Board of Supervisors Agenda and Minutes - Regular Meeting

You ready? Ready? OK. 30 seconds. Good morning. We are going to call to order the Dallas County Board of Supervisors meeting for April 14th, 2026. And I'll ask for an approval of the agenda.

Second.

Is there any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. I ask everyone to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Is there anyone here to speak in open forum? OK, if none, we'll move on to the consent agenda.

Move for approval of the consent agenda. Second.

Is there any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Supervisors, minutes from 4-7 of 2026. Move to roll.

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion carries. Item 7, payroll change notices. Good morning.

I just have one. It's a step increase for a secondary roads employee per the pay plan policy.

Move to approve the payroll change notice as presented. Second.

Any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye, motion carries. Item eight, is there any capital projects to be discussed today?

Not none today.

Okay, all right. So item nine, we'll move right down to the health plan renewal. Good morning.

Good morning, everyone. Oh, we already have copies of it? Ours are better. Our printing is really good. The anticipation for everyone's favorite meeting of the year. This is just, I can feel it's palpable. All right, my name is Joe Stopulos. I am with Holmes Murphy and Associates along with Amanda Belleville. So we are the Holmes Murphy team that works directly with Dallas County. And we've worked with you guys, been blessed to have a partnership with you for about a decade now, working on the employee benefits. So today we have a lot to cover and a few different recommendations as well. And so I'm gonna jump right into it. But again, I'll kind of go pretty quickly on this. There's a lot of data here. If you need to stop me at any point, just raise your hand, let me know. But I'm gonna go pretty quickly through this. Here's the agenda. We're going to start with your guys' medical claims experience for the previous year. Then we're going to talk about medical and pharmacy renewals and alternates. We have some recommendations upon that. A quick stop-loss analysis, and then we'll jump into the dental, the dental renewal, and the answer renewals. Those first three bullet points taking probably 85% of what we're going to talk about today. So jumping right into the medical claims experience, for those of you who have been around Dallas County for any amount of time, the story behind Dallas County has been very rich benefits running very well for a very long time. We've had basically no plan changes and no changes to premiums for the employees in as long as I've been here, so over a decade essentially. We've only had enhancements to the plan, to be quite honest with you. And in that time, we've had a very, very, very large surplus. And so we've run so well that there really hasn't been any need to have any conversations about this. The last few years, that's shifted a bit. That's not unique to Dallas County by any means. Obviously, costs continue to go up. We'll talk about some trends really driven by large-cost claimants and then medications. So RX, just historically, some data there. RX, call it 10 years ago, was approximately 10% of a total healthcare spend. Today, nationwide, it's about 30. Well, you guys are following in that trajectory as well. And so there's some things we'll point out. What I want to really cue your attention to is the far right. The far right is you'll see a thing called Benchmark. And then you'll see current, those kind of two buckets there. And you can see your variance compared to benchmark. Well, benchmark is Wellmark's book of business, right? So benchmark gives you a kind of an idea of, hey, where are we fit compared to everyone else? And you can see on the top line there, inpatient, you guys are 9.3% above benchmark. Well, you're 30% below on outpatient. So obviously that's really good. I'm going to turn your attention to RX. So that fourth one down, you guys are 53% above on pharmacy. That is obviously a major outlier that we just don't see very well. So we'll dive deeper into what that means. But clearly, you're 7.9%, roughly 8% above the benchmark, which is not way off. But when pharmacy is that big of a piece of it, that kind of lets us know, hey, we got to have a conversation around pharmacy, okay? Moving forward, this is going to show you guys what it looks like just going back. I mean, you go back two years, our total paid was $3.8 million. We're already up to $5.5 million. Now, we have experienced growth in that time. You guys had down at the bottom there 237 employees and members of 619, and now we're already up to the 265 and the 699. So we've experienced some growth in there, but even when you break it out on a PMPY, a per-member, per-year basis, you're still trending in the wrong direction. We're eating up that surplus pretty quickly based on where you're going. And again, if you look at the pharmacy right there, middle of the page, the pharmacy paid PMPY, you can see it's gone up pretty significantly year over year. The next page is a little deeper into that pharmacy data itself. If you look on what we've kind of highlighted there right in the middle, the top section is that combined RX. So that's taking your specialty and the bottom is your non-specialty. So we do break it out. Wellmark breaks this out on those two indication lines of specialty and non-specialty. The top is everything combined. And right off the bat, again, benchmark is the far right. You guys on that current section are at 256. Well, that's paid per prescription. You know, 256 versus 174, that's a pretty significant amount above benchmark. And you just think that's on every single script you guys have over the course of a year. That starts to add up over time. And then when we go under the hood, we say, well, where's that fire coming from? You can see it's not in specialty. Oftentimes when we're having these conversations, specialty is where we'll see that happening. And that's just not the case with you guys. You're actually totally fine on specialty. You're right in line. It's really in the non-specialty. You're almost double, not quite double, what the cost is on the non-specialty. And there's a reason for that, which we'll get to in a bit. But that's kind of the lay of the land of where you guys stand as far as the cost of the pharmacy. The next slide will show the actual usage. Not way high. I've got groups that are substantially above benchmark on this. You're not. Benchmark is at 10.5 per member per year. So that's basically each person you're planning on having one drug a year is roughly what that equates to. Obviously, there are people that are taking zero, and there are people that are taking two. You're not that far off. You're at 11.5. So you're one above. So that's not it. It's the cost of the drugs really. That's that's it's the drugs they're taking that are driving the cost more so than the amount of drugs, if that makes sense. Okay. The next page will kind of show you exactly what I'm talking about on page eight, the actual pharmacy report. You'll see here, this is the list of your top claimants, sorry, your top drugs for the plan. And you'll just see a lot of drugs and a lot of big numbers on the right. You'll recognize, if you watch TV, you'll recognize many of these because they have jingles and they are, a lot of them are the weight loss medications that are on TV. You'll recognize a lot of these names. Zetbound, Wegovy, Manjaro, Ozempic, right? You've heard these names before. And there's a lot of them. Clearly, there's a lot of them. We do highlight the specialty ones. These are, again, names that you've probably heard of. You've probably heard of Skyrizzy. Very expensive medication. That... The specialty medications, what we have to do on this is our job on this piece is to make sure we're getting the best pricing on these specialty. There's no way, they're always gonna be the plan. A group of your size, this many people, you're gonna have specialty medications. Our job is to make sure we're procuring those at the best possible price. Same thing on the non-specialty. So in this case, a lot of GLP-1, a lot of weight loss drugs, and we'll talk about that as well. So at this point, you have a lot of people on these drugs. So how can we make sure we're procuring these and getting the best possible price for Dallas County and their employees? Okay, I'll pause there before we get deeper into the actual claims data themselves. Any questions on that before we get further into this? I talk fast. I've had espresso. Happy to slow down if that helps. OK. Again, happy to come back to anything, too. So this is a Holmes Murphy dashboard that we put together for you guys. A lot of numbers here, and the next page is way more numbers, and you'll see they all kind of funnel into this. This is kind of the overview dashboard. I'm going to turn your attention just to the far right, those bar graphs there. You'll see the purple line is the budget. That is what we have with Dallas County budgets every year on a PEPM, per employee per month basis. That is what we are, it's what we're accruing for. And then the teal is how you've actually run. So you'll see two years ago, you were almost right at budget. So, you know, we plan on a buck. You guys are right around a buck. And then you can see that teal has just taken off over budget in the last two years. Well, under the hood, you look down there. Where did these numbers come from? Well, that 1378 from two years ago was really masked by that red bar, that negative red bar. You'll see you still had medical claims of 887 and pharmacy claims of 531. That's the teal and kind of the pea green there. Everything below that, that red, those are reimbursements that we got from stop loss or from rebates on the pharmacy. The stop loss was very heavy that year. If you remember back two years, we had some very significant stop loss reimbursements. So I would say if you think historically in Dallas County, you go back more than three years, go four years and beyond, it was, these bars were up, like you guys were getting huge surpluses every year. We were running at like legitimately 60 and 70% loss ratios. I mean, laughable stuff that you just don't see very much. And once we got to two years ago, you had a lot of people broach that stop-loss and then get reimbursed on it. And so while, yeah, you guys were running right around budget two years ago, it's not like it was super healthy. You still had a ton of medical claims and a ton of pharmacy claims. And then since then, the pharmacy claims have continued to ramp up, and you're not going to receive stop-loss reimbursements from that. And so the medical claims have gone from 887, then the next year was 917, and then this year you're at just over 1,000 of medical. And the pharmacy has gone from 531 up to the 613, up to the 656, which just kind of explains how we've gotten here. That's kind of the overview of how we've gotten to the point. So when you see that delta there between the teal Of the what you're running today at the 1769 versus the budget of the 1326. You know that on the left here shows you you're running today at a deficit of almost $900,000. Okay, now that'll probably shore up over the course of the next few months. Once we round the year up, it usually comes back a little