Finance & Personnel Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay, good morning. Welcome to Finance and Personnel Committee. It is Thursday, feels like Wednesday, but it is Thursday, May 28th, 2026, a gorgeous day in Milwaukee. Finance and Personnel Committee, I am Alderwoman Marina Dimitrievich, the Chairwoman. I'm joined by my Vice Chairperson, Alderperson Peter Bergelis. We have Alderman Scott Spiker, Alderwoman Milele Coggs is excused but joining us soon, and Alderwoman Charlene Moore is here. That presents us a quorum to conduct our business today. Item 1, 260120, substitute resolution relating to reimbursement allowances for members of the Granville Haven Woods Advisory Council. This is sponsored by Alderwoman Larissa Taylor. She did request that we have it on the agenda. We have not been able to reach her this morning, so we will temporarily lay this over and continue to try to connect with her so that she can speak on her item today. And hearing no objections, so ordered. Item 2, 252188. Temporary hold by Alderman Bergalas. Thanks. 252188, Resolution Authorizing the Review, Enhancement, and Expansion of the Department of Employee Relations Mental EAP Health and Wellness Benefits Program. Department of Employee Relations, Molly King. Are we prepared for this one? All right, good morning.

Good morning.

And welcome, and please begin to discuss your item here.

Yes, we have a presentation that we'd like to provide. I guess I'll come over there. What's up? I think everyone has a hard copy of the presentation. Yes. All right. Good morning again, Madam Chair, committee members, Molly King, benefits director, and I want to thank you all for taking up this file this morning. This endeavor here is a proposal to upgrade our current EAP, our Employee Assistance Program, both from a perspective of mental and behavioral health. And what we're trying to do here is... to make sure that whatever program we have in the city is something that not just we have a program for a program sake we want to make sure it's effective and it's meeting the audience meeting our employee and their family where they are so this is target this is this uh program and this enhancement that we're working on is uh we currently have our service with united healthcare and we're looking to transition out from united healthcare to spring health And so one of the things as we did our research and due diligence, we did a bit of fiscal responsible enhancement that will double our employee access as our goal to mental health care while generating measurable cost savings for the city as a self-funded plan, right? Because we're not insured, so everything we do impacts us directly. So the first slide here, and with me is Chris Amore. He's online, so he will be jumping in as need be. So this first slide here basically talks about the landscape, the current landscape. The current landscape in just city in general nationwide is one out of five U.S. adults experience mental health issues. Over a trillion dollars globally is spent on loss of productivity because of anxiety and depression. And what's staggering is, and this includes us here, 76% of our members say they have experienced one or two symptoms of mental health issues. And that is what our nation is facing with. And currently here in the city of Milwaukee, we have UnitedHealthcare, and here's what our status is, state of our plan is. We have three sessions per issues. Six average day to actually get an appointment to meet with the counselor. A limited provider network. In addition to that, the cost increased after the three visits is over. So what does that mean? When you finish your EAP visit, it's filtered to the medical plan, and that's where substantial cost comes in.

I'm sorry, how many do you get currently?

How many? Three visits currently.

Per year?

Per session or per issue. So individual conditions. So you go for various conditions. Each condition you go for, you're seeking treatment for, you get three visits. So what is a really good mental health model looks like, one would ask, right? And so this slide here really illustrates the limitation of what we should be, what we have and what is considered a robust mental health. It states that research shows that to improve an employee mental health begins with at least three to six counseling sessions. We currently have three. In addition to that, it talks about you need to have a network that has to have at least 60% of the appointments outside of the business hours. You need to have a very diverse network provider that people can relate and resonate with whoever is providing them services. In addition, at least a minimum of 50 clinician conditions should be able to be addressed. And the facts show that individuals stick with that first person they get, they're assigned to a provider. And so if your provider is not matching, chances are you're probably never going to go back or continue treatment, right? And so as it states here, the study shows that 78% of employees experience significant improvement in depression symptoms after completing seven or more therapy sessions. So to me, that itself tells us what we do. We do have a program, no question. Is it effective? Is it impactful? And so this is where we decided to really look into what we want to do. And today with us here, I know we have a few supporters. Our firefighter chief is here in addition to the union. Eric Dawn, I believe, is online to show support for this program. So as we continue looking on here, we look at SpringHealth. What do they offer and why did we choose SpringHealth? So we decided to go with SpringHealth because of several reasons. We did interview, I believe, three to four different providers, including UnitedHealthcare for this part of the expansion. And the fact of the matter is SpringHealth is one of the leading providers in mental health space. This is their bread and butter. This is their specialty, right? UnitedHealthcare is more of a generalist, so to speak. And so they provide us two days access. What does that mean? You have a condition. You have certain experience. You need to get seen right away, right? Within 48 hours, you can see someone. You have access to a provider. Whereas compared to the six days we have to wait currently. In addition to that, we're saying, let's double down. The fact of the matter shows that you need at least six sessions to actually see an impactfulness, or to make a difference. And so we're saying, we're doing three, why not do six? And so that we can have a more thoughtful session, so the employee can really spend more time getting the treatment and the needs. There. And what's interesting about this also is that they have a precision matching. What does that mean? It means that they, right now, if you were to call, you know, who's available and are they close to you, right? No, we want something more important than just that. Not just who's available, but who suits your need? Who do you match well with? Who can you talk, can you relate to you better? What's cultural or whatever it is. Who can you? And so that is one of the things that they do really well. And they have a triage. It's called Care Navigator, who will walk you through, make sure that match helps, and see you through to the entire process. So I think it's a game changer there for us, for what we've been doing and what we should be doing for our employees. Again, it covers the entire family, including children two and over. They have the exact same benefits that you and I do have. And again, they have a proven outcome. They have three times better results on depression and anxiety. And we believe that the ROI on this is going to be substantial. According to their study, it's just three to six times an ROI. For us, I think employee healthy, showing up their whole self, showing up to work and absenteeism, limiting that matters. So that soft cost does impact us. And so here is more of a side-by-side slide on what we have currently with UnitedHealthcare compared to what we are asking the proposal is. We have three visits. We're saying, let's double this. Let's make this. If we're going to do a program, let's do it right. Let's go six. We're saying it takes six days for you to even see someone. By six days, you're probably not going to even follow through, right? If you're experiencing hard conditions today, six days to wait to get an appointment or see someone or talk to someone, to me, it could be more reactive. I think two days could prevent things from happening. And that's a guaranteed two days access. The third point we want to make is that they have a more mature, fully established model. They're one of the leading in this industry when it comes to mental and behavioral health. This, again, like I said, this is their specialty. This is their bread and butter. Whereas UnitedHealthcare do have a plan, but they're still developing that, making it more robust. They're not there yet, based on our interview with them. We like the idea of the precision matching, so it's not just who's available and how close they are to you, but making sure it's someone who can help you, who resonate with you, who can provide you the need you can relate to, so to speak. In addition to that, full coverage for an entire family. THE DIGITAL PLATFORM, BOTH DIGITAL PLATFORM IS AVAILABLE AND IN PERSON. AND WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS IS THAT THEY HAVE REAL TIME ANALYTICS. SO OBVIOUSLY VERY COMPLIANT WITH HIPAA. SO WE AS AN EMPLOYER, WE GET TO KNOW EMPLOYEES ARE UTILIZING, THEY'RE GETTING TO SEE SOMEONE WITHIN TWO DAYS. THEY'RE HAVING A TRIAGE PERSON FALL THROUGH THEM THROUGH AN ENTIRE SERVICE. AND THOSE ARE THE THINGS WE'RE ABLE TO SEE. WE DON'T GET OBVIOUSLY COMPLIANT WITH HIPAA'S RULE. And again, one of the big part for us to take away here is the spillover. When that three visit ends, you go to the medical plan. The medical plan is whatever the cost is. Whereas with the six visit, we prolong that EPA service at a set rate. And here, before I move on, Chris, do you have anything you'd like to add? And I'm not sure if he's able to speak. Chris Amora. Okay.

Well, we'll come back.

Yeah. Okay. So here is one of the cool things about Spring Health model is that they deliver about 45% times faster recovery than the next leading provider. What does that mean? Because of how thoughtful and purposeful their service is, you can see results 45%. That's what their standards are. That is impressive, in my opinion. Okay. So speed to recovery isn't just a health matrix, it's a productivity matrix in my opinion. Faster recovery means employee return back to work with their whole self, more productive and being present. This is, to me, this is a very meaningful measure, clinical measure, because it supports our financial case. If people are not at work, we've got to hire temp. Things are being full in ways that in the community we serve are not being served fully. And so one of the really impressive things I think I did mention here in this slide indicated is those care navigator. We don't have that right now. So they get you set up with someone. They reach out to you. Are you getting the service you need? How are you feeling? Is there something else we can do for you? So they see you through the entire concierge service, so to speak, throughout your entire treatment. And I think that is impressive. We do not have that. And not many offer something of such robust. So that to me is a game changer there. And so this slide basically talks about early invention, right? It's the value of EAP, realizing the employee actually need and what they need at every step of the way. Spring Health Platform designed to be more proactive. And so what we want to do is make sure we're able to meet the families who need this and our employee who need this early in the stage so that we avoid things like reactive urgent care, health care, ER visits, and things like that. Something more chronic that can become more long-term. And so, yeah, I think by doing this, we can minimize hospitalizations and such things. And this slide basically talks about a full, holistic view of our EAP program, what we want to have, not just for employee. Because if your spouse or your child is not doing well, you can't be your whole body at work. You can't be your whole self at work. You're not present. And so we want to make sure we're taking care of not you, but your entire family. And so this is the model we want to present. And this is the model we want to have for our employees and their families. So both spouse, everyone has the same amount of visits, same time guaranteed to get seeked service within two days, and having the same triage system as everyone else. What's important in a day-to-day service is 24-7, 365 days. There is no time off. You can access especially when you need it most. Most people historically look at Valentine's, Christmas. Those are the times people experience depression, dark moments in their lives, whether it's loneliness or whatever it is. So we want to make sure they're available when we need them. And so this basically talks more about, you know, the long-term and the fiscal impact, right? We want to make sure whatever we do, we want to look at it in a fiscal impact lens. And so we believe by transitioning to this plan, by making from three to six, we control that six cost. We know what the cost will be. For example, currently, an EAP on just an overall average, an EAP visit within 100 – $200, whereas if it goes over to a medical plan, it becomes, it could be from $800 to $1,200. Depression treatment is about $4,500 a year. So if you can get someone, and according to the studies show, about seven treatments, you can be able to help someone. They're able to mitigate and triage medications also if necessary and when necessary. And so one of the big things for us here as policymakers, reducing absenteeism is important. Being present. We want our employee to be present. Because if you're sick, that's one of the biggest factors of short-term disability is mental and behavioral health. needs, people taking off that time because of their burnout, anything of such. So yeah, fewer short-term disability claims we expect to see, people showing up more to work, and less utilization in ER. To me, that is a game changer. If we can avoid two or three, that would pay for this program and then some. I can guarantee you that. Well, I can promise you that. So overall, Spring Health is a known, they're a reputable company. We feel very confident and comfortable working with them, especially doing our due diligence. It's backed by performance guarantees established. They are going to set up A brand just for us. They're going to be here, boots and ground. They're going to do marketing and outreach so that you don't have to wait until you have service and who do I go and where do I go. They're going to be forefront in front of employees. Always be available so that when we recognize something, we can triage that or refer them when necessary. And again, executive summary here, basically what we wanted to state here is that overall we think that this is a good plan for the city. It's an opportunity for the city to improve our health outcomes. We noticed that in the last several years of me being the benefits director, one of the higher costs has been trending up, and not just for the city, across the nation is mental behavioral health. It's become, I think, a top 5 or 10 percentile for most companies, book of business. And so one of the things that we thought, knowing this, what do we want to do about it? Let's do something about it. Let's do something to move that needle a little bit. And so this is an opportunity for us to transition over to a company who actually does this for a living, who are the professionals in this arena, and to give our employee that kind of service. Six visits instead of three. Let's double down. two days access to care, identify some cost savings in the middle of it, and working with one of the best in class provider out there. So with that, if you don't have any questions, we are really asking you to provide us this opportunity to work with Spring Health and moving away from UnitedHealthcare for the purpose of providing EAP service. And again, we do have a few individuals here in support, both the Fire Department, Fire Union, and Chris Amore and a few others online. Okay.

