City Council - Special Meeting

It is Tuesday, June 28, 2026. I mean, July 28, 2026. I now call the city council special meeting to order. The time is 6 PM.

It's on.

It's on. OK. I ask that you please silence your cell phones and council members. Rob Foster will give the invocation, and then we'll conduct the Pledge of Allegiance.

I don't think it's working. Y'all please bow your head with me. Heavenly Father, we just want to thank you again for another day of life, for your protection and your watch care over us. We thank you for the opportunity that we have to serve the citizens of this city. And we just pray that you would give us wisdom and understanding. And may everything that we're doing say tonight be to your honor and glory is what we ask for in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Amen.

Okay, I hope this is working. It doesn't seem like it's working.

Mayor announcements, thank you for attending this evening. Just a reminder that the final budget workshop will be this Thursday, July the 30th at 6 p.m. If you're unable to attend, you can always watch the stream or recording on YouTube. The Keene PD is still collecting school supplies donations for our school kids. Donations are accepted until July the 31st. The next time you're at the store, please grab a list for any grade level and consider purchasing a few items. And that's a really great thing to do. If anybody is interested in running for a seat on council, the application filing period is now open. The deadline is Monday, August 17th at 5 p.m. Please see the city secretary for the forms or if you have questions about running for office. All forms are also available for you online. The city web's hot. Okay. Public comments. Is there anyone? I have no cards. Okay. If there's no public comments, then we'll be reviewing and discussing and consider a proposal from the Medical Access and Services Advantage, MASA, on the possibility of offering elective membership to residents of Keene that cover out-of-pocket costs for emergency ground and air ambulances. Mr. Seitz, would you?

I'm going to, is this, hello? Hello?

They're not working.

Testing, testing. It's online. All right. Well, hello, everyone. Sandra is going to. to kind of introduce all this. This is the stuff that she's been working on.

Thank you, Jonathan. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Last year, as part of our employee benefits review, we transitioned from CareFlight to MASSA. MASSA is a medical access and service advantage. The additional cost was minimal for the valuable services that are provided. MASSA offers emergency medical transportation and related services with coverages that extend through most of the nation. During our recent discussions, with our employee benefits. I asked whether this type of coverage could also be made available to our residents. To help answer that question and explain the program in more detail, excuse me, I invited Rodney Dryden with the Senior Vice President of Hub International to join us this evening. He is here to review Masses services and present a proposal for your consideration.

Rodney? Thank you.

Mayor, council, thank you for having me here tonight. So, as Sandra pointed out, the MASSA program has been available in the employee benefit world for over 50 years. In 2025, one of our municipal clients came to us that was a subscriber to the CareFlight program. They discovered that the CareFlight program did not service their city. So they came to us and asked us if we could build one. And so we started going to our markets. And we went to Mass, and it took us about eight or nine months, but we built this program. It's the only one like it in the United States. It's available to residents as an opt-out program through your utility or your water billing. What the program does is it provides, and I believe we had, if you want, there's a full presentation,

Ah.

So we'll go ahead and start at the top. Massa has been in business since 1974, approximately two million members in their program. What makes Massa unique and what the challenge is, medical transport is one of the most complicated services that is provided. People have heard of the no surprises act and things like that. The no surprises act covers air transport, not ground transport. So we are seeing higher and higher declination rates by the insurance companies not paying the bill. In other words, and people being stuck with large bills. And as a result of that, people are not taking EMS transports with the frequency that they should, which is causing worse medical outcomes because people are not getting care that they need sooner. So you can see emergency medical transports across the country. There are approximately 23,000 ground transport providers in the US. Every second, an ambulance is dispatched somewhere in the United States. every minute an air ambulance is dispatched. And about 98% of all transports are ground. So I don't know if you've ever known anyone that's taken an air transport, but they're extraordinarily expensive. The No Surprises Act does provide some relief for that. But what MASA does is it supplements that. We started to talk about this a bit, the fear of the bill impacting outcomes. One in four Americans have opted out of taking an ambulance during a medical emergency because of their fear of cost. So 32% increase. We're seeing that the charges for ground transport have increased 32% in the last two years. We expect that trend to continue. And what MASA does is it helps soften that impact to someone who takes a medical transport. What we have learned with this program is for cities that operate their own EMS service, it generates additional revenue into the EMS. How does that happen? So what happens today when you have an EMS, you have a billing company that bills for the charge. An insurance company pays some amount of the charge. If you have a billing company that handles your billing for you, they take a percentage of that revenue that is collected. If you have a $3,500 ambulance charge, let's just pick an insurance company that pays $1,500 of that. Massa would pay another $1,000 on top of that, reducing the out-of-pocket expense to the citizen and increasing rent to the EMS. We did a study on a small city that had billed about $580,000 worth of charges. Their collection rate was about 21%. We ran the statistics on it, and had they had had MASA for those same calls, they would have increased the revenue into their city by about $200,000, based on the actual ambulance charges that took place, the transports, and the added value of the MASA program.