bit. But obviously concerning, given that we're going to eat into yet a very nice, robust surplus. But that's concerning to us. We want to make sure that we're not having to go back into the employees pockets and ask for more money in the future if we can. Right. So this to us is really a hey, let's set the stage for what can we do in the short term to make sure that we're bringing this back. And we kind of have two recommendations that we'll get into. But this always, as your advisor, scares us when we see a deficit that big and don't take action on it. Again, for many years we had a very large surplus. We still do have a surplus. So we're still comfortable right now. We're not trying to break in case of emergency at all. This is more what action items can we take today so that we don't have to do drastic measures in the future. The next slide, I'm not going to get into all this detail at all. This is the data that we use to populate that last slide. So all of our dashboard data comes from this. Really nothing to show. I'll just kind of go through the top, this kind of middle line here. This will show you your today medical claims are 2.463 million pharmacy claims of 1.369 million. You've received stop loss reimbursements thus far this year of that 364 to get our net claims thus far. Again, four months to go at 3.4 million. You add in your administration and your stop loss premiums. That stop loss premiums we'll talk about in a second. That is the insurance that you're buying. Then we get to our pharmacy rebates of 371,000. I point that out. That's a significant number. Obviously, when we're talking about pharmacy claims of 1.3 million, these rebates are not nothing. And so that's why we want to make sure we're buying the best possible We have the best possible contract for those when we're talking about millions and millions of dollars in both the pharmacy claims and hundreds of thousands of dollars in those rebates. And another note that I think is important to know is your employee enrollment is at 263 today. That number is important because you guys really crossed that 250 threshold a year or two ago. And that matters because this whole pharmacy conversation about carving out pharmacy, getting creative around pharmacy, doesn't exist if you're under 250. Wellmark won't let you have that conversation. They won't let you do anything outside of Wellmark until you get above that 250 marker. So that has allowed us an opportunity to have a conversation around what can we do to be creative within that pharmacy space. Next page, stop-loss premiums. We're going to talk about the stop-loss in a bit. Important to understand, today you guys buy a specific deductible of $75,000. That means you are responsible for every claims, every belly button, up to $75,000. After that $75,000, it gets over to the stop-loss insurance company. So they are now in charge of any... So if I have a million-dollar claimant, Dallas County covers the first 75. So that is truly the insurance that you're buying. And today, year to date, you've spent $422,000 on that policy. You've had claims of $364,000. So you're running a loss ratio today of 86%. That's not great, to be honest. I mean, you guys have had years in the past where you've run at multiple hundreds of percent and you've had years you run at zero. We'd really like to see a stop loss ratio closer to 50 to 60 to 70. So a little hot on the stop loss. But as I mentioned, a lot of your claims are not hitting stop loss. You have lots of these kind of $20,000 claimants, especially when it comes to pharmacy, lots of people in the $10,000 range that are adding up that aren't even hitting the 75. Again, that's why two years ago, you actually had a year that was right at budget, and you had huge spike claims, but they all got paid by the stop loss. Today's world, you have a lot more people that are under stop loss that are on ongoing medications and things like that. All right, so the actual renewal itself. So this is your plan today. Your current medical design, you have a $200 deductible, which, do any of you guys have real jobs? $200 doesn't really exist in the world today. I've been doing this for 18 years. Wellmark doesn't. So for example, if you went onto Wellmark and you were a fully insured group and you were under $100, this plan is not even close to offer, like not even close to offer. If you're in the ACA under $50, this is not even close to offer. This is a premium, premium plan. And it has not been touched in years. 15, 20. We raised a copay one time, a long time ago, but the deductibles have not been touched, nor the out-of-pocket maximums in a very, very long time. Today, you're at a $200 deductible, which means as an employee, I walk in, I pay the first $200 of service, and then I pay 20%. The insurance carrier pays 80% up to that out-of-pocket maximum of $1,500, and then I am done for the year. Most people's deductible on a gold-level plan, the deductible would start at $1,500 or $2,000. And today, you're done paying at $1,500 or $2,000. So this is a very Cadillac-level plan. And obviously, the employees know that. Everyone knows that. It's a really good plan. And then down to the copayments themselves, you're at a $15 copayment. Again, that is above benchmark. Benchmark today would be probably $25 to $30. Again, we would have seen this pretty normally 10 to 15 years ago. We just don't see these levels of deductible and copayments nearly as often anymore. And then your pharmacy also very competitive as well. We do have some creative things in there, but we're not going to touch on the pharmacy quite yet as far as the actual copayments. But the biggest things for you guys are that deductible and out-of-pocket maximum level are very low, and actually the copayments are pretty low as well. Remember these because we're going to come back to them. All right. The actual renewal itself. So you're basically three parts that make up your fixed cost. There's the admin fee, there's a specific stop loss, and there's the aggregate stop loss. So the administration fee today, this is what you guys pay Wellmark to be your administrator, right? You're paying for their networks, you're paying for their people, all that. They're asking for a 3.7% increase. That's standard issue. That happens every year. Like clockworkers kind of get used to that. So that's $8,400 there. The stop loss is the insurance that you're buying. So stop loss today, as you can imagine, again, think of that. It's just that catastrophic stuff. It's the people that are going over 75 or over 100. So that piece of insurance is the fastest growing portion of insurance today. Million dollar claimants are on the rise. It's been this case for a bit. Wellmark's average right now is 15%. So obviously, you guys are running hot. You've run hot the last few years. They're really not asking for much more than the 15%. And we'll get into some details on this in a second. So the specific stop loss, that's that $75,000 you guys buy on every employee. They're asking for a 16.7% on that. The aggregate stop loss, they're not asking for anything. So aggregate stop loss, that is your worst case protection. That's 125% of expected. So if they expect $5 million to be your expected claims for the year, expected cost, the most you could pay is 125% above that, which is 6.25% or whatever that would be. So, obviously, you only pay $16,000 for that protection. It's not a very expensive protection, and they're not going to ask for any more money on that. So, $114,000 in fixed costs of increase, okay? Down there shows you a little bit more of how those fixed costs and the PEPM are going up. It's mostly coming up from that medical admin fee and then, obviously, on these specific stop-loss. Well, that's one component. So that $114,000 there, we're going to move to the next page, and you'll see that's in that top line. So your fixed costs are on the top line, the $114,000 moving forward. There's your 13%. The next piece is what Wellmark expects and claims. Why this matters is twofold. One, it's important to understand from a budgetary standpoint, how are we running? What should we budget for? And then two, I just mentioned that aggregate insurance. That aggregate insurance is derived from that number. So where Wellmark expects your total cost to be at, That is where we have protection at 125% above that number. So Wellmark's saying, hey, we think you should budget for an extra 5.9% in expected claims. And any math people out there can understand, obviously the fixed costs, we don't love spending 13% more in fixed costs. But as far as a percentage basis to how actually your overall spend, it's substantially less, right? So Wellmark today saying, hey, we expected in 2025, 26, 5.9 million. We're expecting roughly 7% more at the 6.3 million. Our job sitting here is to say on this specific thing, is this a fair renewal? When we go into the actual fixed costs themselves, you'll see very quickly that yes, Wellmark is still underpriced compared to their competitors in the marketplace on the insurance portion of this. The other piece of this, Beth and the team, how is Wellmark running as administrator? How are they running for our people? A-plus on that side. So Wellmark's doing a good job. Their pricing, as much as we don't love 13%, you'll see in a second, it is running well. So no recommendations to make on this portion of it other than we've done the math and it does check out. Questions on that? Okay. Next page is a possible alternate medical plan design. So we got together and said, OK, what are some major pieces that we could change that wouldn't have drastically changed the employees' lives at all, but would help us as we're facing this budgetary deficit? And this is what I would call modernizing your plans a little bit. If we were to move to this, by the way, I'm going to pause it here and just give you an idea. If we do this, instead of a 13% increase, you'll see in the next slide, it's actually almost a 1% decrease. So this is a significant change in pricing, right? So instead of 13% up, we're going about 0.8% down. It's close to that. So if we head to the next, back to the slide. Okay, just to give you guys an idea, what are we talking about money-wise here? It's a pretty significant savings. And it's not drastically changing your employees' lives. The deductible would move up to 750 for an employee. Again, I would pay the first $750. And then I would pay 20%. The insurance carrier would pay 80% up to the 2,500. And then we would just move those co-payments up $5 a co-payment. Again, from a benchmarking perspective, this is still a Cadillac plan. This is still a gold level plan that you can't even buy in the fully insured world. We wanted to show this to you to say, what does it look like to modernize a plant and still hold costs basically the same? And that's essentially what these numbers are. So we would recommend having the conversation around moving to something like this. Again, we see the way the costs have gone up. This is a way to keep the employees still having a platinum level, gold level plan. not changing it too much we're not changing it drastically it's a couple tweaks um that we think would actually be obviously beneficial to the county to be able to continue to keep the premiums or the uh the employee premiums flat obviously that's what they probably care the most about is what's coming out of the paycheck and this would allow us to do that Beth, anything to add there?