Thank you for that presentation. We have a number of questions. Just one to start off with is when does this happen?

So as the process works, Mayor Johnson, the administration is happy and excited to move this far, especially in the month of May, being Mental Health Awareness Month. And so with your approval, we will get into contract. We will establish a contract and work with the city attorney to make sure the contract is good. And I think it takes 60 to 90 days, I believe, to get implementation ready.

I guess I just thought that would be with, like, open enrollment. Like, what if people are within an existing plan right now?

Good question. If someone is within a current program, we will still have UnitedHealthcare open throughout, I think, for the next several months or at the end of the year at least. And so they can continue to have service through that, and then there will be a seamless handover, meaning – So you work with UnitedHealthcare, one that's a provider, but most of the UnitedHealthcare providers are already in Spring Health. How do you know that for sure, though? Because we did ask those questions as part of our interview.

All right.

And also that would be a seamless transition. If they're not, make that transition seamless over. But we're not going to cut off the access to UnitedHealthcare right away. It's going to be a soft, seamless transition over time.

I'll have more questions, but I'll do it regardless.

Thank you. Thank you for this. I think it's important to be cost-conscious and make sure that we're providing the same or better service. So looking at Spring Hill's reviews online, it looks like in some places their number of providers is limited. How many providers did we have access to in UnitedHealthcare locally, and how many will we have access to locally with Spring Hill?

You know, I know that, but I don't have it with me. I will have to get that back. Spring Health has over 2,000 different. So this is going to 100% virtual mental health care. No, there's a platform, but you also can call someone. You have a telephonic option, you have a virtual option, and you can see someone within the networks right here in Wisconsin, absolutely.

All right, so my question is how many local providers does UnitedHealthcare give us access to currently, and how many providers are available locally with Spring Health?

I do have to...

I see some nods in the back of the room. If someone has that answer, you're welcome to come up.

I don't have it. I'm going to write on top of here, but I will get that to you. And you're asking for local providers, healthcare has?

We're switching. So the ask for this file is to switch from UHC, from UnitedHealthcare, to a different provider. I'm asking how many local service providers our employees have access to currently with UnitedHealthcare, and how many would we have access to locally with Spring Health? Sure. What... And then, so our agreement with Spring Health will be for credentialed therapists?

Yes.

Not talkers?

Exactly. And so that's the good point.

So we will not be accepting appointments or providers with Spring Health that are not licensed therapists?

Right. They're master level Spring Health clinicians. I don't know how to answer the phone. They're master level clinicians.

Master's degree or what does that mean?

It means they're master level within a clinician field. which is a master's degree.

That's a master's degree. Okay. And then is there any out-of-pocket for the three current UnitedHealthcare sessions that we provide?

Yes, we pay 0.43 cents per employee per month.

No, no, for the employee. There's nothing out of pocket currently with UnitedHealthcare.

Right.

And then is there anything out of pocket for the six visits?

Same.

Zero out of pocket. All right. That sounds like a great deal. What happens if the therapist or the employee needs more than six visits? What does that cost the employee? And then is that part of their total deductible? Does that go to, are those prices negotiated? Or are they out of luck and they pay cash out of pocket?

Good question. So currently, after the three visits, it falls into the medical plan. Similar, it will go into the medical plan. After six visits, it will go into the medical plan. Based on the type of service, it could range.

But that's exactly what happens now.

From three filters into the medical. So now we have six. That's why we think the ROI is there.

And then if someone has their UnitedHealthcare provider currently and that provider is no longer or is not part of Spring Health, How does out-of-network provider care work with spring health care?

So UnitedHealthcare is our network. They're there with UnitedHealthcare. They'll continue their in-network. So they'll continue to be in-network. It's just that they'll continue to serve with no new, when we turn this on and soft close, we will start phasing any new visits to UnitedHealthcare. Who is with UnitedHealthcare, stays with UnitedHealthcare, they can continue having that existing service with UnitedHealthcare.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay. I have some similar questions, but let me go to Alderman Moore.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. And Molly, thanks for connecting with me yesterday. A lot of my questions were answered. But in reference to sort of some of the commentary that my colleague has been asking, in reference to so if an individual wants to stay with UnitedHealthcare for their mental health services, they still could stay?

Absolutely, they're with the network. Nite Healthcare is our provider. Yeah, they're the one who provides the services. They could stay with that provider. Again, after three visits, it becomes medical.

Correct, exactly.

When we decided with the will of this committee and we switched over to Spring Health, after six visits, that becomes medical and network. So all the Spring Health providers will now be networked. So would not be considered out of network.

I think one of the things that I really liked about this particular plan is the specialty, right? So when we're talking about mental health, you know, that different folks experience in different ways, burnout, anxiety, depression, whatever, right? This plan from the conversation that we had yesterday and just your presentation really hones in and focuses on this specialty area. And that was one of the things that I loved about it in addition to doubling the sessions, doubling the, because again, you know, three sessions, it feels like you're just sort of getting started. So I love the idea that we're doing, we're doubling that impact and then providing support for our employees. One of the questions that I do want you to, you know, share with our audience is, we talked a little bit yesterday about just, you know, there are so many benefits that we have here in the city. And how do we go about sharing these opportunities? How do we educate our employees about these opportunities that we already have existing?

No, that's a great question. And one of the things, you know, I talked to all the more, and thank you for taking the time to come and meet with me yesterday, is that, you know, we have a lot of benefits. We're very privileged, right? We have so many. It's overwhelming after a while. And over time, we keep adding benefits. And one of the things as a benefits director in the next year, one of our strategy is to reevaluate all of our benefits to see are we duplicative anywhere? Is it working? Is it being, are we just having it just to say we have it? Is it being effective? Is it meeting our employee where they are and their family? Is it serving its purpose? And so this is one of the starting point where we're doing that. In addition to that, the need was there. Our fire union call and they say we are experiencing Our employees see these traumatic and you think they're going to have to go back to work the next day or within that day. It's not human for us to be doing certain things. This is an opportunity for us to show that we care and we want to be there and help. As it relates to the other benefits, one of the things we do, we have a new employee orientation in which we stuff down all these benefits and tell you all this stuff within two hours. And then we have employee open enrollment. So one of the model we're switching to starting this year, I call a drip campaign. So we're doing a drip. So every other month or every month, you'll see us having a webinar on a specific program. Like in May, we did a lot, we talked a lot about women's health, perimenopause, menopause. We talk heavily, we focus heavily on mental health. And not just talk about it, tell you what resources we have. Identify the issue, where should you go to to seek help when you need it. And so as we move forward, we're going to do more of these DRIPs. And that includes even dental services because that impacts heart disease and things like that. So we're not eliminating it anywhere. Because we have so much, it is hard just for once a year for you and your family to like, what do I need? When do I need it? And so by having these DRIP webinars or campaign or outreach, I think it's an opportunity for us to get a little bit more. Throughout the years, when open enrollment comes, it's not foreign or new to us.

Thank you so much for that. And Madam Chair, when the time is appropriate, I would love to be listed as a sponsor or co-sponsor, whatever is appropriate for this file.

Okay. Thank you. Um, I had a couple of questions to Alderman Spiker. Did you have any questions on this?

Um, two quick ones.

Most of my questions have already been asked.

Um, so I know it's in the memo that was sent to F and P members, but so there is a slight cost increase of 65 K switching from the current model to the spring health one. Um, on paper, at least, um, you, been arguing it's a better product overall for employees and you've also argued that if you look at the bigger picture beyond just the bottom line there's a cost savings could you just briefly elaborate on that i mean you already Kind of covered it.

Yeah.

I mean, in terms of productivity.

Right. So currently we pay and, you know, I don't know if I'm able to talk. We are paying 0.43. That's a fact. That's in our book of business for per month for United Healthcare for those three visits. We were able to negotiate less than double. with Spring Health, so we're paying not that much per employee per month for that visit, and that in addition to that, we believe, because when you need that help, you need that help now, before you have to go to the ER, urgent here so within that time frame if you need to you need to see someone we believe that will reduce absentee soft cost absenteeism but more importantly that additional three visits and an aggregated because that's what on the slide was more of an aggregate if you're paying a 200 let's just say for giggles say what you paid $200 for EAP services right that's $1,200 would be known factor anything after that goes into the medical and depending on your condition, that could range from 8 to 1,200 according to the national average. So that's what we're trying to mitigate from that additional three. But there are so much more benefits, right? Again, I think ER utilization is a big one. Getting that service up front when you need it, start at more purposeful, I think that would make it a game-changer versus you got a quick fix and then you're back two months in the same situation because it was a quick fix.

