with the the new ordinance.

I I understand your logic. I was Yes, I was the real question. Do we take 200 50,000 out of funds from 2025 and that is accessible, right? It's available. The whole 500 is available.

The whole 500. Oh, okay. That's just my thoughts on it. Um, I mean, I worked with Tyler quite a bit with this and I think having it putting those funding mechanism going forward would help perpetuate to make sure we're getting that 5% every year going forward, but we're so far behind. We got to get caught up. This will allow them to get caught up. and then having the recording documentation fee, the new ordinance fees for the permits and everything and doing the corner perpetual. Hopefully that will maintain them going forward so we don't have another conversation in 10 years and be like, "Hey, we're back up here. I need another $1.3 million." So the idea is with those with those GPS coordinates I once we have these all perpetuated now in like recent times when we have all that information and data the perpetuation process will be much easier in the future to complete that 5%. I think it I think it would be manageable within the recorded document fees that we get as well as with the ordinance that like we won't we won't require any additional funds once we turn these corners green

and they're established. I think 30 grand will be a pretty workable amount to go out and verify each year, but we're so far behind now. That's the problem. Yeah. Getting there is the uphill battle. Yep. We're behind. Wait. Any other questions? Are you ready for a motion? Ready for a motion? I'll make a motion to um give surveyor's office $500,000 out of our lighted fund for perpetuating the corners. We'll second that. Motion and second on the floor. Are there any additional comments? Don't come back next year. Comments from the public.

Said don't come back next year. Comments from the public. No additional comments. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed. Carries. Thank you guys very much.

Spend it all in one spot. Okay. You have one paper copy of what we're talking about.

Thank you. You want a paper copy? Nope. I got it. What the ordinance? Sure. same one. I have a clean copy, too, if you guys want that for after the meeting if we get through this. And there's no other questions before we start. I've got a meeting at 12:00. Okay, we'll be quick. I'm stairs, so I'll have to uh adjourn it. Okay. By 12. Okay.

I can be quick with the ordinance, then Jayce can get to um the other stuff he's here to talk about. Um we discussed this at the last meeting um or last month um updating the ordinance for the public nuisance to align with how um properties are currently um or what Jace what the code enforcement uh official does with properties as far as um uh the first letter, the second letter, and the final. So, we'll go through all that, but um within this um most of it is just clean up language. Um as you can see the and it's I I apologize the the yellow and underline and cross outs a lot of things to look at your eyes go nuts. But

before we go too far with your presentation, I want to make a comment about abandoned vehicles. Okay. It seems like Well, everybody read it. I'll let you read it. I drive a seveny old pickup truck. If batter goes dead and sitting in my driveway for more than 20 days, it's going to be in violation of the code. But is your plates up to date? Yes, sir.

Yeah. As long as it's Yeah. As long as your plates are up to date. So it' be basically expired plates, no title or not not no title but no insurance um no registration. Um we could add that to that or is and I think that needs to be made clear. Yeah I I believe that in the meaning of the Indiana code Andrew looked at this it we're following the same law that Indiana code has for abandoned vehicles. I can take a look at it here and we can we can add additional language there for registration requirements and things like that.

Is your truck used in agricultural operations? Agricultural operations are exempt, right? had an old pickup that was used for let me check the statute too right while we're at it report back you'd have to ask

and if and in all reality we're probably not going to get complaints on one or two vehicles left in a driveway it's when somebody has 10 15 30 vehicles on a property that have just lined up or they're in disarray and it's obvious that they're they're used for for junk parts or they've they've been sitting there junked for a while. Um, but I think that we can clean up the language to include what defines an abandoned vehicle or the Indiana code because I'm pretty sure that you know expired registration and things is in that in that ordinance or in that code.