Yeah, I will say, Rob and I just looked at the health fund, and we have only about $3 million in that plan. We're down about $1 million since the start of this.

Yeah, it was. It was five or six.

Correct, and we were at four, around four at the start of the year. And so part of this discussion goes into that we are still, we have plenty of money in that health fund. However, it is going down, and so sharing some of that cost burden with our employees is something we need to look at. Also, to bring to your attention, we're not touching premiums for employees. We want to keep those monthly premiums as low as possible or as stagnant as we can. Also, those premiums are bargained into the Sheriff's Office union contract. So we can't touch premiums for that specific group of employees. Just information for you to think about as you're reviewing this proposed change.

You know, a healthy reserve would be at least three to six months. That's one point five million to three million dollars would be healthy. Our concern is the trajectory down from 5.5 to 4.5 to 3. So you can see the trajectory going this way and sort of kind of nip that in the bud. At the end of the day, we just don't want to see this get down to a critical mass where we're only at three months. We'd like to see it slow that rate. I think we're still super healthy right now. We're in a fine place. This is more of a conversation of what can we do today to make sure that we're not seeing that thing plummet at the same level it's going.

And next year, I don't want to sit here and have a conversation and say we need to do something drastic because our health fund has gotten so low, but still offering the Cadillac plan to our employees that they're used to and still having that great benefit for our employees. So trying to be creative in what we do to help with some of those cost sharing.

Questions on that? OK. And then there's the pricing we discussed. Page 18 is a stop loss. So as I mentioned, what we do every year is we'll go out to market. We have to keep Wellmark in check to make sure that their pricing is good. We marketed to 11 carriers outside of Wellmark. Eight of them declined to quote, which means they were so uncompetitive that they said, we're not going to touch this thing. Three did respond, and the quotes ranged from 59% increases to 100% increases. And so that's for that $75,000 spec that you guys got a 16% increase on. So the next closest was almost 60% up. So again, Walmart's obviously doing a good job. The ISL, the individual stop loss layer benchmarking for a group of Dallas County size roughly would say 100 to 150,000 is where we would normally see that at. Today you're at 75. You're a little less than that. And we'll show you, we did an analysis to say what would it look like to move up into that $100,000 level. Just from a pure benchmarking standpoint, that number is usually around $270 PEPM. You guys are at $236. So you are below where you'd see Wellmark's benchmark for this. So again, our job, we look at this, and we want to make sure you guys are getting the best pricing you can, that nothing's way out of sorts. And yep, you're below benchmark there. Outside market is saying, hey, nothing to see here. We don't have anything. Leads us to say Wellmark's giving you guys a pretty fair deal on the actual insurance piece of this. We then have our team, our actuarial team, go through and do a deductible analysis. We ran quotes at $75,000, $80,000, and $100,000. This really plays into how much discount are they going to give you, right? So if you up yours to $85,000 and up it to $100,000, you're going to pay less in premium, right? So you're going to pay less money up front in the insurance cost. Then we have to do the analysis. Okay, will we have... commensurate claims to be winning in that situation. And all of our scenarios would say, it's not the case. The numbers for that are the next page. I don't need to walk through all of them. You look at the bottom right. All of this flows to the bottom right. And if it was a big red number that was, hey, we think you're going to save $100,000, we would tell you that. Our actuarial team says, not really. Your chances of breaking even on this are not even that good. we would not recommend until your claims settle or they're giving you bigger discounts, we would not recommend moving up to a higher stop-loss level. All right, pharmacy RFP. This is, everyone buckle up, this will be fun. Okay, so as I mentioned, pharmacy is the fastest growing portion of all, not just yours, but all health plans, okay? So back up Holmes & Murphy for a second. So Holmes & Murphy, I've been here 18 years. If you go back 18 years ago, pharmacy was less than 10%. There were no $100,000 pop drugs. They didn't exist. I mean, even GLP-1s didn't exist three years ago. And that's making up over 20% of spend now on pharmacy. I mean, when you break it down, pharmacy continues to just do this. Well, Holmes Murphy now has an entire team of pharmacists. So we've invested in an actual team of pharmacy. experts to help our clients who are self-funded to be able to uh to go out and use professionals and go underneath the hood and say what do we have in the plan today and where can we buy this for the best price why this matters to you guys today is you're now above 250 okay well mark wouldn't allow you to do this previously if you were under 250. Secondly, this is clearly a growing thing for Dallas County. We would have loved to have just done this by ourselves. We can't. We're going to need the Board of Supervisors approval to go out for us to do this. But just some numbers here to show you guys where you stand. Highlight on the top there, this is current Dallas County paid PEPM. A lot of this will sound familiar. This is Holmes Murphy's data. It's going to be very similar to Wellmark, same story. The current benchmark is at 313, so again, Double, darn near double as far as that goes. And obviously from prior to today, you guys have gone up pretty significantly. If you look down here on the drug grouping class, this looks a little differently from where you guys are at. Top three, the top one and the third one, those are going to be your... your weight loss, anti-diabetic drugs that we've talked about, all those jingles that you know, that dermatologicals, those are going to be your Skyrizis, Humeras, that kind of thing, kind of specialty medications. You get the third, that's cancer drugs. So cancer drugs aren't even in the top three. The preponderance of your stuff is in those top three buckets, right? And so that's what we'd be really making sure. Those are ongoing. You look at the number, just the number of members on those drugs. Those are ongoing drugs. They're pretty predictable. We know they're going to be in the plan. We want to make sure that we're getting the absolute best pricing on those members because it's not like you have one person buying one drug that's really expensive. You have hundreds of people buying these drugs. And so we want to make sure that we're getting the best pricing for those. Next couple slides are on actual GLP-1 utilization. So this is for the indication of type 2 diabetes. So this would be people who have, and it says that they are a type 2 diabetic and they're using a GLP-1 for this. You guys are not way far off. You're actually pretty similar to Benchmark as far as that goes. The right hand side shows you a little bit of data there. This specific portion is 3% of total scripts showing 12% of total spend. With a diagnosis of diabetes, well, you have people on your plan on the next page that have using it for more than just that, right? More than just diabetes. This is for people who are using it for anything besides diabetes. And you can see the growth in that as far as the PEPM on GLP-1 is paid. So a fairly significant amount of your population utilizing these drugs. Obviously, there are many benefits to that. There's a major cost to it. Clearly a major cost to it. Next slide. This is where we had some conversations on the back side of this is looking at this as an expense or an investment. Well, there's a lot of good things that are coming out of these, right? First off, people are gonna lose a lot of weight. There's a lot of other indications for what it will be used for going forward. It's a changing landscape, but there are many indications that it's gonna be used for obviously Alzheimer's and things like that going down the road. also the pricing is dropping right so the competitive nature of this we're already seeing what it came out as a 1200 shot we're seeing it competitively now for 400 maybe 200 depending on where you're getting it from and so this is of all the places of all the subjects within rx this is the one that's changing the most the fastest again this didn't exist three and a half years ago really on health plans and now it's the number one topic everywhere we go so What we're trying to figure out with you guys is set the stage that we have a high number of your employees who use these and like these. How can we squeeze the most juice out of it and make sure we're getting them for the most cost effective as possible is really what we're saying there. Anything to add to that, Amanda, Beth?