How big a city was that?

Population about 4,500. They had, I believe it was 192 EMS transports, four of them the insurance company paid all of the cost it was less than five hundred dollars all the remaining had a balance virtually all of those received the full one thousand dollar benefit from massa some were just under that just because of the amount that was left over okay

So can you balance bill for an ambulance transfer?

Ground ambulance can balance bill, correct.

Okay.

And what we're seeing in that is the increase in denials is up about 200%. And in the state of Texas, there's a state requirement that if you're an EMS agency, you can't quote unquote write that off. You may have an enterprise account or something that can cover that, but by law we're supposed to pursue those dollars. So with MASA, we get an increase in predictable revenue based on transport. They pay eligible claims. It covers people that have private insurance. If they're on Medicare, Medicaid beneficiaries are not eligible for the program because of federal laws. Uninsured are also covered. So if you had a resident in Keene that did not have insurance, did not qualify for Medicaid, but were enrolled in the MASA program, it would pay 20% of the billed charges. Those are revenue dollars that most EMS never see. The other part of the program, and this is kind of the overall benefits. So there's four pillars really to the benefit program. The ground ambulance that we talked about, it pays $1,000 per transport. One of the other cities that has implemented it said, well, is there a limit? And the answer is no. If an ambulance comes to you and transports you for medical necessity three times this month, it will pay up to $1,000 each time. The benefit for the flat fee amount that you all have in your packet, it's $7.75 per residential customer per month. That covers everyone in the household. So it could be a traditional family, husband, wife, five kids, everyone's covered. Your parents live with you, same address, they can prove residency, they're covered. If your grown children live with you and they can prove residency, they're covered. That one fee covers the entire household. So it's a really It's a really, really sound program. And what we see in a lot of areas, people go to these freestanding emergency rooms because they're having a problem. They give them an IV and they call an ambulance and they take them from that hospital to a full service, maybe a level four trauma center. It will pay for that transport. If you're at Baylor and Fort Worth and you need to go to UT Southwestern and Dallas for step-up care, it will pay $1,000 for that transport. So it's a very sound program. We built this program out of necessity from one of our clients. For me, I've been doing this type of work for almost 30 years. It's one of the few things that I've actually seen that's truly assisting in solving a problem, and that's EMS budget shortfalls. Those are real problems. And it's a huge benefit for residents. So we talked about the ground. We talked about air. That is what it is. If you get a $40,000 air ambulance charge and your insurance company pays $20,000, Massa would pay 10 more on top of that. There is no balance billing. You're covered. That's something the No Surprises Act corrected.

Can you say that again?

Ground ambulance is a problem.

Would you mind repeating that?

Yes. If you had a $40,000 air transport and your insurance paid $20,000, but you got a bill for $20,000, MASA paid an extra $10,000, you no longer have responsibility for that remaining balance. For EMS departments, this is huge. We got Massa to include what is called treat and no transport. Ambulance shows up at your house, put a Band-Aid on your finger, you refuse transport. It will pay that EMS $200 for that call. Virtually all cities charge something to dispatch an ambulance at someone's home. The collection rate on those non-trans, transports on average collection rates. EMS collection as a whole across Dallas-Fort Worth is about 23% of billed charges. So this is real opportunity to generate revenue for EMS. And for those cities that contract EMS from a larger city or from the county, those are funds that go directly to that organization. So how does it work? A member is in the program, and they have a transport. They submit their claim to Massa. Massa pays the billing company directly, and those dollars come back to the city or to the EMS, whichever the case may be. So the resident is not getting a check in the mailbox. It is paying it straight to the provider. That's how it works. I've done a lot of talking before I go any further. Does anyone have questions?