So the state law defines abandoned vehicles in different ways. One way, which is sort of a common sense way, is a vehicle from which the engine, transmission or differential has been removed. So, if you got it in your front lawn up on, you know, up on blocks or something and no transmission or engine in it, that's going to be an abandoned vehicle. Uh, one is a vehicle that's remained on private property without consent of the owner. Kind of like that one case we had where the guy said, "Hey, this truck's been there maybe months. It's not I I don't consent to this." But the one that's a problem that with what Bill is talking about is a vehicle that's at least three years old, probably your truck, mechanically inoperable. I guess you could define it if it's just the battery. I guess I guess it's not operable, and is left on the private property continuously in a location visible from public property, which would be a road for more than 20 days. Um, so that's the state law that says it's an abandoned vehicle. So that's what apparently has been in our code for this time. I guess we could change it for the purpose of our local ordinance if you wanted to. Or we could add a number of number to that too if it's more than 10 or five if that would help. Like a number of vehicles that are

oh abandoned. Like for our definition we could say abandoned vehicles a violation if there's five or more of them. 10 or more. Yeah. I think unregistered should be added. Add unregistered. Okay. I'm okay with that. I want to put a number on. Yeah. I don't think a really big RV that takes up a lot of spots is a big thing, but it's only one. So, I think having it registered, I mean, if it's registered and there's an exemption for a Yeah. Well, which is nice.

Yep. Okay. Um for yard waste on page two um we had that it does not include tall grass and weeds but there seems to be some concern on um people who may grow their grass tall to hide um the nuisance which then um means that we couldn't go after them for the tall grass and weeds as Well, um we've had internal discussions on should we have language in here that if there is tall grass and weeds in addition to another violation, they have to we can request that they mow the yards and that as well. I know that we're not going to go after tall grass and weeds as its own violation, but if it's an addition to another violation, would you commissioners be okay with adding that in there? We didn't currently add it in here, so we'd have to revise this. We want to have the discussion with you before before bringing that forward as a revision

because currently it's not like a city and town where we're policing the grass mowing of everybody in the county, right? Which I think would probably be a problem. I would I would think though it's not a case of hiding what's there. It's more a case of too lazy to mow it. Yeah. Or too too complicated to mow it. I mean, you've got stuff scattered all over like some of these properties do have. It's not impossible to mow it. I don't Yeah, I'm not in favor of including wild grasses or wheats.

And and there are a couple of properties close to our farm or not our farm but farmland that we farm uh that they use as pollinators. So the weeds are pretty much all out there, but if there's milk weeds, they're using them for the monarch butterflies as a pollinator and source. Uh I think we're and I think we're getting over intrusive. I'm afraid, you know, if there's especially uh and again Indiana law is very specific about the noxious weeds,

right, which is a township issue. Um, but I I guess I pretty much agree with Bill that I think yeah, if they're hiding them, then I guess so be it. Uh, I I just think it makes life a lot more difficult to uh try to be so specific and and you know, first thing we do is like I said with a pollinator that they got five acres and it's not m because it's all to them it's all pollinator. Right. Right.

Well, it wouldn't be I don't think it's properties that just have the mowing. It's like if there was a complaint on a property and they're trying to get all that junk cleaned up. So like I don't think that property it wouldn't qualify for this because there's not something else that has been a couple of them have probably two or three vehicles that haven't been moved in a couple years. But I understand. Yeah, I think it's fine line where we're I don't know if I want to go there myself. Okay. No. No. Okay. I'll just say no. All right. All right. You explained it enough. I'm I'm

Well, I I mean, when we get to the the abatement process, I think we'll have another discussion there as well. We that I crossed out, but we can talk about it there. Um, on page three, um, we didn't have in here that the refuge, rubbish, and yard waste was prohibited. Um, so I added that in there as as part of of what is prohibited, even though it was in our definitions portion of the ordinance. Um, in the violation, again, adding those three items, um, we moved the portion about the abandoned vehicles, um, from a different section into the violation. It just made sense to be here. That's why it's underlined. It's not

You ask me about that, didn't you? I think, yeah, that sounds like a good place for it.

Yep. We It was in another portion of the ordinance and I just moved it here. So, it's not new. It's already always been in the ordinance. Um, basically just cleaning up language in C and D. Um, even in one and two, nothing changed there. We don't have a violation report. It's just a complaint form that people um use to fill out. Um, again, just cleaning up language on page three. on page four is when you get into um kind of the nitty-gritty of of what it is why we brought this forward um the steps it takes for the code compliance official to to to to go through the process to get properties either cleaned up or uh the county can abate them. Um so the first violation notice u will identify the violations and order the owner to be in contact with the code compliance official within 10 business days and mitigate the public nuisance within 20 business days. So that gives them think about it if they're if they're notified on a Monday that gives them four total weeks if you use business days to get the property cleaned up. So, and while it may seem like we're not giving them enough days, per se, the business days is what helps us determine um how much time they're getting

because if you put 10 days or 20 days, right, you get a issue of it happening on a weekend. It fall on a a weekend or a holiday and it's easy. Yeah. Easier to to to do that.