I will say we've tried to look at, we just don't have enough data yet on seeing the benefits and other comorbidities that we had seen. Diabetes, heart disease, some of the things that we've seen when we introduced these GLP-1s said that we would cover them under weight loss in the hopes to see an effort in lowering some of the other things that we were seeing that were running high on our plan. We just don't have enough data yet. We need a couple more years of data to see really how that would shake out. But I will say we have seen benefits and we have nothing but positive feedback from employees. who have utilized this benefit that we've offered recently. So we wanna be realistic in the cost of the plan, but also still be able to offer a great benefit to our employees that is one of the highly utilized benefits that we have.

And one of the other things to mention, we go to the next page actually, let's show a little summary of this. We used to say you should lock in your pharmacy, again, you guys are now entering a phase where you're big enough to actually negotiate pharmacy contracts, previously you weren't. We used to say, hey, sign the three-year contract, lock it in as low as rates possible. Our pharmacy team now says, I wouldn't sign a longer than one-year contract. This is just the GLP pipeline. This is just GLPs. there are a myriad of drugs with similar type timelines where things are coming on the market, things are coming off patent, it's changing so rapidly. And as I mentioned early on, when it used to be 10% of your spend, it didn't matter as much. Well, now it's 30% of spend and it's growing. And so this is one of those things where our team, given your guys' size, we really do like to look at this on an ongoing basis. I've got clients of mine that they'll have a, Their drug makeup is X one year. And three years later, it's a totally different makeup. I mean, you have people on Sky Rizzy right now. Well, they might not be on Sky Rizzy in two years. We don't know. But so we want to make sure we're somewhat nimble on how we're marketing and looking at these drugs. Because the way you guys buy them matters drastically considering you're spending $2 million on Rx today.

Are there any medications that are excluded from our plan?

Oh, yeah. Like, yes. You're saying specific to GLP-1s or in general?

General.

Oh, yeah. There's many. Do you have a specific one you're wondering about?

No, I guess I was just comparing to private insurance where... The plan might say, well, we don't cover that.

Yeah, so you guys utilize BlueRx Complete, right? So you guys buy from Wellmark their BlueRx Complete list. There are other Wellmark formulary. So it's the formulary list that you buy from Wellmark. This isn't Holmes Murphy. This isn't Beth and I saying, which drug should we? We go to Walmart, and they've got kind of a menu of items, right, of different things. We use BlueRx Complete. It's a pretty robust list, but it's not every single drug in the world's on it. We could get you a list if you have specific things. But there are ones that they're not going to allow, for sure. Not every single drug in the world's included.

That's what I was wondering, if we're trying to cover everything or

You have the most common Wellmark RX plan. Is that what you say? Yeah. It's the most common one. If you're a fully insured entity, so I use fully insured kind of as the baseline because if I'm a 100 Life group, if I'm a 100 Life manufacturer in Dallas County, Iowa somewhere, that's what I'm buying. And by and large, it's Blue RX complete. That's the most common one we would have out there.

for sure.

But again, it's not everything. It's the one that they have said, hey, this is probably the best value for your employees. There's a lot of things that are covered. There's some things that aren't. They class things out, right? So certain things cost more if you want to get this drug versus this drug, but not every single drug is on it. That's a good question.

So you were saying since we're over the 250 employees, we can go to maybe market and shop out our carves.

So you called carving out your RX. So we would be able then to, similar to how on the stop loss, you had to be over 250 for us to do your stop loss. And so that was a big deal for us. Previously, when we were, for the first time ever, being able to say, how does a stop loss look? Can we even look at outside vendors? Previously, we couldn't, and now we can. So we're already doing that. That's something we can do without your guys' approval. We can kind of look at it and bring it to you. The RX is different. It's a little more complex. But yeah, most groups are doing this. I mean, and if you're not with Wellmark, I'm going to throw Wellmark under the bus. If you're with UnitedHealthcare, we could have done this when you were 100. I mean, it's a Wellmark rule at 250. But again, we're doing this for all of our clients. One other, just this again, kind of showing you a little more data on this. Specialty drugs are what are driving everything. Obviously, GLP-1s are, they are a racehorse as well. Specialty drugs, this is why we have to be nimble on these things. As a new drug comes on, the amount of million dollar claimants that we're seeing, the amount of $100,000 a year drugs, $500,000 a year drugs, injectables that cost a million or $2 million, these things all exist. Many of us are old enough to remember lifetime limits, right? Million dollar lifetime limits. That was the standard until 2010. And then it was a $2 million lifetime limit. I got clients that have a million dollar a year. Just a person that's on the plan for another year. And a lot of it is driven by specialty drugs. And so again, this is just one more data point of really our, this would allow Holmes Murphy and our X team to make sure that we are on top of this for you guys on a proactive basis, looking at your drug spend, where things are at, and trying to get you guys the best pricing on it. Okay. We could probably go a couple of, this is, we could probably go a couple more slides here. This is just kind of showing you guys what we do. Again, it's a pretty high-touch thing. Again, you guys, we would come to you with here's our recommendation, but our team works kind of around the clock. It's a lot of lifting, but it's a robust PBM process. So the pharmacy benefit manager, we will go out and do all the hard work, all the heavy lifting, and come to you guys with a recommendation at the end of the year.

But we will need to sign a contract or an agreement that will need to be reviewed by attorneys. So there is a process that we need to start as soon as we can to get the information at this time next year to have it implemented if we make a change July 1 of 2027. We attempted to do this last fall, and we got into the process. I realize this is more in depth than what we normally look at.