Okay. And then I guess briefly following up on one of the questions Alder Bergelis asked about whether anybody would lose a provider that they're currently with. So even after the SOF closed, if you had a UHC provider, even after that closed, goes away and spring health is for everyone you still won't lose a provider and part of the explanation to that had to do with something I lost track of about when you're kicked over to medical or not because they would still be within the network all the spring health providers are within our network So then nobody will?

It will not be outside of network. If you choose to go with outside of spring health, that would be determined. That would be outside of network. But all the providers, and then we have UnitedHealthcare list, right? You can choose any. So it's kind of commingled. Does that make sense?

It still remains unclear to me.

Well, I'm trying to see if the UFC, that's a whole different animal. UHC providers are a subset of the Spring Health, so Spring Health includes all of them and more. More. Yep.

They have over 2,000 specialty group providers.

Okay.

Wait, how do you know that? That's the question. I feel like we're asking this question and maybe I'm just not understanding it. So for many years, you could have people right now that have multiple family members, which I hope is the case because that's a good tool to have in your toolbox, that are seeing providers that clearly accept UHC, likely, because that's at least helping pay for it. What if those current therapists take UHC but for some reason are not in network with Spring Health?

So if you're seeing, yeah, that makes sense. So if you're seeing, after that three visits, you're in medical. So John started, you're in medical right now. So they are already in a network.

Well, that was like a preliminary question that I had, and forgive me for not knowing this. Is every therapist appointment, does it automatically put you into EAP? Just by the essence of people working in the city of Milwaukee using therapist services, does that mean they're using EAP? I thought it was a separate program.

EAP is a separate program for mental behavioral health. Yes. So depending on your conditions.

So if you could be in a family therapist right now and not be using EAP, would you not be impacted by this change then?

You would have to choose to switch to one of Spring Health's providers.

Well, that's what Alderman Spiker was saying, is you're in the middle of... You could choose to. You don't have to. Oh, so if that family therapist that you've been seeing for three years, probably not through EAP, that you have a relationship with, if they don't take Spring Health... You continue with that.

You continue with your medical plan, because that's not on the medical plan.

Right, that would be on the medical plan side, because remember, there's only, with the current plan, there's only three free visits, and then it kicks over to the medical.

Medical plan.

With Spring Hill, there's six free visits, and then it'll kick over to the medical side if you want to continue.

But isn't part of mental health justice that we should consider it in parity with medical insurance? Like, why is it separated out? Like, why would you want three non-medical ones? Like, we want it to be considered a holistic health approach.

So we, the city, it's a holistic health approach. It's just the city is covering it 100%. When you go to medical, your deductibles kick in. Correct. And your costs share with us. That's why it's a shared for our board employee. And it could be at a different rate cost. Okay.

So for employees, because they really can't take any more out-of-pocket costs because we haven't seen any increase in our flexible spending accounts, which I do think that we should consider for future years with the going rates of inflation and wage suppression that we've seen.

Right.

The average inflation right now is approximately 3%. And then under President Trump's economy, we know that it's been absolutely terrible. And buying power has been decreased. So what is the first thing that many people are considering is I don't maybe need that mental health wellness appointment. Especially when it's competing for precious FSA dollars to already pay down medical deductibles. Will this change have any impact whatsoever on the deductibles or FSA use? It should actually probably reduce it, I think, from what you're saying.

Well, you have three additional visits, so it wouldn't be going to deductible until 6th.

So you wouldn't go deductible until six, but when you did use medical deductible, would there be any change in like an out-of-network cost?

No out-of-network cost. I'm just trying to go through every scenario. No, I appreciate that. Okay. Those are great questions.

All right. So other research shows that... lack of accessibility um out of business hours um if you are a parent right now trying to get a medical dental vision anything that your children need you have to miss work to do it i bring this up all the time it's excruciating impossible environment for anyone to succeed and could have its own mental health implications um so the fact that it has out of business hours i think is good just lastly I want us to continue. I think this is a pillar in mental health, but there's also other wellness and mindfulness initiatives. There's other organizational things that people are looking at, especially in this month of high discussion, like you mentioned, with it being just the end of May here, actually. You know, having wellness initiatives, we're talking about a lot of physical wellness initiatives, but like and maybe I'll bring this up when we meet with the people from Freighter. But in part of those employee discussions, like more opportunities when we go for healthy rewards, getting benefiting mindfulness, more opportunities. Mental wellness checks, because usually that's a physical check. And obviously we all know that there's multiple things there. And then also just incentivizing in a way by not disincentivizing, again, kind of those wellness initiatives that are outside of mental health. Whatever people's practices may be, you know, from meditation to time off to what it is that they need, I think is things that are pretty important. And then lastly, just obviously having a psychologically safe lifestyle. organization that's free of toxicity and those negative things. Okay. I guess my last thing is just to also make sure that we're really communicating this out. As you see some of these changes, constituents will then reach out to us that are city employees and then we'll have to send them your way. So on the front end. Last but not least, it's great to have the endorsement of the fire chief. I just think that considering that police and fire, but mostly police, is such a huge part of our budget. All, just to triple check, all police officers have access to this entire program.

All the employees and their families.

I just know with different bargaining units and whatnot. But, you know, I think we need to continue to increase the membership of some of these EAP programs to just And I guess, you know, this is something I can talk to the chief about. The nature of their scheduling is so challenging. I could only imagine. But it's all so needed. Yeah.

And that's why the flexibility. You hit two great points. One is kind of flexibility. When you have a child who's in school, I had one employee who reached out. His or her daughter was in school. you want me to take them out of school to make this appointment and that, and otherwise I have to get someone who's out of network. That's why when we explore this, those are the questions we ask, bring out, when can we meet you? 365, you know, 24-7, 365. They have therapists who are our counselor who are geared towards teenagers or whatever, adolescents, whatever age it is. So that's why they're very thoughtful and purposeful. And again, this is their model, right? And one of the things that you did kind of allude to, and I mentioned briefly to all the women, and I look back because we're in discussion about it, is most cities, no one really does a, you know, when we think of wellness program, we want to think holistic wellness. And you'll see more of that. That's what we're doing now. We're encompassing financial wellness, family being, and things like that. One of the things that we're looking to do with part of our health appraisal is encompassing mental behavioral health in there. And not any one or many people are doing it around the country right now. So something we are really trying to see, purposefully working with Spring Health to see how we can develop that along with our partners, our workforce health, so that we can start at an early phase, once a year, have those thought-provoking questions asked, and if you need, proactively, I'm helping you to get assistance if you need early on before it becomes something more or worse.

Yeah. Madam chair. All the one more. I think another thing that piqued my attention with this transition over, it was just also the extension to the family. It wasn't just, you know, the employee that's able to access these benefits. If, there needs to be family counseling or some behavioral health for your adolescent, that these services extended to that. And again, the six that's at no cost, that really, really piqued my attention. So as work gets stressful for folks and just all these things that impact an individual work, This is something that I think we can definitely champion and especially provide each of the departments with the necessary information to let them know, hey, your employees have access to this particular service. So I definitely see some really great benefits to it in the long run.

Part of our, we have, you know, the city has established a labor and wellness committee, and this was discussed with that leader, and Eric Dunn, who sits on that from the fire union standpoint, was fully supported of this. The entire committee did support this initiative, so he's on line if you want to.

Well, we are going to move on, though. Thank you so much. Anything else?

Just real quickly, so Christmas Zamora's role will not change under this? It will not change. It will still be the same? Yeah.

He will be a good support to help refer and things like that.

Right, and he'll just have to, if there's a broader range of spring health folks, he'll just have to acquaint himself. Our goal is to double down.

This is becoming a crisis around the country, around the world. We're seeing people losing loved ones daily, and not just that, but the various conditions. Until we figure out what's going on, We need to find ways to help our employees and their families. So we have our in-house concierge. I call it concierge service. We're blessed with that. And so now we have this robust system available to all of our employees. So we want to give them. We want to meet them where they are. We want to give them the service they need when they need it. And even before it becomes something more elevated, let's try to get it proactively by doing questionnaire, by seeing do you may need to consider, have you considered asking those questions.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments by members? Alderwoman Moore moves adoption. Let the record reflect that Alderwoman Lele Coggs joined us virtually and should be marked as present. Any objections to adoption of item two? Hearing none, so ordered.

Okay.

Okay, all right, we'll get to her. Thank you so much. That's item two, okay. Then let's pause and we'll go back to item one then. Sorry. Just give me one second to go back to one. Item 1260120, substitute resolution relating to reimbursement allowances for members of the Granville-Havenwoods Advisory Council, sponsored by Alderwoman Taylor. I see you've joined us, Alderwoman. Yes, thank you. Okay. Could you just briefly discuss this allowance and the cost of it and who it would go to so members know?

Yes. So we have nine members on the Granville Havenswood Advisory Council, and they volunteer their time. So they're business owners and homeowners in Granville. In the area in district nine and they volunteer their time to to help vet and oversee businesses that are coming to the area to they also support and is another resource for businesses as they come into the area and. So I really appreciate the commitment of showing up at every meeting and being available and doing the work that it takes to make sure that we have businesses that are viable, that become assets to our district. And so I look for a way to appreciate what they do and so even though it's a very small token of appreciation I asked if there was a way to to be able to give them this financial appreciation and so I found that that because they are technically a city entity that we could just do a small token of appreciation for that and so So I'm asking if we could pass this file in order to be able to show that appreciation for the time that they commit to helping us manage the district businesses.

Okay, and what would be the stipend per person then?

So it's very small. From my understanding, it's not more than maybe $20 enough to that if they were coming in person that it would cover gas costs. I mean, not even at the rate that gas is right now, but it's a very small stipend per meeting. $20 per member per meeting. Yeah, and don't quote me on that because I don't remember the exact amount, so I'll have to go back and review that. Dana, I apologize for not having the exact amount, but it was about $20.

Okay, we're looking at the fiscal note here. I was having a Granicus issue. The fiscal note says that it's $1,600. I'm assuming annually that must be.

Yeah, but that is not per member.

Oh, right. And then it looks like it's a reimbursement. Mm-hmm.

Okay.

I guess I'm not sure who to ask here. I know we have various arrangements like this. You know, I look at Boza where they're putting in hours and hours of time. And, you know, I don't know about Historic Preservation Commission. I'm just not sure where we are as a city. I do agree with Alderman that if we want truly representative, diverse bodies of people volunteering time, there does need to be some stipends. And we should normalize compensating people for their time. I guess I don't know if this is a first or the norm. I'm just trying to get a view of this. So, are you able to talk about that?