Is the program voluntary?

Yes. It is called a voluntary opt-out program. So what does that mean? The way that the risk underwriting was structured, everyone is enrolled in theory from the beginning. Anyone who wants to opt out simply says, I don't want it. That's it. What most of our cities that have implemented this have done is they've given a 60-day runway to educate the community, put mailers, stuffers in the water bills, social media, on the website. Massa provides all of that information, generally 60 days in advance, give people plenty of time. If you started it, just as an example, October 1st, it is billed in arrears. So what does that mean? That means the city is not fronting money for the residents. It's structured around your water billing cycle. So if you bill for water on the 25th of the month and the payments due the 15th of the following month, the actual first payment to Massa wouldn't be due until December 1st. So there's plenty of time to collect revenue without the city fronting money for the residents while water bills are being collected. There's also a fail-safe mechanism to, if you have people who do not pay their water bill on time, after 60 days, if Massa hasn't seen that Rodney has paid his water bill, his account is suspended. So the city's no longer being billed for me And until that water bill is brought up to speed, there's no more charges. That's how it protects the city from having to pay money for people who are not paying their water bills timely. For your staff, what is the lift for staff? Every month from however you bill your water, the name of the resident, their address, and their account number. That is sent in an Excel file. either via email or through a portal to Massa, they create an invoice, send it back to the city so that you have an audit trail. That data is compared every month to see overlaps, who has, who has not paid, so that the billing is accurate. I've asked the cities that have already implemented what their average time they're spending a month on Massa, and the comment has been anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. So some of your neighboring cities to the north have implemented this program that operate EMS and they're 60 days into the starting process of it. The adoption rate and the retention rate is running anywhere from 90 to 93% depending on which city. So roughly 10% of residents opt out. They're able to communicate the messaging, English, Spanish, and the request was made, is Marshallese an option? And the answer was yes. So they can create the messaging paper electronically through your social medias, however you want to do it, Massa will provide that information. So the program itself has been really successful. The steps are pretty simple. There's five of them. Approval, utility building setup. There's about a 30-minute call that asks questions like, when do your water bills go out? When are they due? What's your collection rate on average for water bills? Residents are enrolled. They receive a fulfillment kit at home. So every resident that's enrolled gets a packet at home. It describes the program. It describes how you can opt out. It describes if you want to, you can create an account on MASA's portal, and it's self-serve. I asked the question, what if I opt out today, but six months from now I want to opt in? You can do that. Or if you're opting out and you want to opt in, it's the first of the month. So if you wanted to opt out today, the opt out period would start August 1st. If you wanted to opt in, coverage wouldn't start until August 1st. Okay. Any other questions?

Is there a certain limit or a certain percentage that the city has to maintain? to keep this in or say three quarters of the city decided they didn't want to do it, but a quarter did, would we still be available for it?

We were at a city last night having the same conversation, and that very question was asked, and the answer is no. There is no minimum participation threshold. Okay.

Thank you.

Yes.

And then suppose you piggyback. Say you're transported from here to Walls in a,

ground ambulance then they decide you've got to go by air to Harris do you pay on both claims yes okay yes when we built this program it was simple we needed to solve for a problem and we are seeing more and more cities we just started this program February 1st of this year we've had seven cities adopt already we have 11 more that are preparing to adopt And those range in size population from roughly 500 residential meters to 430,000 residential meters. So we are seeing this being contemplated by cities of all sizes and for varying reasons. Number one, in our smaller cities that we represent, many of them want to provide a benefit to their residents that they can't go out and buy on their own. You can buy this massive program on your own if you want to, but it's like $600 a year. This is 91 a year. So, it's solving revenue problems for EMS and it's providing a true benefit for residents. None of us wanna take an ambulance ride, let's be honest. But also, if you do, this is gonna relieve some of the sting out of the bill.