This isn't just us going out and marketing your ancillary lines or your stop loss. It's a more robust situation.

So one thing that I would ask when we're done with this is to have a consensus to either move forward or not move forward on this piece so I can get those contracts, get it to the attorneys, and we can kind of start this process so we have enough time to do this to talk about it in a year from now.

I'm going to pause there. On the medical side, there are basically two things that we think are for discussion. One is the pharmacy RFP side, and the other one is the increasing of the deductibles from the co-payments. I'm going to pause there because this is the end of the medical piece. We'll move into dental and some other stuff. So any other conversations around the medical or our recommendations on that?

I just think for myself, I might need a little bit more time to review all the deductible and the autoponic, but my opinion is if we think we can get a better plan for our pharmacy, then I think we should try to go out to market. That would be my opinion on that.

Beth, we do not need decisions on this today, right?

Well, you just wanted some kind of consensus on the pharmacy part.

Correct, just the pharmacy portion so we can start that process. But the others, I understand if you want to take a couple weeks to think about it.

And one thing just from our standpoint, if you guys have questions specific for our team, happy to talk afterwards on the deductible stuff or anything like that. So let me know. All right. Moving on to dental, this will be Lot less exciting. Dental's a little more predictable, and the numbers are a little smaller. So this is your dental claims experience. Right in the middle there at the at a glance, you can see you're running a little hot. Claims versus expected at the 107. Your claims PEPM at that 76. So if you go down, that 76 is right there in that kind of third column. Two years ago, you were at 73. Last year, you dropped down to 67. This year, you're up to 76. So you're at a 71 the last three years. You're at 94% over three years on the dental claims. Nothing too scary there. We're talking about It's always a little bit jarring when you get done talking about a $6 million medical spend, and now you're talking about a $100,000 dental spend. It just doesn't quite hit the same. The next slide is your 0% increase. Blue Dental looks at this and says, hey, we're not going to raise our fixed costs. Well, they'll probably raise them next year, but they usually go every other year on that. So you pay them $13,000 to administer the plan and use their network. They say hey listen we expected last year $221,000 of claims. We would expect you to budget that same amount this year. The one thing that we would just point out is on the bottom there your current suggested rates from Blue Dental are 35 and 96. Again they're holding on that saying increase it. You guys accrue at 13 and 41. That's kind of a behind the scenes thing. You obviously kind of lump in your medical and your dental. Just to point that out that... As we're having this conversation, this is kind of a deck chair off the Queen Mary. It's not a big deal comparatively to your giant medical spend. But you do accrue that as kind of a bucket, I would say. And so just something to think about. Like, again, you're way off on that, but it's built in with the medical. So just something to think about. Again, you're not, well, Mark's not saying, hey, the dental plan's on fire. You're totally fine. It's more of an internal thing on how you're accruing for it. All right, additional renewals. All right, a couple years ago, we got together with CuraLink for our employee assistance program. So we proactively, and this is not unique to Dallas County, this is a section of our business that's probably changed as much as anything since COVID times. People used to use EAPs as a reflexive thing. Hey, we want to have it for defense. And now it's much more offensive. A lot of people promoting EAPs and spending money for EAPs and trying to get better EAPs to help their employees. You guys buy the CuraLink platform. You have three free face-to-face visits per year. And today you pay $7,779 for that. They are asking for an increase up to the $8,700. Again, it's $924. It's not the end of the world by any means. Increases, but if you look at the next, oh, we don't have, oh, I thought we had it on there. Oh, we do have it on there. Okay, good, I flipped too fast. You guys are utilizing it. Your employees are utilizing it. You have a decent amount. By the way, utilization in the EAP world, anything above like 5%, it's pretty good, and you guys have actually had, you know, 11% of your programs have been utilized. You've had a bunch of face-to-face visits. So you are getting utilization out of it. Beth has said the team seems to think this is working well.

I've had a lot of positive feedback, and for reference, usage has tripled since we went to this plan.

It was darn near. It was close. It was very low.

We had two to three maybe a year utilize the EIP. Now we're up to nine. And I do have positive feedback from employees that have utilized this service.

Yeah. So what caused the change?

The change in providers?

No, the change in usage.

I think they're easier. They have a lot more like mobile features, online. We have a lot of people who utilize them through technology. So they don't have to pick up the phone and call. And I think that's been a big change. They also have targeted services for emergency personnel, EMS, sheriff, those types of things. I think those have been utilized. Specifically, they were great after the Perry shooting and some of those high profile incidences that we've had and employees have reached out. So I think that's been the major change. They offer a lot more technology friendly services than our previous provider did. And I know there's an increase. I knew this was going to increase during budgeting, so I have put that into the budget for the next fiscal year.

Next is the flexible spending account. This is a couple things to note here. First off is the plan maximums as they do every year go up. Next year's limits are the, this year's limits are 3,400. The dependent care, you guys are currently still at that 5,000. That law changed for the first time ever in the budget bill from Congress last year. Went from 5,000 up to 7,500 on the dependent care side. So we would recommend to move to both of those maximums. The other piece of this is flexible spending accounts, not the most grandiose conversation topic to have, but your current administrator is dropping the ball, and they're not just dropping the ball on you guys, they're dropping the ball on basically everyone, and so we have gone out to RFP. On the next slide, we went out and looked at a few different places. You guys are today with iSolved. It's kind of Fred, this is the nerd stuff of being an insurance broker. This is the kind of stuff that should just happen. It should just happen. And of all the things that you should not have headaches on, this is one of them. And we're getting headaches today on ISOLV. So our recommendation, we've done the work, we've had the conversations, we've done the RFP, would be to move to health equity. The pricing you can see there is actually less. and the service will be better. And that is what the team would like to move to. I don't know how much detail you guys want me to go into in this other than we would really like it if you guys would approve a move to help equity on this.

To give you some ideas of some of the issues that we've had with iSolved, billing has not been correct in over a year. So Leslie is chasing down accurate billing almost monthly. Claims administration, they say two days. It is not two days. It can be weeks to get claims. Um, and just overall the administration of the plan has not been great. Um, and so that's why I asked Holmes Murphy to go out to market, to look at a vendor that could do this more efficiently for us. Um, cause every single month we're running into administration issues, not only on our side, but complaints from employees as well.

Yeah. And again, this is not unique to you guys. This is a, they've been bought out like five times and just level of service has gone down. And so we were moving a lot of groups from I solve to health equity or one of the other.

And in reviewing the three options that we had, health equity is a preferred partner of Wellmark. I liked their pricing and the services that they could provide. Um, I've talked to Leslie about it. She works with them intimately. on a monthly or a daily basis. And she has also recommended that health equity looks like the best out of the three.

And that also goes into the COBRA as well. COBRA is more of an ancillary thing. The fire is on the FSA, but if we're going to make the move, we're going to move COBRA as well. And so health equity would take over the COBRA as well. Any questions on that recommendation? It would make Leslie's life really better. That's what you, that's mostly what you want is her to be happy.

Yeah. And we've had complaints about customer service.

Okay. Again, one of those things that should just not exist. Like, like of all the things to have complaints about, this is just one that should be, it should just happen. So, okay. The next renewals, you guys have your vision is with a visa. That is in a rate guarantee until next year. Your basic life, voluntary life, short-term disability, and long-term disability are all with Reliance Standard. Those are all working well, and they are all in rate guarantee until next year as well. And then your ID theft through Aura have a handful of people that have taken that up, and those are on rate guarantee for a few years as well, so a recommendation. given that the customer service is working on each of these and there's no complaints. That's kind of our bellwether of what do we do on these. They're all working well. There's no price increase. So we would recommend staying the same on each of those lines as well.