Governor Rauch from the Legislative Reference Bureau. Yeah, I just came to confirm that it is $20 per member per meeting. Okay. And that is the standard reimbursement allowance provided under the salary ordinance, which there are certain boards and public bodies listed as eligible. I would guess that it's about 10 currently.

Okay. And this in particular, because like... You know, there's bids, mids, like is this considered a city task force or committee? Or is it like, I guess I'm just trying to understand that.

I would defer to Kathy. Good morning. Kathy Brangos, Legislative Reference Bureau. This is actually classified as an advisory council. Okay. And it would be added to the salary ordinance under the same section as a number of other bodies.

And I can tell you what those bodies that... Yeah, let's look at those real quick because I'm assuming now that people might add to it, which I think is a good thing. We just want to know the costs.

The Capital Improvements Committee, the Charter School Review Committee... the Election Commission, the Deferred Assessment Board, the Deferred Comp Board, the Equal Rights Commission, the Ethics Board, the Food and License Review Board, the Fourth of July Commission, the Zeidler Public Service and Award Selection Committee, The Harbor Commission, the Historic Preservation Commission, the Library Board, the Milwaukee Commission on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, the Public Debt Commission, the Safety and Civics Commission, and the Sister Cities Committee. And are they all $20 or is there a range? No, they all receive the same stipend. $20 reimbursement. I believe that is correct, yes.

Okay.

Madam Chair.

Yeah, I definitely just learned about that. I think it's a good thing, but interesting. Okay, let's continue to, so Alderman Taylor, we got some really good information here. We're going to move it around to some questions. Alderman Spiker.

Just on that last, so under the ordinance, those are eligible for that payment, but that doesn't mean they are receiving it.

Right. That is correct. And there may be certain members that are, depending on what their position is, they may not qualify.

Right. Yeah. Like a common council member.

Correct.

Oh, yeah.

Lord forbid we compensate anybody.

Okay. I just want to make sure, because I never heard any, when I served on the library board, I never heard of any members saying they were. just part of the job so I guess there is a larger question here about I mean you want people to serve you want to make it worth their time but whatever we do here has to be applied in a logical way more broadly so we just want to make sure we know what we're getting ourselves into if we sign off on it in one special case are we committing to the others that are currently listed under the ordinance and that are similar to this one because i mean this is a fairly unique one but there are other commissions where folks do carry a heavy load and do we want to compensate them and what would be the the cost of that so i'm just wondering if budget has taken kind of a back of the envelope look at this are there any concerns from their part or is this all small potatoes

Okay. Budget, did you want to speak about these?

I mean, the fiscal notes in the file, overall this isn't a huge scale, so I would temper all my remarks in that way. But, you know, obviously if it's going to be compiled a bunch of small-scale things and start adding up to a larger scale, we might begin to have concerns. But it is a policy question for this council to decide that has fiscal impacts.

Madam Chair. Okay, thank you. Alderman Warren? I just wanted to be clear. Ms. Cathy, the list that you shared out, these are commissions that could be eligible or already in the mix as far as compensation for the reimbursement.

Those are the bodies that are currently listed in the salary ordinance.

In the salary, but don't necessarily have this designation. I think what I'm trying to say is, for example, you know, this charter school review board, are we are they currently getting a reimbursement? Do they fall? Are they currently getting a reimbursement?

They are eligible for it. I cannot say for sure whether they're receiving it or which members may be receiving it, but they are eligible for it based on the salary ordinance. Got it.

I think I understood the question. So there's a lot of different bodies that hypothetically could be eligible in that such a resolution could be passed to list them under the salary ordinance. That body is listed under the salary ordinance. But I think what Kathy was driving at is that just because a public body is listed under that section doesn't mean the members are actually applying and then receiving the stipend stipend.

Okay, and then how does the stipend work if it's a reimbursement? Does the member submit it to the chair and then the chair submits it in? How does that work? Is it a once a month, once every quarter? Does anybody know?

If I may, it says that the allowances are paid once a year. At the end of the year, such board chair shall submit to the comptroller's office a list of members eligible for such compensations, together with a record of the meetings that they attend.

Got it. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Board Chair. Any other questions or comments by members?

I'm sure.

Alderman Bergelis?

Thank you. Where is this... budget expense listed in our, where is this money coming from? And so then my follow-up question will be, how much did we spend on this last year and the year before? Just because what I gather is that there are a number of bodies that are eligible for this reimbursement But we don't apparently know Which of those bodies are receiving reimbursements? Yeah, so I would like to figure out or understand better what the city's spending on all of the bodies that are eligible for it and then

That would help me decide if I want to support this resolution or not that I haven't compiled that information now But it's something I could ask my week. I can ask my staff to do we could get you that information You know by next committee or I mean I could do it as quickly as possible But we'd have to kind of I think some of this might be in different sections.

I just want to be I just thank you I appreciate that no one really knows I think this is setting a new standard or a new precedent that you know one particular public body is going to start receiving public funds for reimbursement i may be certainly comfortable with that depending on the work on the body on on the reimbursements but i really need to have a better understanding on what the city's already doing even though there are some public bodies that are eligible doesn't mean necessarily that they're collecting or paying that out So I don't know if I'm comfortable voting on this now. I would like to get more information on it, but I'll leave it for more discussion for now.

Alderman Burgels, just to answer your first question, it's budgeted in the Boards and Commissions Special Purpose Account, which is under the purview of the Comptroller's Office. So that's where it's budgeted in the annual budget.

How much is budgeted for that annually?

I don't have that offhand. I can certainly look into that.

There are just a lot of unknown questions. Thank you. Madam Chair.

Okay, thank you. I'm sorry. Let me just ask the sponsor. Does this have a like urgency to it? Meaning there's some questions that I think could get this, you know, approved. But also, unfortunately, council is just like two business days away because of this holiday. So is there an urgency, Alderman Taylor? Or can we seek to get some of this clarification?

There isn't necessarily an urgency. So Yeah, so I'm fine with getting clarification. Yeah.

Because I hear a lot of support myself included. I'm of the belief that we should probably be doing more of this, to be honest, because I just, again, want to reemphasize as we seek a true diverse representation of our community on many of these commissions. We need to compensate people for their time because it's valuable. And we know that when we have working people or people of different incomes, it's almost a luxury to have hours every weeknight to be able to be on some of these meetings. And that's not reflective of our community. So I value your advocacy here. I think we just want to cross a few T's and dot a few I's here. Alderwoman Moore?

Oh, Madam Chair, I was just going to say if it was okay with the Alderwoman that we just hold. Yeah. We just hold until we get some more info, but I would agree.

Okay. Looks like there's a motion then for a hold, Alderwoman Taylor. I'm hearing a lot of support, but just want to get a bit more information, so...

Okay. Hold has been moved then.

I guess technically it was Alderman Burgales that was the first who talked about it. And is there any objections by committee members? Yes.

I do have some preliminary information I can share with you that I just got from my staff. We did budget in the line. Bill mentioned this special purpose grant. We budgeted $16,000 for that in 2026, and nearly all of it was spent in 2025, $15,655. So the fiscal note would probably jump this up. past the budget level in 26 if it was implemented mid-year?

I guess with that information, I mean, it'd almost be... 16 or 26?

Yeah, it'd almost be... 16,000 total is what's budgeted, and in 25, 15,655 was spent. So it's budgeted right on the number.

You'd almost want this minor increase or other ones to be in the 2027 budget. That would probably be our recommendation. Or this would be effective in 2027, so it could be dealt with Okay, and for those reasons, I think it should be held while we just figure that out. And then any objections to that hold? Hearing none, so ordered. But that's really valuable. Thank you. Okay, all the room, and let's continue to work on that. Thank you. Okay, item three, 251940, communication from the Department of Employee Relations and Freighter Workforce Health regarding the city's comprehensive health and wellness program for the 2025 program year. All right. We have a lot to share. I'm just going to ask for the presentation to be under 10 minutes. So we already have it, because we do want to ask questions. So that way, we'll have more time. We're not limiting the discussion, but we're just allowing for more committee Questioning and discussion so welcome. We love having you here And then who would wish to begin the presentation miss King?

Yes, well behalf of them just the record Molly King Director on behalf of the employee relations and fader workforce. We're pleased to present the annual annual comprehensive cities health and wellness program for 2025 program year today's report will include individual participation wellness initiative key outcomes support employee well-being and workforce productivity and its comprehensive report really remains an important component The city's broad effort to promote employee wellness While managing health care cost and improve workforce resiliency I don't know if you could get the screen bigger

It looks like it's full screen.

It is? Okay. Well, this slide basically shows it's been over 15 years, in 2020, 15 years since we've had this program, our wellness program, where our model is, our philosophy has always been well at work, well at home, and well into retirement, reflect a whole person, lifelong approach to an employee health. We are very proud of this program, what it's done. One of the big things when we developed the program, the intent was to make sure we have healthy employees, but also mitigate health care costs. And so throughout the year, that has been proven to be a very successful program, and we are proud of our relationship with Workforce Health. And with us here today, we've got the president of Workforce Health, Patty, Executive Director Blaine and Megan. We also have Robin, who is handling the slides. So I'll let them, I'll put it over to you, Patty.

Good morning, Madam Chair and councilpersons, all the persons. So great to be here. Again, this is something I look forward to every year because it's such a moment of pride and on behalf of Frederick and the Medical College, we just are so grateful for the opportunity to serve the folks in Milwaukee that take care of our city, our shared commitment and our mission. to really advance the health of the communities that we serve. And I know that it aligns with the city's objectives as well. I'm excited today to share with you kind of an overview of our overall programming. I think historically, those of you that have been part of this presentation in the past have heard a lot about our wellness programming. But today we have the opportunity to really illustrate for you the comprehensive nature of the program and the city should take great pride in the benchmark program that you provide for the team members across the city and really it begins with benefits strategy and collaboration we're proud to be part of that and work with the labor management committee with molly with the benefits consultants with eap all of the vendors that support the comprehensive program so part of what we hope to be is a trusted resource to help advise and support the programming for the for the city and you'll hear today about the well-being programs and and that is really the 15-year history but how that's evolved and the city continues to evolve it's programmed to align with national standards for excellence in this space. So we'll talk a little bit about well-being, our occupational medicine services, the workplace clinic, of course, that we're very proud of, injury prevention, and the fast care services, all of which are a part of this constellation of overall benefits that you just have talked about earlier in this meeting as well. So with that, I'll turn it over to Megan to take us through the slides, and we'll be mindful of the time.