Massa will take that initial export from your water bill and

will monitor opt out. How do people opt out? They can do it on masses portal or they can contact the city or they can contact our office. So there's options. Those opt outs are done. The next month's Excel file is sent to Massa. They reconcile that against what is currently covered, and they do the audit each month, and they send that bill back. Comments so far is accuracy has been in the 98th percentile on billing. Nothing is perfect. Everman, Northlake, Paradise just approved last night. The others I don't have liberty to disclose yet because I haven't asked their permission. So I can tell you another one is Westworth Village. Uh-huh. Correct. Anyone in your CCN that receives a water bill from Keene is eligible for the program. And it's important, thank you, for saying that this is a residential program. So businesses in the city are not eligible. This is truly a residential program.

And just to make sure we're clear, they are the ones that come up with all the marketing and get the word out?

Absolutely. So, Massa will provide all of the information for the city website. They will get the URL. Some of our cities have created their own URL just for the program. One, it's the city names forward slash Massa. They will provide all that. They'll provide all the socials. If you would like to have community meetings in a community room someplace to educate residents, Massa is happy to come and do that. What we have communicated to Massa, we don't want anyone in this program that doesn't want to be in this program. They need to take every precaution to make sure that people are being communicated and that they have every opportunity to opt out. Because the reality is you have people that pay their water bill and they don't really look at it. Six months from now, they're gonna look at it and say, what's this charge for $7.75? At that point, they can say, I don't want it. We can go back about 30 days. So people do need to pay attention to their water bill um and make sure so massa will make every effort to communicate and continue communications with your residents i got one for you um is this going to be a fee per person or is this per household great question per residential household okay just you might have mentioned that live in that house it's 775. if one person lives there it's 775.

If, say, for instance, 10% of the city decides they want it and 80% doesn't, does the price change between the amount of people that want it?

No, sir.

So it's going to be $7 if 10 people want it and $7 if 500 people want it? Correct. So it would be the same? Correct. Okay, thank you. You're welcome.

I'm not Will Winters. He couldn't be here.

So I see that your coverage is nationwide.

Yes.

So I'm just going to throw this out there. Suppose I'm rock climbing in Big Bend and I've got to be transported to Alpine. The ambulance didn't start here in Keene. It's going to start down there. It's still going to be covered?

You know, what a terrible presentation. The coverage covers you anywhere in the United States and its territories or Canada, which is something that separates it from any other program in the United States. There are a lot of regional programs that are subscription services. But if you don't take a ride in one of their assets, there is no benefit. MASA is carrier agnostic. They don't care who transports you or where they transport you. It's covered. We don't expect any change in cost for at least three years. And based on what we have seen so far, I'm a little hesitant to say this because it's public record. We're not projecting any kind of substantial increase. No, we're not seeing that. And we know it won't change for three years. But these are great questions, and I appreciate them very much. And I will tell you already, on the employee benefit side, I have had quite a few people that have used the program. On the resident side, the utility piece, which is what you're contemplating tonight, I have had a few people use it without issue. It has worked the way it is designed to work.

really excited about the program i think it's a great benefit for your residents i think it's a great benefit and a revenue source for ems and i'm glad to take any additional questions and i really appreciate your time tonight um if it's okay council and respectfully rodney um there's red lettering here to approve it tonight do we have to approve it tonight we don't have to it would be ideal but there's no requirement okay i i just If it's okay, because again, my concern is a level load to my staff that's already spread thin. And so respectfully, and I know Craig, the city manager of Everman very well. So I'd actually like to reach out to him and just do a little, I just got to do my due diligence. Not that I don't trust you. I want you to check. For the sake of my staff, I need to make sure that we are not piling more on top because we're still trying to dig out of some of these other things. Yeah.

I think that's a great plan. I'll tell you what the city of Bowie did. They approved it effective November 1st to give that 90-day period of education is how the city of Bowie did it. But yeah, and I would encourage you to contact Craig.

Just a quick follow-up. What percent declination is there nationwide?

From NASA?

No, no, no. From standard ambulance.

You said that there's... Well, the declination... Declinations are up 200% from what they were. What we're seeing is about 2 in 10 be declined.

So 20%?