There is one plan design change that I put in the information that I sent to you. And this is as it relates to our voluntary life and voluntary accidental death and dismemberment. Historically, those have been separate. So new employees or current employees have to enroll in voluntary life and voluntary or voluntary accidental death and dismemberment. They were two separate. Every single plan that I have ever administered, those have been coupled together. They're coupled together in our basic life insurance. So when we offer $50,000 in basic life and $50,000 in accidental death and dismemberment at no cost to employees. What we would like to do July 1st, and this is no cost to the county to make this shift. It would be a cost increase to employees if they choose to do this. But moving forward, we would like to couple those together. So when employees enroll in voluntary life, they're automatically enrolled in accidental death and dismemberment. It would change the pricing for employees to reflect that, but it is a minimal increase.

They would notice. They would not notice it. They would just get it. It would be pennies.

Right. And so we would like to make that change July 1 moving forward.

The rest of it is all appendix and plan designs and stuff. So that's all I have as far as the preparation of the actual renewals themselves. Any questions for me? Any questions on those renewals? And again, we are happy to offline, if you have specific questions for us, happy to jump on a phone call or meet with you guys.

Thank you. And so the only other thing we need, there's no action on this today. We're going to think about it, except you wanted direction to go with the prescriptions. Correct. I told you my thoughts, so.

I think we should explore and see if we can do better.

I agree.

Thank you. I'm out next week. I'm gonna put this back on the agenda for the 28th, if that's okay.

Okay, thank you. Thanks, Ashley. I'm sorry, board members, did you have any questions? Any other questions for now?

Okay, appreciate that.

OK, we do have a public hearing at 10 o'clock, but we'll move on to item 10, which is the Adel Lions Club use of the county parking lot. And did you want to say anything, John? Please go to the podium. Please go to the podium. Just go up to the microphone. That's OK, John.

Hi, I'm with the Adel Lions Club. Thank you for considering this again this year. We used your parking lot, the northwest corner, the lot across the street east of the courthouse, and we just used a little section up there enough for a pull-in mobile unit and a little pop-up shelter. And what we do is we provide free, that's free, A1C screenings to anybody who wants it. And last year we were a little disappointed in the turnout. It was the first time we tried it. So we're gonna try to figure out ways to promote it better this year because we've got enough money in our budget to pay a lot more than what we did last year. So we'd appreciate being able to use the parking lot. We'll clean it up after we leave and get out of the way.

And that date was June 6th?

Yes. That's Saturday, yes.

In conjunction with the car show?

Yeah. In fact, we got a couple of referrals from the car show last year. So they helped us out. We're out of their way.

And you would use it between 8 a.m. and noon?

About 8 a.m. to about noon-ish.

Okay. Questions for John?

I move. I move to approve the Adel Lions Club use of the East County parking lot as requested.

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Item 11 is the Resolution 2026-0045, City of Adel 8020, Voluntary Annexation.

I'll plug in real quick, Melinda.

In about five minutes, and then we'll go to that public hearing.

There we go. All right. The city of Adela has a voluntary annexation going before the state. Typically, counties are asked to comment, offer a resolution of no objection or objection. It's not necessarily a level of support or not support, but it's just a matter of you reviewed the request, you've had any questions answered, asked and answered. So what the city of Adela is asking for or seeking, just over a 1,200-acre annexation with approximately 19% of that land being non-consenting property owners, meaning they're owners that don't necessarily want to be part of the annexation request. The state still considers this a voluntary request because it's under the 20% threshold, so this is a voluntary annexation per state code. Looking at the county land, it's all zoned a mix of A1 and A2 throughout the entire 1200 acres. We've land use designated this property as agricultural. It is within the two mile kind of review of Adele. So it is an area targeted for municipal growth south of Adele. So the annexation does fall along the center line of all adjacent road right-of-way. That is a requirement of state code and it is something that the secondary roads has reviewed as well. So it really meets that single requirement of the county to ensure that it is being done correctly. The resolution that was in the Agenda packet made a few slight tweaks to it to reflect the proper language and comments received. Obviously, what struck out is what was in the one published. The changes are shown there, again, kind of in red, kind of hard to see. I apologize. But it really, in the end, states no objection to the annexation because it does essentially meet, does not impact the service delivery from the county. It does go to the center line of road. It does align with our comprehensive plan.

Questions? I went over it with him.

Yeah. You know, ADEL has not held a public hearing on this annexation yet. Correct. So, I think it may be a little premature for us to take action on this until they hold their public hearing, which is scheduled for this evening.

Oh, it is? Okay. Yes.

Yep.

All right. So, should we wait? We'll just wait for next week?

Next week.

Yep.

Okay.

I'll place it back on the agenda for next week.

OK, the board will be in recess for the two minutes before the 10 o'clock public hearing.

Good to see you, John.

OK, it's 10 o'clock. We'll reconvene the Board of Supervisors meeting and bring up discussion action resolution 2026-0046, public hearing final plat of River Oaks Estates. So Samuel, you'll present, and then we'll open the public hearing.

Sure. This is a petition to approve the final plat of River Oaks Estates. This is west of N Avenue 169 and just a little south of Highway 44. Lot is currently about 25 acres, just a tad under, and the proposal is to split it into two lots with an outlot serving as a private road to serve those two lots. It is zoned A2, A1 and A2. A2 is the Agricultural Floodplain Conservation District. Moving on here, this shows the proposed plat, lot one to the north, lot two on the south side, with both having access to a cul-de-sac for a private road there. This was reviewed by Conservation because there was A2 on it, and they didn't express any concerns necessarily. They just identified there are some significant trees and other environmental sites there and just encourage best practices for the development of the site, and all the development should be high above this. This is along the bluffs along the river, so they'll be on the high side developing. This was reviewed by the Planning and Zoning Commission on 317, and they recommended approval.

Okay. Okay, thank you.

Staff concurs.

Staff concurs. Board, we're going to open the public hearing. This is the time and place for the public hearing as advertised in this matter. Have you received any written protests or comments?

We have not.

OK. And if there's anyone who's wished to speak on this matter, please go to the podium and give your name and address for the record. Board members, any other questions? Anyone from the public like to speak on this topic?

I'm Jim Greif.

Could you go to the podium, sir?

I'm Jim Greif, and just north of this plat that he's proposing, I guess out of curiosity, we were just trying to find out what was going on on it. I mean, we have no objections to it or anything. And it's just another neighbor here, Dennis Bodger. But our lots both adjoin that property. And I dealt with Dan Wilhelm some on it. I don't know if he's what has transpired since then. But I guess just out of curiosity, trying to find out what was going on. Thank you.

Samuel, do you have any comment on that?

Yeah, I mean, what's shown on the screen there is basically what's going on. It's taking the 25 acres and dividing it into two lots that could both be built on.

Samuel, what would happen to this plan if this board did put a conservation easement on this property?

I don't know if that would be possible, because there's no requirement under the subdivision ordinance. Places where we've done the conservation easements has been a condition of a rezone. And so to go in and ask for that here, you could request it. but I don't know that the county could force it.

Was that a legal opinion we need?

I'd have to look at it.

And then what was Conservation's comment on this?

They just encourage best practices and development in those sensitive areas.

How close are we to the river?

The river actually runs through the lots.

Can you show me up there?

The river runs. Yes, there's currently an easement to access so it's the current Parcel as well as the parcel to the south so that Lane will actually be serving three parcels Two of which are part of the subdivision

Is there any other public comments? Okay.

And the neighbors are supportive of this?