Yeah. Um for B, the second, this is all new B and C. Um the second inspection has been made and it's determined that it's still un unsatisfactory progress. Um the code compliance official will send a second notice. Uh the second notice uh will order the owner to be in contact with the code compliance official official within 10 business days and mitigate within 10 days. So it shortens up that that time frame. Um, pay attention to the days here because we're just get I I want you guys to to see if this is too much time or not enough time. Um, so between the first and second, you're theoretically at 30 total business days and that's at Jace inspecting it on that 20th day and sending the letter out on the 20th day, right? So, you're not really I mean, if it's a weekend, there's a couple more days added in there, but um you're at, you know, 30 total business days um to abate the property. If they haven't done that on the third, then it's a third and final inspection being being made determining that there's no progress or unsatisfactory progress and they send out the final violation notice and be ordered to appear between the hearing authority, which is you county commissioners, uh for a hearing. Um during that process, Andrew would go through similar to how you did with um the last property. Um you know, he's he's going to hold a hearing as though you three are the judges for that that that that case. Um and you will make the determination um as to whether you're going to require them to abate or um work with them or allow the county to to move forward with um a hearing. So, um the code compliance official would give them the date of the hearing working with the county auditor. So, all of that um that third and final does not give them

a time frame to abate. It just says you're on your final notice and you're going to a hearing. So, um, you know, from the first violation to the third and final, um, violation notice that requires them to come to a hearing, you could be looking at 50 days, 50 total business days, depending on how things can can work out. You're probably looking at um, this really being a 60 to probably 70day total process. um actually more than that with weekends. You're probably looking at more of a a 90-day process with with with with weekends. So, um it's a long process is kind of what I'm getting at. And I know that the last meeting we talked um I think you made the the the point that it's just taking too long. some of these have been out, you know, and sometimes the code compliance official, whether it was Paul or or who who became before Jace, is is saying, "Yeah, I'm I'm working towards it. I'm working towards it. I'm working towards it." And they might clean up periodically a little bit.

Odds are there's usually an excuse. So, um, you know, what do you think about the time frame for that for the actual violation notices and giving them the time to clean up? I mean, I would say we typically get complaints in winter or in in the fall after the leaves are all down and people start seeing that there's a lot of junk around. um late fall through the winter and early spring is when we get the most complaints. And then stuff falls when people start getting outside too periodically. Um so, you know, taking into consideration the weather and and things like that, it can it can be a timeconsuming process.

I'm fine with the time frame. Okay. I mean, I with my business, we deal with hoarding situations a lot and junk removal and either they're going to get it done pretty quickly or they're just not. And so, letting them drag it on for a long period of time. I mean, some of these I mean, I'm looking at we got some of these that were from 2022. Yep. And we're in 2025 now. So, yep. I kind of push to have this and then it gets in front of us. I mean, we can always still as a commissioner still give them more time if feel like it, but it lets our co- compliance guy to kind of like, hey, I've done what I could with this property on you guys. I'm gonna move to the next one.

And odds are if they're getting to commissioners, they're not working with us, right? Like they're they're they may come up here with an excuse as to why they've not been able to, but Jayce is pretty good at working with them. So, okay, we can keep that time frame. Good. Um, the rest of it is mostly all cleanup. um where we're going to have if they want to appeal the vi if they want to appeal their violation. So if they get their first violation notice and they want to appeal it kind of what that where they do that um kind of what the hearing is for F abatement of public nuisance. Um if the owner fails to abate the violations, um the code compliance official will order the hearing before the hearing authority, which again is the commissioners. Um you guys will hear evidence from the code compliance official and the owner and vote to authorize or not authorize the county attorney to file the action uh for the ordinance, which we've done on two cases now, one case. Um, so

I think we we had one case from maybe a year or two ago and then one recently. Okay.