And I don't know if you know how EMS service works, but... The way it works and what causes the declinations many times is the responder, the technician, the EMT, the notes they make on that transport are critically important to approval rates at an insurance company level. And it depends on the level of sophistication and communication skills that EMT has and their note-taking ability based on work volume. Because as we know, many EMS departments are short-staffed. They're on one call after another, and filling out the notes page is not always top of priority. View this as a supplemental program to any of you that have health care. And for those of you who may not, it pays 20% of the bill charges.

So we have a couple of residents that actually work here as well. So would they be double-coveraged in this? So they would opt out. They would want to opt out because they already have that, correct?

100%.

OK. Just checking.

Really good question. OK. And that's exactly right. Anyone that has it through their employer, in fact, at the bottom, on the communication pieces there are comments if you have this program through your employer if you are a medicaid beneficiary do not enroll okay so we we try to cover all of those things but yeah i'm just making sure that's a great question our our employees at the city don't feel like they're being you know yeah taken advantage of yeah and there's actually one other step behind that when it's submitted into massa they cross-check to see if somebody's already enrolled through their side. That's good. Good stuff.

That's good. Are there any other questions?

General comments? Good, bad, or ugly?

I actually, I really, I like the fact that it's something that's available to the citizens as far as just being able to provide an extra service right here in town. And I like the revenue side of it as well for not only our own ambulance service and fire and rescue for that matter. So if we show up on a call and you don't necessarily need a ride, but, you know, that $200 fee, you know, can... can go a long way if you're just putting a Band-Aid on, you know, so.

The city that we talked about a minute ago, this is public record, they billed almost $1.3 million in ambulance charges. They had collected $267,000. And we're getting the information now to see what the lift would have been with this program for their residents.

Yeah. That's a good give. Okay.

So do we need to table? So I'm going to make a motion to table this until, what, a month from now? Do you want a month?

I don't really think we need a month, but maybe the August council. That gives us almost two weeks.

That's only a week, yeah.

That's why he was saying another month.

Well, let me ask you this. Are we going to have any more extra meetings in the month of August that maybe we can put this on?

We haven't calendared any meetings. So right now, all we have is August 6th, and then of course, you're holding your third Thursday if needed, but.

I was gonna say, I think, and the 6th is gonna be fast. That's what I'm afraid of. I think I can update you on the 6th. If it's on your agenda, you'll know we're ready to talk about it, which gives us two days.

But do you all have time?

But we, yeah, we also need time to be able to talk to Yeah, maybe September.

I would say let's shoot for September. September meeting? Yeah, it gives us a month. Okay. That'll feel better. I won't feel rushed.

I'll continue to make my motion to table it until the September first week meeting.

Okay, I have a motion and a second. And all those in favor? Okay, carried.

You bet. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. Sounds good. Thank you.

Appreciate you. Okay. Now we're going to get down to the budget workshop for physical year 2027. This is information reports only. No action will be taken. need to receive information and discuss personnel and fringe benefits regarding the physical year 2026-2027 proposed budget. The topics include renewing and proposing health insurance costs.

So after reviewing our employee medical insurance options, we have two options to consider. The first option is going to remain the same, but it does come with the premium increase of 9%. The second option is going to be similar, but we'll propose the base plan to be a PPO while we still have access to the PPO max plan. However, the employee will be responsible for the difference with the PPO max plan. The second option is designed to help with the cost. but making it the PPO-based plan. I just wanted to make that the key with that. Curative has been amazing. I've had a lot of good feedback throughout the year. I did have one employee just recently stated that they received a message, but however, they were going to nominate that particular, I think it was a facility or may have been the doctor, but otherwise in that I've not received Nothing but great feedback from Curative. Rodney is here. He's going to go over some of the both options and answer any kind of questions and explain each benefit.

Rodney?

Okay, now I'll put on my employee benefit consulting hat. I had to fill in penchant for will. Okay. So, uh-oh, this is not me. We don't have any slides? You have the handouts?

So is it these handouts here?