Yes, we do have six minutes left, so...

Thank you, Patty, and thank you, Madam Chair and Council Members. My name is Megan Grishow, Account Manager with Workforce Health. Respectful of your time, I'll skim read our wellness story for you. I'm taking you through the first chapter of 2025 Year in Review. A few highlights I'll point out that we're very proud of is the Workplace Clinic is now your strong destination for primary care. Patients used to be able to and still are able to use our services for acute needs or episodic care. But now you can visit our primary care clinicians to close those care gaps, really focus on prevention, which Molly spoke a lot about earlier, and really meeting the employees where they're at. We're very proud of that. We were also able to introduce a health appraisal scheduler at every health appraisal. Again, meeting the employees where they're at, getting those primary care appointments scheduled, getting those follow-up appointments scheduled, or some of those wellness programs scheduled at the time of service. All these enhancements were designed by Molly and her team with the mindset of, again, meeting employees where they're at and decreasing health care costs for the city overall.

So we have more we'll talk about here in a few minutes, but one... Before we move on, I wanted to add one thing is that, you know, although when you mentioned that, well, you have to take off time to work to get to the doctor and so forth, and when we do the health appraisal, we were very mindful. Now we have Saturdays out, we're doubling down on that, evening hours. So we're really trying to meet employee where they're at and be more accommodating, in addition to have our service translated in Spanish also. Thank you, Molly.

Skipping ahead a couple slides, we'll start with our wellness service. And we believe that one of the most powerful measures of success is the employee experience. And so one of our wellness champions, Lynn Kekichi, was very gracious to be able to share her story. And so I apologize about the informal technology, but we'll play that now.

Hi, I'm Lynn Kakashi, program assistant with Forestry Central, and I wanted to share my personal experience with the Wellness Your Choice Milwaukee program. Initially, I participated in the on-site health appraisal simply because I value staying informed about my health and appreciated having access to a free, convenient screening at work. I felt generally healthy and expected my results to be routine, so I was surprised to learn that several of my values had fallen into a higher risk range. Motivated by those findings, I promptly followed up with my primary care clinician for additional evaluation and support. Through early detection and coordinated follow-up care, I was ultimately diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease, an autoimmune condition that may have otherwise remained undiagnosed as subtle symptoms gradually began impacting my daily life. I truly credit the health appraisal with helping uncover a condition that allowed me to take action sooner, improve my quality of life, and better understand my health. Since then, I have actively engaged in many of the city's additional wellness offerings, focusing on improving how I feel both at work and at home. Because of the positive impact these programs have had on my own life, I volunteered to become a wellness champion so I can encourage my coworkers to prioritize preventative care and take an active role in their own health journey. And I make a point of sharing with my coworkers the wonderful health savings account benefit offered by participating in the program and how the funds can help offset costs for everything from over-the-counter medications to even getting chiropractic care that most insurance companies do not cover. Thank you.

Very nice. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you.

We will probably skip through a few of the data sets here, but high-level overview is the city continues to experience gold standard participation for voluntary wellness programs, currently at 76%. And I'll turn it to Molly in case you'd like to chat about any of the breakouts the city was able to offer.

Oh, yeah. So basically, as this slide shows, maybe a little competition here. We do have a few competitive offers. Yes, we did audit three times. Don't you worry. We did audit the comptroller's office. I asked Megan three times. Can you verify that, actually? But they're accountants, right? What do you expect?

We have a very smart comptroller.

Yes.

And for compensation, yeah. Financial wellness, of course. The two of them have all 100% participation. And so while not everyone is above that 50%, 60% range, so that's great. Do we have some work to do? Yes, we have a few areas. We've now been going to police. training programs, right, when they have these new recruit classes. We show up at NEO. We show up there with members. We have a few wellness champions who are very competitive within the police departments. We have a robust program in fire. So over time now we're starting to develop this relationship with the other department and ensuring that we have more participation. Again, this is a free health care check for everyone. And the concept, one of the things we did in the past, we do a lot of surveys to who is not participating, what kind of group, not who is a person, but what kind of an aggregate level are not participating. Is there a stigma behind this? Is there something that's happening that maybe we need to message a bit differently? We have been messaging differently, letting them know this is an independent provider. Workforce Health is separate from the city. They administer and keep. those data within their purview. And so as you look on the right side of this slide, the other side, you can see the ethnic breakdown of how individuals are participating and by generation or age group. So as you see that the, you know, the 40, the 50s are heavily participating, but we have participation at all levels, right? And so We want to continue to see how we get more individuals to take advantage of this benefit. Thank you, Molly.

Skipping ahead a couple slides, we are going to jump to our workplace clinic, which we're incredibly proud of. The utilization that you'll see here on this next screen also demonstrates incredibly strong utilization over the past few years. And following on the next slide, thank you, Robin, you'll see here one of our advanced practice providers and primary care clinician, Gina Moscone. She sees patients for a variety of visit types, and the top three you'll see are vaccinations, blood pressure check or medication management, as well as respiratory infections. Overall, the distribution of these visit types make us feel very happy and strong and confident in the clinic model that we're currently offering. It shows patients trust us for their care, not only for acute reasons, but also for their preventative health strategies. So we're very proud to be part of that role in their life. Taking us to the closing chapter of our wellness book, we'll talk about some calendar year initiatives that we are going to be focusing on. Again, we are strategically evaluating these services to not only be fiscally responsible, but again, Molly's main mission is let's meet the employees where we're at. So a few of those initiatives, and Molly, feel free to jump in here, is we are optimizing the healthy reward point allocation to drive healthier outcomes, including increasing Adding a whole new category in mental health and well-being, we're incredibly proud of that. So not only will this allow to break the stigma, we want people to know their resources, but they're being incentivized to use them as well. So we're very happy that Mellie and her team were able to strategize that with us. We are also hoping to expand medication dispensing within the clinic, so this not only will help with medication adherence at the time of service with your primary care clinician, but it will also be able to be a cost savings. Madam Chair, you speak a lot about having to take off of work to go to the doctor. We're going to save you a trip to go to that retail pharmacy to pick up your meds. You could do that right in the clinic to save you some more time. And then one final high-level strategic update I'll provide is we are going to be looking into advancing some digital tools for chronic care management. You might have seen in our biometrics slide that we are very proud to announce that our diabetes and glucose indicators are continuing to move into that optimal rain through some digital tools. We are going to be focusing on our blood pressure hypertension within our population. and continuing to focus on our diabetes and pre-diabetes management within the city. So we are very, very proud of all these strategies. We really thank you for your leadership and your investment in the city employees and their families' health and well-being, and we're very proud to partner with you all on that.

Just to add a few other things, we can go back to that slide. We are close to time, so if you can keep it short here. A couple of things we want to mention quickly is one is we are looking to, you know, when you go to the wellness center, what are the costs compared to an urgent care, compared to an ER? And so what could we do to meet the employee where they are? Where are the employees living? Where are they residing? And do we have access close by? So that's one of the years we're evaluating in 2026. And so there's more to come there. But if you can go to slide 11, I just want to indulge me for one split second more. When we talk about wellness, we want to be holistic about it. And when we look at our financial wellness, Here's a really compelling slide. Working with deferred compensation and Voya, the team at deferred compensation, we showed that individuals who attended one of those financial wellness webinars and seminars are participating heavily more than others. Over 10% are participating on average. That's 10% of their income they're putting away for their future benefits. And that is impressive. I think recently we've also received another award for our state-of-the-art financial wellness program. And so I would be remiss if I didn't mention the amazing job our financial wellness team is also doing. And again, as we talked earlier, we're now encompassing behavioral mental health as part of our holistic well-being evaluation once a year. With that, we'll be happy to take any questions you might have.

Okay. I was wondering, you show the participation in the health appraisal, but is there a slide or a fact of how many employees are maximizing their, like, reward benefit?

Yeah, we'll jump ahead a couple slides here, Robin. You can... I see that 80% of the population participated in at least one healthy reward activities and then deeper engagement beyond the minimum threshold. And those point allocations are designated below. With 21% of your population achieving the highest standard of 125 and $350 towards their FSA account.

But, like, that seems great, but if you've got averages 70% doing health appraisal or 80% what? Only... Okay, I see what you're saying. Mm-hmm. So then... Okay, wait. This is them broken down in tiers. So there's like very few people, let me say it like this, very few people doing the healthy appraisal that don't get some level of healthy reward. There we go. Okay, I just need more coffee. Yeah, I see. So there's not like anyone who's really doing that, but then not getting, but it seems to be few that are getting the maximum. So what do we think, because we did look at this last budget and we may look at it again, Through surveys and feedback, do we feel that, because I see you saying you're going to tweak it in the way that, from what I understood, was that mindfulness, there'll be other mental wellness activities that will qualify for the reward. So that's amazing. But also, what if the reward was higher? Do we know if people would do it if they could get a little bit more of an incentive?

It's a great question. We always ask the question with Molly, would people do this without an incentive? And so we really want to drive the why behind it. We also are very strong proponents of managed care. So while people currently have the choice to earn points through, you know, the mayor's bike ride next week or investing in EAP services, we would like to see more incentives around completing your managed care with primary care clinicians. We did increase that incentive a little bit. So to answer your question, Madam Chair, we were to increase the funds, I do think that people would be a little bit more incentivized to do it, but I would also like to be very thoughtful and strategic and where else can we allocate these funds to make it truly impactful and meaningful and really explore all of our options.

It seems to me that these gold star participants that are maximizing healthy rewards are helping the overall system by maintaining an incredible healthy lifestyle and therefore making it less expensive on the entire organization and the ROI on that would be outstanding. So, um, you know, that's the case that I spoke with a colleague It just be interested to even have a trial year like it, you know, I always think a trial Because it's you're also using it in health savings accounts like it's you know for and generally I don't know how people spend it I'm sure we have that information but like, you know, if you're getting more acupuncture or massage or wellness, whatever is included It's still overall wellness. So like I think there's some And I thought the way that it was built is that if your FSA is used by the middle of the year, which I think most folks expend it by June, right, then you can dip into your HSA, I think, for FSA-covered costs, if I can remember how that is. Yeah, so there's a lot of benefits.