Uh, the rest of it is is all kind of clean up except for failure to pay. Um, the failure to pay we added an interest. So if they fail to if the county goes through the court process, the courts allow the county to clean up properties, we will send that bill to the property owner. If that property owner doesn't pay, then we have we are allowed to acrue interest on that payment. Um and we have that 8% until paid. if it just never gets paid, then this ordinance allows um the county auditor to place the amount um on the tax. So, when they would pay their property taxes, they would pay this at that. I'm assuming there would be interest with that as well, and it would show up on the tax bill. Yeah.

Any and any judgment we get has an automatic

Yep. Uh time of the appeals. So, we're requesting that um that if they want to appeal um the violation or the invoice, they've got 20 calendar days to to do that. Um rest of it's all just clean up of going from reg from resolution to ordinance. Um abatement to vendors. This is something that um is mostly cleanup. Um I'm wondering if an abatement so If the county is ordered to clean up the property with a judge and if we are going to have to do it with one of these cases coming up, do you want that abatement to include mowing the weeds? Mowing if it's if there's tall grass, do you want it to include removal of or or mowing of tall grass? I removed it under the assumption that you wouldn't But so the so you justify it.

I wouldn't know how you would justify it either. If we're not prohibiting it, how do you justify going in lawn? Yeah. I mean, but a but the guy that has all the trash now when we need to go and invade it when we need to go and clean it up, there's going to be probably 36 inch tall grass they're going to have to work through. And they're just going to have to work through it. Yes. Okay. Okay. Would be my thought. That's fine with me. I agree.

All right. As are easy. this afternoon. Now, um and the rest of it's all just clean up. Um if we have to go to court, the violation is $100 per day per violation. Um nothing there really has changed um as well. So, I think the only change that we need to make then is under the abandoned vehicles, um add in lack of registration. add in yeah lack of registration or unregistered vehicle or something like that which we can do if you want to do this on a first reading and I can bring it back I have in two weeks add it right now okay yeah you've got the word document okay I want to comments questions

I just want to do first reading today and then come back and do a second and third just to get up I got a I got a problem doing any reading today uh page Three. Page three. Section D, paragraph one. Complaint form may be submitted by any resident of Cal County neighborhood committee that's been crossed out. What What are we saying there? We're basically just Well, oh, for there that really anyone can file a complaint. That's not what that says. crossed out.

Well, we're saying that a violation complaint for may be submitted of the alleged nuisance before there was there in the old ordinance language is that it was by any resident of Cal County in the same neighborhood or community. Well, to be just in the same neighborhood then is that what you're thinking? But what defines a neighborhood in the county was my question is what defines define resident in that neighborhood? It says it's crossed out by res. Who's going to file the complaint? Anybody in Decal County or anybody? It doesn't say that. Oh, I think it's an assumption. I guess we could add submitted by anyone. Any resident of Decal County. Would that be better? That would be better.

Any resident of Decal County. So, you don't want people from Allen County submitting. But we don't we don't require they can do anonymous complaints. So, how do we check that they're a resident of Decal County? That's another thing that we need to change. You want to require them to not be anonymous? Yes. Okay. It's confidential obviously. I don't how I don't think it can be confidential. It's a public I think it'd be a public record under due process. You know what I mean? Like anonymous. I don't I still have problem with people not signing. Okay. I'm fine with I am completely would be happy to have them sign it because I think it makes it if they're not willing to sign they're not willing to complain.

Why would why would we around the county? I think it's up to you. You don't have to have anonymous complaints. It's up to you as commissioners. I've even thought about maybe should go to a public hearing. I'm okay with those complaints. Get public comment on this going to make these major changes on the changes. Oh, for the ordinance itself. Fine with that. You fine with that? Yeah. I'm sorry I didn't hear that. What' you say? Okay. Public hearing. Okay. In the evening. Sure.

So, do you want to How would we do a public hearing on an ordinance? I have to advertise whenever we're doing it. Advertises it for whatever time we're having a public hearing on this res or this ordinance. Okay. Okay. Whatever time they do.