I mean, there's so much timber ground in between us that, I mean, they're adjoining property, so. And I did allow them through the neighbor's property access to get down in there to create a trail down through there. So as far as I'm concerned, it's probably not going to affect any of us.

Thank you. I'd move to close the public hearing. Second.

Any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion carries.

I move to adopt Resolution 2026-0046. Second.

Any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion carries. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, we quickly can move on here. Item 14, I don't see the recorder here, so we'll wait on that. And Item 15, was actually it's jumped down to the board appointments. Item 16, Beaver Township Trustees. So which is one of these three people going to be the clerk?

No, Erin Spellman is the clerk. Clerk, okay. She emailed these three names, apparently in March, but it was a zip file, so our email server rejected it, and when she followed up, we found out. She had a resignation of her current three trustees, and these folks stepped forward back in March, but we weren't aware because of technology.

I move approval of resolution 2026-0047. Second.

Any other, any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye, motion carries. We've still got five minutes. Let's go to the county mileage reimbursement rate, which is item 15. I had some staff members ask me about this as different departments, if you're run by a board, are using the federal rate, whereas I think the actually attorney was starting to use the federal rate.

Correct.

So there was confusion and creating extra work in operations and accounting. So someone just asked me to bring this forward to see if the board would consider just always staying with the federal rate and reviewing it every year. So that's food for thought on this. And the federal rate currently is 0.725. This resolution keeps it as of July. We haven't reviewed it since 2022. And the ask was, could we just every year in January as part of our, you know, that January 1st meeting, review the new federal rate or keep it evergreen with the federal rate, write the resolution in such a way. So that's our question today to discuss.

So when would this become effective?

Well, we could do it now or we could review it every January. I would say if we change it, we would change it now And then we would, I think reviewing it every January is not a bad idea.

My question to that is, it may not impact things much, but budgetarily, we've already set out a budget based on the smaller numbers.

Depending if the department had budgeted at, did you budget your, I'm looking at you, sorry, I'm putting you on the spot. You're using the federal rate, so did you, when you did your budgeting, did you use the federal rate?

We were within, well, we,

I think most departments do that.

Well, they'd have to find out. Is there no budget?

As part of my policy, my staff has to get my pre-approval. So that's how I'm able to manage and make sure that it fits within. They can't just go and drive somewhere and then come back and say, oh, I want to be reimbursed.

And you know what? I said January. It really should be. July with our fiscal during the budget process. So I mean, we don't have to make a decision today, but we need to bring it back up what we think we want to do. And if we want to not do anything till next year, but I mean, we need to keep it because we have not reviewed it in four years.

Is there a difference in the state rate and the federal rate? Yes.

Federal rate is 72 and a half because gas costs more in California, New York.

Well, gas costs more everywhere now. I don't know what the state rate is, but the federal is 72.

I was trying to recollect where we came up with current.

It was the federal rate at the time that we did this, I think. It wasn't? In 2022? It was. That's what I thought, too. Because we were at 39. Remember, we were at 39 cents forever.

Yeah.

So kind of.

I think we've. As far as I can remember, we've always followed the federal rate. Whether we've been changing with the federal rate when the federal rate changes or not, I don't know. I don't think so.

Well, obviously not.

Yeah. But the rate that we've used has been the federal rate.

And so we're not consistent throughout the county?

No. Well, elected officials, like the county attorney's office, they can set their own.

And I think the boards can set their own. Yes. So my recommendation is that we go to the Fed and we just review the Fed every year and stay with the Fed.

It would be easier for the accounting department, because if they get claims from say the county attorney's office, it's at 72 and a half cents reimbursement. And if it is me as an example, although I don't do this, but it would be 62 and a half cents.

I'm not aware of a state reimbursement rate for mileage.

I don't think there is. I'm not aware of it.

Federal, I mean, the state may by itself decide for reimbursement. There's no Iowa reimbursement rate because you don't, I don't believe you write that off on your Iowa taxes. You only are able to write it off on your federal taxes.

Hold that thought. It's 1015. We need to go into public hearing. So we will pick up item 13, public hearing, continue first reading of the proposed changes to chapter 44 zoning ordinance regarding accessory dwelling units. So there was just some discussion last week about some different options.

Sure. So I won't rehash everything there, but we'll go through the slides here real quick. So we had two public comments that were submitted. Some spoken in person last week, and one had submitted a letter. Those are the summary of those comments that they had submitted. Essentially, the first one, they just wanted to have the limits into the code so they could apply it for a variance to go larger. Duke Ellersler, he just wanted an exception for larger lots. 10 acres or more, he'd like to see the minimum at 1,500 square foot for an ADU or 50% of the primary residents. So those are the two public comments. And then last week, we kind of got into, well, what does that mean? What are our options? So I'll kind of go through those real quick again. And there's a chart in the staff report as well that kind of, yes, Supervisor Helm has it, summarizes everything with staff comments. As I proposed, I was just linking it directly to the state code. it becomes non-appealable. State code is what it's allowed. There's no variance relief or anything like that. I typically start off most strict because it's easier to come down from that rather than trying to open it up and then having to regulate later. So that's where I started at. But based on some of the public comments, we have some options available. I'll run through them real quick, and I'll kind of zero on the two that I think are most reasonable. Number one, just keeping the small lots restricted, not larger than 1,000 square feet or 50% of the primary dwelling, but create the exception for larger lots at 1,500 square feet or 50% of the dwelling. Just codify the requirements of the state code into our own code. That would allow everybody to appeal for a variance. if they want to go larger than that. Option three just codifies both of them separately. So smaller lots have their path for a variance. Larger lots have their a little bit larger units. And they also have an appeal for a variance. And then finally, option four is create the standard what state allows, but allow for a conditional use option if they want to go larger than those limits provided by state code that we have codified. What do I like in the end? I think option three or four are probably the two best. Again, option three gives you the variance route, but I really do not understand what the practical difficulty would be for a variance. The board, sorry, the zoning board, they had to find that old traditional hardship. What's so unique about your situation that you need to deviate from the code? And it can't be self-created. You can't self-create your problem that you need relief from. So just because you want a larger home or a larger ADU, You self-created that problem. That's not a problem with the land or the problem with the setbacks that are creating that. It's you wanting a larger unit. So really, my recommendation to the board should not be approving variances just because somebody wants a larger unit because it just does not meet the definition or it does not meet the requirements of review. The option four gives the conditional use. So we set the minimums at 1,000 feet or 50% of the primary dwelling. They go to a conditional use. That opens up a public hearing process. So it gets reviewed on a case-by-case basis with recommendation from the Planning and Zoning Commission and then approval by the Board of Adjustment. So they can look at each situation. It opens up for public hearing process. So neighbors can show up and say, hey, that house where they want to put it is right in the waterway. I'm concerned it will back up to my property or whatever other problems there might be, old tile lines, things that we don't know but neighbors might know. So it gives the public a chance to comment on on somebody wanting to go larger. Those are the four general options I've come up with. I believe four is the best, but three is an option. But I don't understand how the Board of Adjustment could approve a variance by the way the state code reads. The rest of the ordinance is pretty straightforward, I think. It sets minimum design standards regarding primary, make sure the septic works or can support the additional one. You don't get the second driveway. unless it's appealed through or unless it goes through the secondary roads. And Alan and his team can look at those and review those on a case-by-case basis. This was taken to the Planned Zoning Commission. They did recommend approval of the proposed without any relief for variance or option. But again, based on public comment, some folks are looking for some level of relief or appeal process rather than just a straight hard number. Questions?