Yes. OK. OK, great. So in front of you, you should have a handout. And if you don't mind, I'll point. On the left half of the page, these are your current plans and your current rates. As Sandra said, this is the renewal of your current plans and your current rates. The city of Keene currently contributes towards the cost of any of the three plans at 100% of the employee and 70% of the departments. At 9%, the increase in cost to the city of Keene is $88,000 annually, based on your current enrolled population. for their current plan selections.

Would you state that again, that we pay 100% for the employee and then 70% for the family members?

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

So that's page one.

So how does that work if they're on a family plan then?

What do you mean, how does it work?

Well, if I'm on a family, then am I getting the employee part free?

All of you, if you had, employee and it was just them right for their health care it would cost them zero I got that right if you had a person covering a spouse or they're covering their children or a traditional family it costs them anywhere between a hundred and five dollars per pay up to three hundred and sixty six per pay depending on which plan So your employees pay a portion of the premium if they choose to cover dependents.

And the other caveat to the way we're structured is if an employee's spouse is offered insurance through their employment, they are not eligible to be on ours just because ours is better. Does that make sense? If they don't have coverage or they're self-employed or they're a stay-at-home, then they can opt in.

When you say they, are you talking the spouse?

Correct.

So you could have, say I'm the male, could be a city employee, I would have this insurance, and then my wife would have her insurance?

Correct.

Okay.

And then just so we're clear, The children, they can choose which parent they go under?

They can.

OK.

They can. You cannot not offer coverage to children. Right. You can to spouse. And then this is a weird state of Texas rule that when you're choosing which plan, like if your children had coverage through both parents, whichever parent's birthday is first in the year as to whose is primary. I don't know how long it took the legislators to come up with that, but that's the rule.

Something to ask when you're screening to ask someone to marry you.

So to just really clarify what Jonathan said, employee and a spouse If the spouse has employment and has the offer of healthcare coverage through their employer, they are not eligible to participate in the City of Keene's program. If they do not have coverage for whatever reason, they are eligible for the city's program. And there's an attestation form, I think, that y'all have signed for those situations.

So if they just have it offered to them by their employer, but they don't want it. They can't go under their husbands.

Correct.

Okay.

And the purpose behind that, the city has a really nice program, but there's a cost associated with it. So we wanna offer a benefit that is really good for your employees and their family members that need it or want it. For those who have an option outside of the city, they need to take that option. Yep. If they lose that coverage for some reason and they no longer have coverage outside of the city or an option for it, they are eligible to come to the city's plan. Is that clear?

That makes sense.

Okay. So, again, your current plans with no changes in benefit, the cost increase is 9.2%, about $88,000 increase to the city. That's roughly about $7,400 a month as far as an increase to the city. And there's a correlating increase to those that are covering dependents. The cost goes up approximately 9%. If you turn to the next page, Sandra touched this. Currently, any plan is 100% for the employee. and 70% for the dependents. And the employees have the choice of the plan. And you can see, currently you have 14 people in the PPO, eight in the EPO, and 38 in the PPO Max. Well, the PPO Max is the Cadillac of Cadillacs. It's a nice, nice program. So what did we do here? We said, we're still gonna offer all three of those plans, but the city is going to base their costs The 100% and the 70% off of the PPO. So in other words, the city is not paying the full boat for the PPO max, the most expensive option. If the city adopted that idea and paid 100% of the employee for PPO and 70% of the dependents for PPO, Also paying 100% of the employee for the EPO, which is an in-network only plan, same doctors, same hospitals. Also 70% for them. But if a person wanted to continue that PPO max plan, it would go from being no cost to $131 if they were single. For a month. That generates, instead of an $88,000 increase to the city of Keene, it's an $8,000 reduction in cost from what you're paying today.

If everybody goes.

I'm sorry?

If everybody goes.

Just based on the city is saying as a maximum cost threshold or price point for the city of Keene, We are saying we will pay as a city, our part, no more than 100% of the PPO cost or 100% of the EPO cost. No more than 70% of the dependent cost for PPO, no more than 70% of the dependent cost for EPO. That dollar amount is set at the PPO level. If you want the PPO max, which is more expensive, you will pay the difference between those two.

So what's $38,000?

If they choose to stay with that plan, that's right. That is correct. Currently 99% of all your claims are running in network. So virtually everyone is seeing a network doctor.