Would you what would you like that section that portion to say then? Do you want it to be a resident of Decal County or I mean if I live on if I live in Allen County and I'm on the other side of the line but my neighbor is north of me. Is the Allen County resident allowed to complain or the Nobel County resident or the Stuben County resident or the Ohio County resident, Ohio State resident? They'd have to at least specify living on the same road. In other words, they'd have to live across the road. Uh you can't have somebody in central Allen County filing a complaint, but if they live within certain distance across the road in Allen County, maybe. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I hadn't really thought about that.

I was just thinking about like I don't know maybe in Allen County or Sten. I mean somebody might drive here to work every day that they might see it and wanted to say something that they wouldn't be. No, it's not within basically where it affects their personal pro or their property. Gotcha. It has to be something that would affect our property valuewise. And then maybe so if they're not in the county and they're again uh on a same on a line road right within the neighborhood I don't know what the neighborhood is quarter mile only Decal County residents are those

own property adjacent to property my opinion I'm against that I think it could be anybody in Decal County has be within a certain mileage of your property or anything like that. That gets too complicated. I think just anybody in Decal County can complain about anything in Decap County. So, it needs to be a Decap County resident. I'm fine with that. I don't And then if we want to do within three miles of the county to Noble Street Bend or whatever, that's fine, too. If you want if you're worried about having people along the edges of that, too. So, I agree. It's gets too you start making it too complicated. I think

the only reason I took that off and I didn't take it off because I was I wanted it to be anybody anywhere. But that I didn't understand what the same neighborhood was or neighborhood or community in Decal County meant because So you were okay with the resident side. You just didn't want to be neighborhood neighborhood. Okay, that sounds so any resident in Decal County. We're going to add back in but not the neighborhood or community. Not the neighborhood or community part. And sorry, did you want there to be a distance if they're outside the county or just to Cal County resident?

If they're on the border within they own a property that adjacent to our Dec County, that's fine, too. I think that's fine because I don't want to have a problem with someone's right across people owning property on the Dec County line. Yes, there we go. Across direct across from the Dow County Yeah. If there ifine or something like that, that that keeps it pretty simple to what it is. Yeah. Um, there's another thing I would um just my opinion is we could have Dean uh Daryl D. Cruz court in the courthouse. We ever make an annex building later and we move the commissioner court or something is that going to be a problem we have to change again. Do we just make it be Yeah, we just make it we just do a shall be the commissioner's court in Dec County, Indiana. Yeah.

That way if anything changes down the line we don't have to come back and rechange it. Okay. Completely again. Yep. I'll delete that. else that commissioner's court you just say commissioner's court of decal county Indiana that way you're just covered whatever whatever happens going forward makes sense I was just being official I understand because there was a couple it's a couple of times in here I was just like yeah I crossed out where I thought I'll do a and then the only other thing was maybe I just didn't quite understand it was the $100 per day violation is that upon on when does that start? That would be when we would go to court. So if you order court, I'm sorry,

the day of court. So if you would order us to go to court when Andrew and Rachel are working on the the lawsuit, we would through the start date of that through when they would submit really the um the lawsuit is when it would It'd be$100. When we make a when we make a decision at our public hearing, we say, "Nope, we're gonna we're gonna sue Jayce." Just saying you're the client. I say, "Hey, we're gonna choose Jay." The next day, the $100 starts. No, what you're saying, I think that's when it should I don't think you should have it start when you file the lawsuit. I think it should start earlier. You and I talked about I think that typically when it starts when we do

I would say maybe through our zoning ordinance, it's the f the date the first violation went out. I think the date that Jayce sends the first violation is going to back all the way to correct. Yep. I think you need to make sure that's I think you need to clean make that much more clear on the penalty there. You could say going forward in saying a fine of $100 per day beginning as of the date of first notice. Yeah. Because if you're looking at 50 days, I mean quite a bit of money versus at the end when we file the lawsuit. We need to clear that up. Okay.

Another question I have uh also is when it says court, are we talking about commissioner court or the judge court? So in where specifically are you looking at that for? Because the $100 per day fine. So that would be courts. So the hearing authority is going to be within commissioner's court but the uh well again I you know I thought we put in here superior or I thought I saw

it it does but I my question is the 100 per dollars per day is that again we had you know Andrew had them square in which to me means it's basically a court hearing with the commissioners or is it the court hearing with the judge? But that penalty is only going to come about when we go to court. Well, the penalty actually coming about when when Jace does the first But the penalty is not starting when you hold the court here in commissioner's court. It's starting when we file the lawsuit.