Yeah, so right now we're RFPing for, we came before you, RFP for our health appraisal. Flexible spending, an HRA, healthy reward account, provider, administrator account. And so in doing so, we're also evaluating what else is out there. There are things such as lifestyle savings account, which is much more flexible. That's a great advantage. I think if I had the choice, that would be something I would consider for us to look into as we evolve, as these programs are evolving. However, it is a taxable account. And so what else is out there? So we are looking at and seeking these opportunities. So you can use meditation. Currently, you cannot do that. with the HR and FSA account. The HR kind of mimics the FSA IRS regulations. The difference is we get to carry it over with our boundaries, our balances. But we are evaluating to see what else is out there. A little bit more, give the employee a little more flexibility besides prescription, right? Let's be more proactive about our needs.

It just seems that we've been at this level for many years. So it's been frozen, which we know frozen is technically a cut. And I get that it's a benefit, but it's just some people are really, you know, really acing it in the gold level. Like that takes a lot of time to enter all that data. Okay, let's move it around a little bit. Any other? We'll go Alderman Spiker because he was last time, and then I'll go more.

Just a super quick question on the health appraisal participation. I noticed police and fire, which we have a number of employees in those categories, are kind of at the lower end of the tier and 72% usage from fire and 68% from police. Have we done any sort of... Questioning or surveying of just those specific departments to figure out whether the you know, what's making the difference here whether compensation is really What would move them them off the dime versus you know easier? access feelings of More time I imagine time would be them in the case of fire.

We know that they complete annual exams as part of their NFPA guidelines and so I think that might be one contributors. They feel like they're already having that annual exam That's more comprehensive than the off appraisal. So I don't know I can't speak to the police and I think it's a good question that we always want to look at what would be the Motivators and how can we make sure that it's easily accessible and convenient?

Yeah, they have that exam Sorry What timeline do they have that exam?

It's offered a couple different times throughout the year in groups for the firefighters.

That's a really good question, Alderman, because one of the things we didn't – it was a great idea. I think that's a low-hanging, easy thing to do.

Yeah, citywide might be a little tough, but if you could delve into some of the lower-performing departments, it might be constructive.

One of the things we are doing now, we're showing up to when they have recruitment class. We're showing up to their building. We're asking, can we enter? Can we come when you have meet and greets and meet and confer and things like that? And we also have a buy-in from their union presidents, which is amazing. We have a lot of buy-in from that, from the Labor and Wellness Committee. And so we will leverage that relationship there to see how we can penetrate even further. and figure out what's going on.

And then one more quick question regarding fast care usage. I see there's a breakdown by location, so Greenfield is the lion's share of usage, but do we have any idea what sort of employees are using the fast care? Are there any sort of metrics that you're getting from information acquired there, whether departments or ages or people with kids or any of that stuff?

Yeah, great question. Thank you. We do have that data. I apologize. It's not in this slide deck here. We do see a higher mix of spouses, adult dependents, independent children utilizing fast care in comparison to our workplace clinic. And we also see a little bit more during the weekend when our workplace clinic hours are closed just out of convenience. So We're happy to provide you that data.

Okay. Yeah, I just wondered if there were any meaningful patterns there and any gaps in folks you might expect to use it but aren't utilizing it and any changes we might make to accommodate that. So, thanks.

Okay. All the room and more. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I just wanted to sort of piggyback on just going back to the health appraisal participation. I know that you all make it really convenient because, you know, it's like it's here at City Hall. Go to the eighth floor. And I say thank you so much because, you know, I don't have to go anywhere else. And so it works out beautifully for me. But in regards to some of our law enforcement, do you all provide any of this? You know, take that on the road, for example, to the districts, the MPD districts, because people got to check in. People typically check in there. Right. Has that something that has been ever done or considered?

Great question. In our district office, where they're very limited hours, we are there for our traveling wellness center programs. We do have some touch points with them, but main health appraisal locations are at the Fire and Police Academy, which was expanded this year. We also see a lot of spouse participation at that location. as well as our MPA offices, we typically see an overwhelming amount of utilization, almost at 100% for each of those health appraisals there. So we've also expanded to afternoons, Saturdays, and evenings for them. Nice.

That was going to be my next question. Thank you.

Meet them where they are. Yes, that's it.

That's it. Thank you.

Okay. Alderman Bergelis? Thank you very much. Going back to the 80% of the eligible population participated in one healthy reward activity, 76% of people participating achieved a healthy reward. Does this include... Spouses or is this only employees? It does include your entire eligible population, which is spouses as well Okay, so some people so the the gold tier is 125 points Which frankly is not all that tough to achieve If you use the app the app is kind of glitchy sometimes, but you guys are helpful with that but Uh, so an eligible employee with a spouse can get 350 for themselves and another $350 for their spouse.

Correct. Yeah. Up to $700. And those funds also carry over through after they retire up to three years, if I'm not mistaken, Molly, which we hear as an incredible benefit because as we move into retirement, one of our biggest expenses are medical.

So, um, What is the cost for each of these different tiers that we have? We kind of went through in budget last year with some budget amendments trying to adjust some of these figures, but how much are we spending on bronze? How much are we spending on silver? How much are we spending on gold? That's not something you have available, but I think it's really valuable for us to have at budget, depending on where the mayor comes with adjustments on his proposed budget for these dollar amounts. I'd like to be able to understand if... what it would cost if we change the 350 to 450, 550. $1,550? Well, frankly, these are real costs. If employees are doing the right things and showing that they're a healthier employee, the city has a tangible, measurable benefit to that, which we can certainly adjust and translate to a higher first tier or higher top tier. The first tier, second tier, okay. Like, yeah, it's great to have those additional funds. But if you can get 75 points, you can probably get 125 if you made a conscious effort for it. And right now, that difference is $200. If we made that difference, $500, we will certainly have more participation. You can look at it as a pain in the butt to go through the app and to click the boxes to document it, but that's about accountability. You're demonstrating that you're actually doing the work. We need to have demonstrated effort if you want to get that reward, but I want to make it worthwhile. I would love to have a $1,500 top tier reward and see how many of our employees have that and have you guys come back to the finance committee and say, hey, we're running short of money. We need more money for our top tier because we have so many people participating in this free benefit. It's not a free benefit. It's a benefit that pays you money. We want more participation. So I want to make that top tier goal the gold standard. to have 80% participation and 100% top-tier status. This isn't hard to do. It's a big benefit to the city, and I think we should be rewarding employees that are doing the work that we show and we know gives a healthy result to our workforce. Thank you.

I think that makes a lot of sense, and I would say you can think about, as a city, what sorts of things you incentivize at that higher level. And with our expansion in primary care services in the workplace clinic, we know that investment in closing those preventive care gaps will be not only good for health, but good fiscally as well. So I think you could look at what you're incentivizing with that additional funds and really drive the right behavior.

You know, one of the things we talked about is how to be incentivized for active health care. You know, you need to get your screening at a certain age. Are you doing that screening? And so those are the ones we want to, you know, are you getting your colonoscopy, your mammographies? Are you having a physician, dedicated primary physicians? available to you. And so those are the things that it's a good opportunity for us to bring. Because if you have a physician, you have someone to go to, you're going to go and see them.

From my own perspective, preventive care, I had a few hundred dollars for one visit that was preventive. Which is unusual, but I can go to the clinic across the street here. It's at the City Hall complex and not have to worry about any of those I'm just checking the board to make sure we don't have someone who wants who's trying to chime in If you are not wanting to participate in the meeting, please mute yourself. I can't read that far away who that is It's not muted or we will mute you I Okay.

More comments? Alderwoman Moore. Thank you. I just wanted to be clear on your ask. You were looking for the amount spent per category? Yeah. Okay. And do you all normally just lump it? Is there a budgetary item? What I would be interested to know is we budget. X number of dollars for healthy rewards. For 2023, we spent out, this was the budget, we spent out this much. For 2024, we spent out the budget. I would love just a three-year comparison, just to sort of see, and that just dovetails on the request that was asked. But I'm curious as to if it's being, how much of it is being, are we spending? because they could go to, well, there might be, probably not for $1,500, but it could be an opportunity to say, hey, this may be an opportunity for us to bump it up a little bit, right? But I would be interested to know that budgetary category.

Go ahead. We circulated a couple budget amendment proposals about that last year, so we have the numbers, and I remember $590,000 is the total budget. We ran through a couple different scenarios he's taking a peek to see if we can find it now, but I don't know if Nick was able to access it The actuals for healthy rewards last year

No, I don't have that. I mean, I think you could assume that you'd be looking at the universe of people that are maxing out, hitting the new max, although you're saying it might be bigger because if you really make the max more of an incentive, more people might hit the max. So there'd be some speculation there, but we'd have to do some multiplication.

Right, and we have that information available, and when it's found, if you could share it with the committee, just so that we're fresh and ready for budget season, which will be here before we know it. Yeah, I had that note to get you that info before your budget amendment, but I figured I had some time.

Mr. Chair, I just want to say I'm leaving money on the table. I'm working on it. I'm working. I'm working on it. I am going to get my points this year.

Our deadline for the financial wellness is June 30th. So if you haven't already got your 125 points, which equates to $350.

Yes, look, I'm gonna be trying to do all the things, okay? But I just wanted to say that if there, again, it goes back to those health and wellness champions and how we can sort of formulate that in each of our departments. We need to get a couple of them. But to just really kind of keep this on the forefront, you know, looking at special things. I'm very tempted to have the city clerk throw a pizza party if we can get over 90. I'm such a competitor.

Veggie pizza?

What? Veggie pizza? Well, I will eat the veggie pizza. I will order a sausage pizza for you or pepperoni. But, you know, but to just say this is so important, I think going back to just the preventative, how do we just do a better job in getting the information out there? And, again, because we have so many opportunities, right, you know, how can we get those champions to, you know, just remind people, hey, we got a long schedule today, you know, whatever. But just to just get people engaged and really take their health and wellness seriously.

Well, you are the well-being champion for this. in City Clerk's office, one of them, so we expect you to...