Which means the PPO plan would still work for 99% of our employees. Correct.

Whether it's EPO, PPO, or PPO Max. The difference, as you may recall from last year, is the pharmacy piece. PPO Max, you can go to any pharmacy you want to go to. PPO has a smaller pharmacy network. There's still 30,000 pharmacies in the PPO. So for your roughly, what is that, 22 people that are currently in PPO or EPO, no change compared to what you're doing right now. For the other 38, potentially a change, yes.

And the biggest thing, the biggest way to fix that change is to make sure you're going to a pharmacy in-network. Yes.

Walmarts, Costco's, all of those are in-network.

But not CVS or Walgreens?

PPO or PPO, CVS and Walgreens, no. That's correct. And that gets into cost. CVS and Walgreens, huge pharmacy change, obviously. also two of the most expensive places to get your prescriptions. So Aetna, CVS Pharmacy owns Aetna Health Plan. I don't know if you're aware of that. Blue Cross Blue Shields owns 38% of Walgreens. OptumRx, you've all heard of Amazon and their program. Pharmacy is a hot potato right now. Big Pharma, is running the cost of healthcare in a big way. What our job is to go to the market, find the most viable options for the city and its employees that do two things, that keep us within budget and provide a meaningful benefit to your people. In 2024, you had a $1,500 deductible, you had a 4,000 deductible HSA, You had a lot of people that couldn't afford to get things done, MRIs, CT scans, because you had to pay your deductible first. When we implemented this program last year, you might recall we went to a no deductible, virtually no out-of-pocket program. The feedback, as Sandra pointed out, has been extremely positive. Curative is a disruptor in the marketplace. Your city did see one of the best renewals we got from here at 90%. Our average Blue Cross Blue Shield renewal for January was 31. Our average UnitedHealthcare renewal for October 1 was 22. And that's increase. So the market is in a tough spot right now. We are in a good spot. We went full market. We asked for quotes from everybody. We got a lot of declines because they said they can't get there in price. So is everyone comfortable with the explanation on making the PPO your base plan and the savings compared to current dollars is a little over $8,000 a year compared to what you're paying today? The PPO Max offers some unique benefits. Some of them are. Yes. Like at HEB grocery store, as an example. If somebody wanted to contact a nutritionist and have that nutritionist walk around HEB and make a menu for them, As a part of this health plan, that could be done. Really? Yes.

Is that worth?

$90,000.

$90,000 for a budget?

And here's the reality. If that benefit is important to a person, they can still have it. But they're going to pay $1,500, $1,600 a year to keep it.

And again, talking to a diabetic, it's been diabetic since I was 21. Um, I've been through my share of changing. I mean, I've, it seems like every, my favorite one was, uh, I'd been going to, I'd gotten to know my pharmacist really well. I mean, every month went in there, you know, and, and all of a sudden I went in there one day and they said, all right, that'll be $800. I'm like, well, what happened to 25? You know? And, oh, well, we don't, we don't take your insurance anymore. So then I have to switch to CVS. And I have, you know, I've had to switch through the years all the time because this is just the nature of the beast, right? And I'll tell you, I've been going to HEP pharmacy. And I mean, if it helps keep the cost of the city down, it's worth it to me. And I think with the employees, they'll be understanding. And, you know, sometimes we have to change to, you know, the important thing to me is we provide benefits to them.

What we hear most from cities is COLAs are contemplated for employees, the cost of living adjustment. And so often, health care eats it up for those that are covering families. To be able to keep our costs pretty flat is really good. So to have options where employees see virtually no change in their costs is really, really good. Our costs went down in 2025 quite a bit. And this year, from the city's perspective, we could have a small reduction in keeping the employee calls relatively flat. So it's a fairly good option we're in. Yes, sir.

So I just ran some numbers. And correct me if I'm wrong, OK? Please. But if I look at the PPO plan option on the right-hand side.

Yes.

So for employee and spouse, it's 2,045.06. Okay, yes.

Okay.

And if you subtract 929.70 from that, you get 1115.30, which is not 30%. more than 925.

It's a 20% difference.