Well, again, I think that needs a clarification. I I don't know if it says judicial court or you know that clarification. It's not the commissioner's court because again we're swearing in witnesses. Uh me that means we're holding court. I think we just need to clean up that whole how that all going to work. I think you need Yeah. I guess what I'm Andrew a little bit more on that. Yeah. Yeah. What I'm what I'm getting at is that there's just no penalty coming to commissioner's court. You guys aren't issuing any penalties. It's only going when we go to court upstairs. Well, but I thought we wanted the penalty to maybe start with start. Yes, but they aren't issuing penalties. No, they're Yeah, they're not issuing the penalties. Uh but the penalty is still owed. Yes.

Then the court does. I'll clean it up. So, it's fine. But yeah, I'm still confused. We're getting we're getting confused on it. And I I think it's Well, clean it up. Make it more. Yeah. Confused as to which court it is. Okay. And who's and when we're doing all that stuff. So, I think we need to table this. Yep. Yeah, I agree. I think having a little bit more clean up on it. You got all those notes, Chris? Um, yeah. Back in two weeks. Yep.

Have them look at it and we can talk about it. Do you want to have the hearing in two weeks or do you just want to see this clean up language in two weeks and have a hearing? Clean up language in two weeks. Clean up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That way it's all buttoned up before we put out to the public to have Susan. Can you get a time for next week or in two weeks?

9:00. Okay. 29th. 29th.

Okay. What else we got? Um, just some updates on some of the properties. The ones I'm working on are in yellow. I have a copy. Do you have an extra copy?

You didn't. And then the other ones are sort of put on hold for a minute. So, what I'm I'd like Jace to go through is kind of where we are with these properties and ones that he can really focus on with the 10 hours that he's allotted per week. Now, um as you can see, there's a lot of of properties here that, you know, over the course of the years they've been working on or monitoring. Um, but in all reality, you're looking at probably, there you go, estimated time. You have that

on on how long it takes for them to actually work to get through this list. Um, and whether that means we need to up the hours um and then and then move to um see how properties are are getting abated um and that sort of thing. But, um, I'd like Jayce to go through kind of where where we are with all of these, um, and what the issues are if he if he can. Well, I was going to say, if you look over here, I have the actions just like the Woods, Charles Woods. I'm working on it. He just monitoring him right now. Um, Eric Fuller mon, but he keeps going back and forth. Um, one time it's clean, next time he's got stuff setting out there. And then just modern um Mason and modering uh Gary Lynn and Vicky Lynn. My question for commissioners too is do you want Jace to be monitoring these properties or once they get cleaned up for instance like Eric Fuller if he cleans up his property and it's done do you want to wait for another complaint to come?

Okay. So you would rather her sorry him not monitor right these properties. Okay. I'd rather not. So after it's done it's done and yeah when it's done it's off the books. Okay. Okay. Because there's also a file from the previous where they have ones that they're monitoring and I don't know how many's in there. I don't either. A lot. Yeah. We don't need to be going back and checking. Okay. Yeah. We get another complaint and then we bring up the fact there's been already been one complaint. Start that start the process over again and maybe even a little more firm on that second process. Okay.

If we need be. Okay. Um, Rodman, um, I did update you guys, I believe, pictures and it's there's nothing. I have not seen any progress. And then CR, where are they at with that, though? Is it on Are they on day was that day 30? Yeah. So, you gave a 30-day update. Well, yeah, a 30-day and then 60-day. Yeah. And then um France, it's really looking good. I think they're about done cleaning. Yeah,

that that was that one out on 35. Yep, that was pretty bad. I appreciate what they did. Yeah, with that there there did seem to be some extenduating circumstances there that once those circumstances were taken away, the people did a good job. Yeah, believe it or not, it was an older lady and so Yeah. Yeah. But she did a good job when she Yeah, she did. And she was very nice about it. And um and then Mason again at uh 1357 kind of uh 13. Um going to be bringing that one. I'm familiar with Mason. We all are. You are. Everybody. It's almost my neighborhood.