I absolutely, I take on that charge. So, older woman Moore, and Ms. King, to answer the question, I did find your November 7th memo, Molly. We had 842, this is 2024, actual HRA utilization. Tier 1, 842 participants for a total of 126,000. Tier 2 was 954 participants for a total of 238,000 spent. Tier 3 was 1,528 participants, 350 each, $535,000, about 900,000 altogether. Had we increased those payouts to 250, 350, and 500, it would have been an additional $408,000. And if everyone had moved to the top tier, it would have cost an additional seven hundred and sixty two thousand dollars That's using actuals for 2024. I'll forward this to the committee so that we all have it, but I think it would be healthy So that we can see exactly where we would be With a with various different price points Awesome. Excellent. Any other questions on this item from the committee? Anyone on the board? All right. Alderman Moore moves to place this item on file, hearing no objections. So ordered. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to you all for being here today. Thank you. Thank you all so much. Moving on to item number four, file 260152, communication from the Department of Administration. Budget and Management Division amending the Positions Ordinance relating to position authority for positions in the Department of Public Works Operations Division. Welcome from Budget. Is Mason coming?

Mason is upstairs. Welcome, Director Kovach.

Oh, Chuck's here, yeah.

We're prepared to discuss all this, yeah.

Good morning, committee members, Chuck Schumacher, operations administration manager. This is a file that is related to a classification report that is also attached to your files. What we're doing here is we're moving some positions out of the fleet dispatch section and into sanitation, and we're creating new positions in the fleet dispatch section. So I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Any questions from committee members? Alderman Spiker.

So are there three new positions then being created in fleet, it sounds like? But it's still budget neutral because why?

Because of the three equipment operator positions that we're giving up.

Okay. So there's three vacant positions that you're getting rid of to make room for the fleet additions? Yes. Okay, thanks.

What kind of equipment were these three positions operating the equipment operators there? They do garbage recycling street sweeping You know, it's a whole variety of different equipment that they use And the positions were vacant for a while weren't able to fill them We were unwilling to fill them unable unable to fill them, but we still have a need for street sweepers.

Absolutely absolutely so

Why are we giving up on street sweeping when we still have a need for it.

Yeah, I wouldn't say we're giving up on street sweeping. No, we're giving up on three positions. We're giving up on three positions. We've been running a vacancy rate of about 19% for equipment operators. That's unfortunately not new news to us. That's been the case for a number of years. We're competing against the private sector for CDL equipment operators. But to get to maybe the heart of your question, Alderman, you might recall that we've got two new pieces of software that we've been using, the Samsara system, the routeware system. These are two new pieces of technology that are helping us shuttle work orders around between back office staff and drivers. That's new software that we really kind of stood up prior to the August 2025 flood. I found that very useful. The administrative need that we have is people that can take information coming in from drivers and then routing it back through the system to other drivers. So it's almost like we need some additional people to shuttle the work orders around in sanitation. So we're leveraging You know that system to sort of you know, help get work orders out to people as they need it Well

Yeah, Alderman Spiker, you still have the floor.

So I get it that with the two new pieces of technology, you might have – well, it might bring about certain efficiencies in how you – Sleep streets, push snow, that kind of stuff. But the three new program assistant positions in fleet, would they be doing that type of work or what would they be doing?

No, the three new positions in fleet, those are the people that are working on the daily schedules. So these are the folks that do the daily garbage and recycling schedules. They're monitoring equipment that has been repaired overnight. They're connecting equipment, jobs, and people. They're also the folks that do the snow schedules. So, yeah, so that's what those folks are doing.

But given those technological improvements, wouldn't there be less of a need for folks to be doing that? And how did you survive without those three positions in previous years then?

Yeah, well, so, no, it's two separate functions. The creation of the daily schedules is, you know, an ongoing daily activity that we have been doing for years, you know, aside from the new technology that we've got for work orders.

Without those three people, though, so how have you managed thus far? Why is there the urgent need besides there's just – and, I mean, we've – budget director Kovac and I have talked about squish and DPW and if you've carried a vacancy rate for these many years the question as well why don't you right size it and and push down the number of requested positions well this would be a reason because then you'd have the flex to do something like this like at three new positions outside the budget so I guess I have a little Art burn here and again returning to the question of what happened and fleet that we need these through positions when we survived last year and Apparently previous years without them

No. So to be clear, we didn't survive last year without them. As part of your file, you've got the DER classification report. And what that's, you know, this is part of the reclassification process is that they're taking those, we're moving the positions from fleet to sanitation. And then, you know, we're creating new positions based on DER's study of what the fleet dispatcher folks were doing.

Oh, so there aren't – is it really just three people going over from fleet to sanitation? I thought there were, in addition, three new fleet people.

Yeah, so there are three people currently going from fleet to sanitation, and what the DER study does is it reclassifies those positions. So there aren't three new people? There aren't three new people, no. I mean, there will be three new people in fleet because the existing folks have left and gone to sanitation.

Right, but there won't be three new city employees as a result of this move. They're just moving over into the new league. Reclassified positions or are there it looks like there's six people on paper here. So that's what's confusing You would be recruiting for three new.

Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna be recruiting for the three We're gonna be recruiting for the three new positions that this that the study establishes and flees Okay

And if you're recruiting for those three new positions, you're saying that's a product of the classification study. Correct. So did the classification study reveal a need that heretofore had been unmet, and that's why you're asking for people to fill these positions? And if the unmet need were one that you were getting by with out meeting before, what's changed other than that? I mean, with a classification study, I can see if the job's changed and there's new responsibilities. You want to adjust the – make sure the person's getting paid for the job they're actually doing. But in this case, it seems like three new positions are being requested, and I'm just not understanding where that need came from. I don't understand how a classification study would – would generate that need as opposed to just say look these three folks are better used here doing this kind of stuff dude i i think i'm if i'm the only one utterly confused here then we can let it pass but i'll can you

Can you narrow your question a little bit? Yeah. I understand you're confused. I'm trying to think of the best way to answer that. Again, the best way I can explain it is there's currently three people that were moving from fleet to sanitation, okay? That leaves three positions sort of... That leaves a hole. Let's look at it like this. That leaves a hole of three positions in fleet. So what we want to do is we want to create those positions now. And DER has studied those. They've determined what the classification should be. And now what we're doing is we're saying, okay, we want to make this budget neutral. So we're going to reduce the number of equipment operators we have by three. And we're going to use that funding to... to fund the three new positions in fleet that we're creating.

Okay, so then the three people who left fleet that you're now then recruiting for those holes in the new position, they're going over to sanitation. Why was there the need to have these three people over in sanitation?

Right. And that's that's the technology I was talking about, the route where in Samsara system. So so now now that we've got those two, that means we need fewer equipment operators and more.

Well, I would say admin staff. Yeah, I mean, for sure. You know, I mean, that's that's and it's not true that we need three fewer equipment operators. It was true is we can't fill those positions. And so now we're tossing in the towel and saying in order to fund. So there still is something funny going on here. In order to fund these three new positions in sanitation that will support the technology in the back office, we need these three new positions. And lo and behold, we have these positions we've never been able to fill. And so we're just going to take those. and call it a day. So that's what's happening, right?

I mean, the way I guess I would present it to you is that we are unable to fill those three positions. So rather than let them sit vacant, what we think is a better use of the money is to fund this new need that we're seeing on the admin staff side for purposes of shuttling work orders around.

And those technologies were discussed in budget, so why during budget? I mean, what... is ultimately sticking my craw here is this kind of stuff happening mid-season as opposed to during budget. So when those technologies were advocated for at budget, why wasn't there then the foresight to say, hey, you know, we're going to need some more admin positions to support these technologies. And so that's what we're straightforwardly asking for now as opposed to later highlighting how much Squish there is in the DPW budget and availing ourselves of that and coming up with these positions kind of after the fact. Why wasn't this something that we discussed or thought about at budget?

Sure, so as we were developing the 2026 budget in the spring of 2025, we hadn't fully stood up the routeware system. The August flood really caused us to jump into that system and forced us to utilize it to its highest extent. And that process has taught our staff how to use the system to its best use. So now that we kind of have got the experience, we understand how the information gets put in the system from the drivers, how it's reviewed from supervisors, and how it's pushed back out to various routes and the routes that have to change based on that dynamic information. What we've discovered is that we do need some more administrative people to help with that process of taking the information, plugging it back into the system so that the jobs can be rerouted.

So final comment question is, I might have thought that technology would have introduced efficiencies, which would then require fewer employees, but the upshot here seems to be we need more employees if we're implementing a technology to support the the back office. So the technology in this case resulted in three more employees and not any more efficiencies in terms of fewer employees.

Yeah, well, I guess I'm not sure I would say it didn't result in any inefficiencies.

And employees and people we pay money to do the job. The idea is, you know, the police chief and always is talking about a force multiplier technology and that. So the idea is that you can do more with the technology, but. Ultimately, we're going to be facing tough budgets, and you might say, hey, we use these technologies, and therefore we're able to provide the same services with fewer employees. In this case, this is a case study of showing that we actually need more.

All right, Spiker.

Yeah.

Believe it or not, the questions you're asking are questions we asked. Okay. I did not think your questions were confused. I thought they were very much in line. So I do think I sometimes go along with your word squish. I don't really like it in this case, and I'll tell you why. If I sat over there, I wouldn't like it either. You know, yes, we're funding a certain level of equipment operators, and then we're not always hitting that level. And so that does mean there's room in the salary budget. But if you're still trying to deliver the same service, you sometimes deliver it through overtime or through temps or through private contractors. So it doesn't necessarily mean there's room in the budget, but it does mean there is this inability to hire up to exactly the funded level. And there has been for years. It's getting slightly better now from the other larger market reclasses. So that's – if all we were doing was funding these three new admin positions by trying to realize savings that might have happened anyway, I think your questions – well, we asked the same questions you asked. I do think there's a connection here that isn't fully fleshed out, but we expect there to be a connection between the new software – We think there will be a connection between making all of the equipment operators more efficient due to the software and due to the dispatch and communication assistance work. So it's not that we're not like banking a savings that was going to happen anyway and spending it here. That's, I think, what you're asking, and we had the exact same question. There is a connection.

We hope expect between these three administrative positions and improving the efficiency of the of the equipment operators So this we hope that the savings are connected Yeah, and that that was the vision that sort of efficiency if you have this technology that tells your I mean you can Take care of your routes in a much quicker manner. You don't have to so okay. No, that's that's That's good enough.

Thank you. Can we move on from this then anything else?

No, I

No, we can't move on or no?

No, no, we can't. I feel like the deterrent of making sure if we do some of this in the future, we're very mindful of it, has already been set. So goal accomplished. Thank you.

Sure.

All right.

Any other discussion on this item? Hearing and seeing none, Alderwoman Dimitrievich moves approval of, oh, I'm sorry, Alderwoman Dimitrievich moves to place item four on file. Any objection to that motion? Hearing none, so ordered. Passing the gavel back for item number... Next five. Yeah.