SO I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE I UNDERSTAND THIS. I LIKE OPTION 4 BECAUSE I WANT THE PUBLIC TO HAVE A WAY TO BE ABLE TO SAY MY CASE IS UNIQUE BECAUSE OF X, BUT I ALSO WANT THE ROADS AND SEPTIC AND ALL OF THOSE THINGS TO BE ABLE TO LIKE THE CHECK MARK TO MAKE SURE WE'RE NOT DOING SOMETHING THAT'S GOING TO CAUSE A PROBLEM DOWN THE ROAD. AND THEN BECAUSE THAT'S A CONDITION, THAT WOULD BE THE CONDITIONAL USE PROCESS.

CORRECT. I should point out, too, this option, it just has 1,000 square feet of 50%. If you still wanted to allow the other exception for larger lots, that could be another item added to this condition. I don't have it spelled out here on the screen, but that would just be another, if you wanted to give the big lots a little bit more building.

So where you could not exceed 1,500 if you lived on 10 acres?

Correct. You could carve the exception into the conditional use option as well. And I'll tell you, these limits in my research, these size limits, this is really geared toward the cities. 1,000 square feet is essentially a three-stall garage. Most residential lots in the cities can support a three-stall garage for the most part. So we think that's where that 1,000 square feet came from. It fits most municipal lots. So when you get out in the county, you're talking three acres, 10-acre lots. It kind of... It may not fit the best, and that's why we think the exception, maybe allow 1,500 square foot for larger 10-acre lots, kind of helps bridge that gap that I don't think the state looked at when they adopted the legislation for the, and applied it to the counties as well.

Well, a caveat to that is 50% of the primary resident square footage, whichever is greater.

Whatever is greater, correct.

Less.

Yep.

And on the acreage, you could very well exceed that 1,000 square foot.

Yeah.

Some of these big farmhouses out there, they're pretty good-sized farmhouses, so you can get away with a pretty good ADU coming into it. And then there's a flip side, though, too, is you may have a The original farmhouse may be 1,000 square foot. You can come in and build a new house that's, say, 2,000 square foot. And the old farmhouse then becomes the accessory dwelling. I think we've seen that example a few times, or we've had that inquiry as well. So the old principal structure then becomes the ADU. It just matters which one's the bigger one.

And Brad, did you have any comment?

I do not.

I need to answer.

Okay, you didn't want to add any of these options into this?

I think four. Oh, okay, okay.

And would you want to add that 1,500 square foot for the lots with greater than 10 acres? Or just leave it as it is, and it can be a conditional use process?

I think leave it as it is.

I will say, as we get data, we get requests in. We'll track the requests and see what we're getting. And if we're getting mostly 10-acre lots, we'll bring that back to you as kind of a little recap a year or two later. And if we have to make amendments, we absolutely can, of course, if we feel like it's not quite working the way we want to have it work.

Well, I would be supportive myself of moving to the 1,500 square foot.

Adding that into, do you like option four or which option?

Option four, fine.

But adding that in.

Not adding 1,500 square feet.

So it'd be the, okay. I don't really care. I just liked that process, the conditional use process. So it's hitting all the chucks as we go through it. Okay, I'm going to open this up to public hearing. Does anyone from the public have any comments on this? Did you get any other comments besides the two you've already referred to?

Nope, just the two you saw.

Have we received anything in our office?

No. Thank you.

So again, public comment, anyone? So as my understanding, help me through procedurally. Okay. So on this, zoning ordinance, we would need to close the public hearing because we just, and then we'd need to amend the ordinance and then do the first reading, or how does that work?

Okay. Close the public hearing. We'd then do a motion to amend the ordinance as presented to include the option four with the additional 1,500 square foot option for the larger lots. You would then vote discussion and then vote on that amendment. And then you'd have a motion to approve the ordinance, essentially as amended for the initial reading. And then you have the option to waive your second and third, if you so choose.

Any other comments from the board? Any other comments from the public? Action.

Move to close the public hearing. Second.

Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye, motion carries.

Okay, so then the action would be a motion to approve the first reading.

No, you'd want a motion to amend ordinance uh to include basically option four of the conditionally used process and then the exception for the 1500 square foot for lots over 10 10 acres so we need a motion to amend that language and then the other motion would come in later and then after that after we vote on this amendment then we'd have the motion to approve the ordinance all right in its complete state

And that would be the first reading?

That would be the first reading. And then if you so choose, you can have a motion to waive the second and third.

I move to amend ordinance chapter 45 zoning ordinance regarding accessory dwelling units to include option four and to include 1,500 square foot Primary residence, no, 1,500 square foot accessory dwelling. For lots over 10 acres. Lots over 10 acres. For lots over 10 acres. Second.

Any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion carries. We can do the first reading now.

Yes, now you need the motion which will approve the ordinance in the first reading, yes.

So should there be a second reading?

Oh, yes, I think so, because we changed it. Then we can waive the third reading.

That would be my recommendation.

On motion to approve the first reading of the proposed changes to Chapter 45 zoning ordinance regarding the accessory dwelling units and set time and date for a second reading.

You don't need to set the time and date. The public hearing is closed, so this will just be a, unless you want to, but you don't necessarily need to do a public hearing for a subsequent meeting. We just schedule it. Yeah, you just do it. It'd be an action item on the second reading. at next week's agenda, or the subsequent agenda, whatever agenda you want it on.

All right. So the motion is to approve the first reading of the proposed changes to Chapter 45 zoning ordinance regarding accessory dwelling units.

Second. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion carries. Good job on the heavy lifting.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you, Bri. So, Bri Golightly is leaving the meeting. So, let's go back to the county mileage rate. And then, Melinda, can you email the recorder to see if she could come up?

Oh, she's here. Where?

Oh, she's outside. Okay. Sorry, Renee, I didn't see you. So do we have, should we, do you need more time to think about county mileage reimbursement rate? Do we need to look at the budget and see that there would be a concern if we upped it to the, it's 10 cents more a mile.

I don't know that there's, I mean, yeah, it's a concern, it would be a concern, but you could ask the department heads to... Review their budgets. Review their budgets.

If they need to make any additional amendments.

And I would think that they would operate like what the county attorney discussed, how he operates his, and that they have to approve it to begin with. Well, it could be a concern. I'm not too worried that they will go over their budgets because if the department heads are doing their jobs, they would manage that.

Okay. We can wait.

Okay, we can bring that back. Okay. And then I would say we make a plan for either reviewing it every year during budget cycle or we just continue to flow with the Fed, right? Because it sounds like quite a few people are already on that. OK, GREAT. ITEM 14, RECORDERS OUT OF STATE REQUEST.

GOOD MORNING. Um, in may we have a fiddler conference and it is just over the river in rock Island, Illinois, and two of us would like to attend that. I think those meetings are very beneficial to our office. Um, as you know, I, we will not be attending the recorders association meetings for the time being. So this would take the place of that. And I'm not asking for additional dollars or anything. It's just more of a courtesy because in our policy, it says, ask for out of state travel.

And you have money in your budget for the travel? Yeah. Because you had already planned on trying to go to this anyway.

Move to approve the recorders out-of-state travel as requested.

Second. Any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Thank you. Good.

I hope it's helpful. Yes.

Okay, going through, so mileage rate, we'll bring that back for further discussion. And then we did the board appointment. Other business, the only other business I have is reminder Thursday evening, we have the DD41 meeting, and we're working on the agenda now, getting it ready to go.

Did you have anything else?

I do not.

I just have one reminder, I'm out of the office next week at my conference, but we'll be available by email if you need anything. Melinda has the resolution for the Monday night meeting for the elected official salary increase. Oh, OK. Tuesday night, excuse me. The 21st. The 21st, yes.

Anything else to become before the board?

Move to adjourn.

Second. Any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion carries. We are adjourned 10-34.