Yeah. What's that one? That one is the blue house because there's a blue house and then one across the street and then there's a trailer down just down the road. It's the blue house. Um I've talked and worked with him and there's still trucks and was everything. Yeah. I mean that's we've been working with Molita Mason before I started. Um can't think of who our code compliance guy was during that time, but um we've been working with Molita We were in court with Molita when Jim McCanna was I think you were you were just first deputy maybe second deputy at that time as first deputy.

Yeah. Yeah. So we've been working with Malita for a long time. That one you can see from the cemetery. Yeah. Oh yes. And there's always a reason that Yes, there is. What can we do with that? How can we move forward with that? Something that one I was going to bring to the commissioners for a hearing. Yeah, but right now I'm still working on a few that we have. Just put it on the front burner.

All right. And then um Miller, well the next four I'm just monitoring so I can basically take them off, right? And then we have the Albbright, which it looks like he's cleaning, but he hasn't did anything with those poles. He did something and then stop. Yeah, he even moved he even moved the crane out of the way, too. I don't know if he moved them to the to the side or they were more in there when he cut down the grass. I don't really know what happened there. So,

well, it looks like there was a pile. Now there's two piles. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'll reach out to involved and just see where we're at on that. Okay. And then Sison's um I looks like that was a 30-day update, too. And there was no progress, which you guys should have got pictures. I think I sent them all to you last week, I think. Yeah. And then uh Butler um he is good so I could take him off.

The Russell one. Yeah. Oh, wait a minute. I'm g have to check that one. I think he is good. He's just I'm monitoring him. Got three minutes. And then um Coron or 05 Nickerson. Yeah. Yeah. Nickerson. You have that one to bring in front of commissioners, too. Yep. Looks like the next two. Next two need to come in front of commissioners. Yep. Oh, Thrush. Yeah, Thrush. And then the next one, um, I am actually working with the owner slash he's an attorney for Windgate Properties. Yes.

I guess that's what you call Troy. And then the one I was working with the owner that's pretty well clean. So, um, then the other one, um, that one's has lots of farm machinery. Can't do anything about that. And then AM group. Um, that one was just high grass. Can't do anything with that. And then the next one will be coming to the commissioners. So, it looks like there's one, two, three, four, five of five that have Jayce has brought before commissioners and there's things going and there's four more that need to come before commissioners um in the next round. I think what we kind of need to figure out is, and I don't think it's something that we just figure out, you know, like that, but it's how much time does Jayce have to to work on the five currently that are going through court and coming before commissioners, receiving updates every 30 days versus bringing the others to you. Because what I what I don't want to happen really is is we come up with a pile of them that are getting inspected, you know, and it's it's taking a lot of time, you know. I think working on four or five of them at a time is probably okay, but

and it's very hard to keep up on them. Yeah. I don't know if I'd want Jace on the current hours to bring the other four before commissioners until the other four are cleaned up or a one in one out type situation. Yeah. Rotate them. Rotate them out. Yeah. Rotate. And if you look on the next sheet, just uh estimated um time that I would have in one start to finish. There's a lot of process to go through. Bill, are you wanting to come back after your meeting and finish up these conversations? We have a few other things we got to go through, too. No, I have to wait. Okay. Have to wait.

We Okay, but we can't wait on the eviction thing. Unless you want to put it off. What is it? The um eviction. Yeah. Is that quick? I mean, if you need to go, they could at least do it and then we could adjourn. That's up to you. I just I don't think you want that one to wait. Just Just do it.

Okay. So, jump here real quick. We have one of the residents out there, Rebecca Caldwell, has not been cooperating at all with Brenda or with the transition of sunsetting of Sunny Meadows. I've talked to each one of you guys separately. I've talked to Andrew. through this that I want to make a motion today to have him start the eviction process. So, I will second that motion. Motion second on the floor. Additional comments, comments from the public. All those in favor signify by saying I. I carries. Okay. Anything else real quick?

Oh. Uh, so I've got a notice that'll need to be signed by Bill, but I can email that to you, I guess, to Bill, too, or just have it signed, I guess. Are you authorizing then the bill to sign the eviction notice? Correct. Yes. Okay. We just did. Very good. I thought I'd bring it hot off the press and I'll notoriize it. Thanks, Bill. We are adjourned. Thank you, Ell.