Round five. Okay. We are now going to move quickly through these next items. So item five, two, six, Oh, Oh, nine, three. Let me just grab this. And that is our communication from the department of administration, budget and management analysis division regarding vacancy requests, fund transfers and equipment requests. Okay, so we do not have any fund transfers, so we'll first begin with property tax levy supported positions. Department of Administration, Budget and Management Division, Budget and Fiscal Policy Analyst 4. City Attorney, Assistant City Attorney 5. Common Council City Clerk, License Specialist 2. Comptroller, Accounting Program Assistant 3. Election Commission, Election Operations Manager. Department of Emergency Communications, Emergency Communications Manager. Fire Department, Deputy Chief Fire, Battalion Chief Fire, Fire Captain. Library, librarian three, three positions, library reference assistant, two positions. Police department, media producer, police district administrative assistant, police services specialist, investigators, four positions, police human resources administrator, human resources supervisor. Department of Public Works administration, Department of Public Works inventory and purchasing manager. Department of Public Works Infrastructure Division, Program Assistant 2, Electrical Worker 3 positions, Custodial Worker 2. Any questions on property tax levy supported positions? Hearing no, we'll now move to non-property tax levy supported positions. Department of Community Wellness and Safety, Recast Program Coordinator. Department of Compliance and Engagement, Equal Rights Specialist. Employees Retirement System, Office Assistant III, ERS Chief Financial Officer. Department of Public Works, Infrastructure Division, Civil Engineer II. Department of Public Works, Water Works, Water Chemist, Water Treatment Plant Lead Operator III positions. Any questions on property tax or non-property tax levy supported positions? Hearing none and seeing no fund transfers, Alderman Bergelis moves approval of item five, which is our budget and management vacancy request and fund transfers equipment requests. Any questions on that approval? Any objections?

Hearing none, so ordered.

Thank you. We're now on item 6, 260-095. Communication from the Department of Administration relating to approval of changes to certain single or sole source contracts or contract amendments. Ms. Rhonda Kelsey, are you here? Are anyone from purchasing?

Yes, I'm on the board. Good morning, Madam Chair.

Good morning. I see you. Good morning.

Okay. Good morning, committee members. There is one contract that requires your approval this morning. It's in the file. This is the CMC incorporated contract for the Milwaukee Police Department for the purchase of CMC terrain mapping software in the amount of $81,000 for a three-year term. Okay. That's the only contract in this file.

Okay, thank you. Let me just check. Is Alderman Wilman Cox still with us?

No.

No? Okay. Just didn't want to call on her if not. That's our only one, Ms. Kelsey, as you mentioned. Correct for item six?

Yes.

Okay. Any other questions on item six? Then hearing none, Alderman Moore moves approval of item six. We'll move on to item seven. 260-097. Communication from the Department of Administration informing the Finance and Personnel Committee of waivers granted for certain single or sole source contracts or contract amendments. Ms. Kelsey.

Good morning. Are you here? There are two contracts in today's file, one for the police department and one for the Fire and Police Commission. These are both contract amendments. They've come before this body in the past. The first contract amendment is for the purchase of a soft interview room. For the install of cameras and whatnot for the police department. So we are or have, I should say, we've amended the current contract amount, which includes five contracts again with Exxon. for body cameras, tasers, et cetera, in the amount of roughly $18,000. So this purchase increases the current contract amount of 13.75 million or so to roughly 13.774 million. The second contract, again for the Fire and Police Commission, this contract is with Safeguard Recruiting. We are, so again, you all are familiar with this contract. This is their marketing branding contract to increase recruitment efforts for police officers. So we have amended this contract in the amount of $175,000. which yields an increase of the total contract amount to $430,000. And we've also extended the contract through April of 2027. And that concludes the contracts in this file.

Okay. Questions or comments on Item 7 in the contracts before us from purchasing? Okay, Alderman Bergalas.

So my question might be directed to the Fire and Police Commission for the recruitment vendor. That's quite a... It's an extension. It's a little bit more money. Or I'm sorry, it's an extension for a little bit less money. What...

what results from the first year contract uh indicate that we should continue with the same vendor since um this is leon tobb executive director of the milwaukee fire and police commission since we uh began our partnership with safeguard recruiting in approximately uh august of last year applications have nearly doubled from uh August through December, we had 742 applications during that period, which was a significant increase in the number of applications. That cohort of applicants is still in the testing process. They have not been hired yet, but they will join class 2 of 2026 for MPD, which is scheduled to start in early August. And then so far this year, we've had just over 1000 applications, which is a significant increase in applications. Now, I will provide a caveat to that. While applications have significantly increased, we've not yet seen a corresponding increase in the number of new hires. That said, we are working with Safeguard to fine tune our applicant outreach model, as well as internally in FPC, we are looking at doing a number of things that will hopefully move more candidates through the application, sorry, the testing process, including a new express exam for the initial written test. We've requested a waiver.

I'm sorry to cut you off because we're just talking about the recruiting contract and not results from recruiting efforts. But so you mentioned that this contract started in August of 2025?

I believe it was signed in April or May, but that's when it really got going and Safeguard launched its efforts.

Okay. So the original contract term was from May 1st, 2025. We saw that waiver presentation May 29th, 2025. And that first-year contract from May 1st through the end of April 2026 was for $255,000. That contract has now expired, and we're renewing it for $175,000 for another year. So you're saying that it didn't start May 1st?

The contract started May 1st, but the work began in earnest in mid or late July, I believe.

All right, and then what's the $80,000 in cost savings from the original contract and the renewal?

So the contract renewal amount for 175 is the same cost for the digital recruitment campaign. They are providing free of charge this time weekly and monthly standing meetings on creative elements. They're also... at no cost adding an additional recruitment video and photos, which does have a significant dollar value.

So there are some startup costs that were covered in the first-year contract that don't need to be duplicated. That makes perfect sense to me. The August 26th police class, is that class going to be full now?

No. I don't anticipate that there will be a significant increase for that class. But again, we are working on a number of things that I'm hopeful will improve results going forward.

So we have more applications, but the same number of people that make it to the class, to the academy?

For this one applicant cohort, that is correct.

All right. So I will mark that as a... note of concern that we're spending money on recruitment getting more applications but not getting more people through to the academy the entire purpose and requirement that we have for maintenance of effort in act 12 is to increase our sworn staff and frankly unless we fill these classes we're not going to be able to maintain our sworn staff So my concern is that this is great to have people apply, and we have a bigger pool of applications, but if we don't have more people filling the academy classes, this is not a successful recruitment effort. Thank you, Madam Chair.

And if I can briefly respond to that, Madam Chair.

Very briefly, because we're going to move on from this. Thank you.

Briefly. Alderman Bergalas, I do share your concerns as well. My concerns are, well, one concern is that if we do not continue the contract with Safeguard, our applications will decrease significantly. That could result in even smaller classes. Also, as I mentioned, we are working on a number of ways to increase our hire rate, get more applicants ultimately hired, and I think it is a process, and we're working very hard on it. Thank you.

Well, to be fair, if a ship is sinking in the ocean and we're taking on water, we have to either get a bigger bucket or more buckets, right? But we're still sinking at the same rate.

I don't necessarily agree with that analogy, but I agree that we need more applications and we need to get more people through the testing process and get them hired. We are working on both very hard.

Okay. Maybe you gentlemen can continue to work on this together because there's been a lot of back and forth. But I can understand the need. I understand. Just one fact. Okay. Anything else on 7? Anything else on 7? Anyone else? Then we'll have Alderman Spiker move to place that on file and hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you. We're now on number 826098, communication from the Department of Employee Relations relating to classification studies scheduled for City Service Commission action. Ms. Knickerbocker from DER, please. Thank you.

The report before you today is for the purpose of reclassifying the positions that exist in that fleet operations section. Just to do a big picture overview, and I can answer any more detailed questions. The current fleet operations manager, we looked at the classification. I want to emphasize that this report was not a market study. This is actually looking at the classification of the position and comparing it to others in the city, in this case, Public Works, and realizing that this fleet operations manager is actually operating at the same level as other positions in the waterworks and sanitation. regards to the people who are actually working on the floor and assigning people and equipment we're going to create we recommend creating three different titles different than what we have now creating a public works dispatcher lead to assist people on the floor in real time as well as two titles of public works dispatcher one with one being the underfill but with people being able to move up to the two The other thing we did, just because this is not the only dispatch section in Public Works, is we took a look at the dispatch center in Water. They have similar but slightly different needs. A recommendation there is to create position authority for the two-level and position authority for the one-level, and that's related to the schedules and requirements what people are actually doing on the job. And I can answer any questions.

Questions on item eight? Questions on item eight? Hearing no questions, Alderman Bergelis moves to place eight on file. Any objections? Hearing none, so ordered. Round number nine, 252216, communication from Department of Employee Relations. Amending the salary and positions ordinances relating to clerical or administrative corrections. Ms. Knickerbocker?

These are just corrections that we have found. Thank you. That need to be made.

Any questions on the corrections? Alderman Moore moves to place nine on file. Objections to placing it on file? Hearing none, so ordered. Item 10-251-855, substitute resolution relative to acceptance of funding for 2025-2029 lead hazard reduction and healthy homes grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This was referred to us from the Public Health and Safety Committee, correctly? Yes, positively, if you want to make sure. This calendar's been a little off. Okay, and then Alderman Spiker moves adoption of 10. Any discussion of adoption? Any objections? Hearing none, so ordered. 11-260-102, an ordinance to further amend the 2026 rates of pay of offices and positions in city service. We do need to amend that. because it did include item one issues which were the reimbursements for the allowances for the members of the grand mill haven woods advisory council yeah it was held so then we have to amend it to remove it and alderman bergelis does that at this time hearing no objections so ordered and then alderman bergelis moves as amended passage of two um i'm sorry passage of 11. okay so Now, it does reflect the work of our earlier files because we removed that one item, which we held in item one. And passages before us, any objections to passage on 11, hearing none so ordered. 12, 260103, an ordinance to further amend the 2026 offices and positions in the city service. That also reflects our work from earlier files. Passages moved by Alderman Spiker. Any discussion of passage? Any objections? Hearing none so ordered. There are... Three files before us. We'll take them as a group that should be placed on file because they're no longer necessary. 13 is 190232. 14, 210231. And 15, 251683. And those will be moved by Alderman Bergelis to place on file. They're no longer necessary. Any discussion? Any objections? Hearing none, so ordered. And this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.