Well, I just figured 929 was what it would cost for a single person. Then if you take, so you got two people now in the 2045, you subtract that. I think I got, if my, I got my numbers all over this dang page, but it looks like it was 11, 15, 30.

Yes, I see that.

Okay. So take that times .7.

780, 71.

Yes, not 929.

70. 17, 10, 41. You see under the blue bar here?

Mm-hmm.

That's the city's contribution, 17, 10. You see that?

Yeah, but so I'm, I was just, you said that we're going to pay 70% for the spouse. I don't know.

So you pay all the employee. You take the 11, what is that, 2045.

minus 929 equals 1116 times 0.7 equals 781 that's what the city would be paying toward a spouse 781 and then you add that back to the 929.7 oops

The problem with doing math on your phone. Correct.

OK.

So you do that. The delta between the 929 and the 2045, you multiply that times 0.7, and then you add the 929 back to it. That's the city's piece. Does that make sense? Thank you for the math exercise. You had me worried.

He's good at that.

You know, it wouldn't be the first time a formula did not do me right. Thank you for checking. Anyone else? But that's a fair question. So you can see right there, that exercise we just did at $1,700 a month, this is a great benefit to your people.

Oh, yes. Thank you.

In January of this year, Curative added a program called Lantern. What does Lantern do? If a person needs an orthopedic procedure, back surgery, neck surgery, knee surgery, hip replacement, knee replacement, shoulder replacement, they'll send you to one of their centers of excellence. And if you do that, Lantern and Curative will pay the member. So we actually had one member that did that at the city and received a check for $1,500. In fact, they thought it was a scam and they said, what is this? And it's legitimate. So why are they doing that? They are sending you to the top performing surgeons and surgical hospitals to have the procedures done at a lower price point. And if they can do that and save that money on claims, they're rewarding the membership. Real example, hip replacement, Memorial Hermann down in Houston. $152,000. Kelsey Siebold, same surgeon, $79,000. Wow. Is Memorial Hermann twice as good? I don't know. But it's the same surgeon for half the claim. Same doctor, same surgeon. Same orthopedic surgeon. Two different hospitals. Most doctors have admitting privileges or surgical privileges at two or three facilities. So it's about, Curative's whole argument is, and you'll remember this, some of you from last year, is controlling the cost of care. and at the same time removing the barrier to care so that a person that is dealing with a heart problem, diabetes, gets the care they need and gets the problem corrected sooner and faster and at a long-term lower cost than letting that heart condition get worse and needing something serious that cost a lot of money. Yes. It's a tough model, and they're in a tough business, and there's big competitors out there. But they're a disruptor, and we're seeing more disruptors enter the network and the industry as a whole. So the last thing I'll touch on is dental. It's this really pretty blue page. We did shop our dental plans, our life programs, and all those remain under rate guarantee. There's no changes there. We did receive a renewal from Mutual of Omaha. Your employees love your dental plan and they are using it, which is good. That's why we have it. They started at a 9% increase. We got Mutual of Omaha down to 7%. We do have the option of changing our dental and reducing our costs slightly to MetLife or to Renaissance. We could reduce our costs slightly. My feedback that we've received from staff is staff has been pretty happy with the Mutual of Omaha dental plan. It really comes down to do you want to change dental providers to save $1,000? That's really the question.

As you all remember, especially those who have been in council for a while, again, with the constant churning, health care has been one of those things that churned. And so our kind of goal this year, you know, when I met with Sandra and, of course, Mira, was let's do what we can to not only offer without, you know, breaking the budget, but also let's try to be stable. You all heard me preaching stability, right? And so every time you do a massive change, it's very disruptive. And then, well, there's a lot that goes into it. And so the goal was, let's see if we can maybe save a little bit money on this end. It'll cost us a little bit more here, but it kind of washes out so that we're not changing everything again. So that was kind of the goal and the mission and the marching orders, I guess. So that's kind of where we're at right now.

So basically, you want to keep the dental where it is. Sounds good. Any other questions?

I guess the employee can't change on the dental. the employee could not upgrade to a different dental plan?

We have two dental plans currently. We have a base plan, which is called the low plan. That's the plan that the city bases its contribution off of, the lower cost of the two plans. And if employees want to, they may elect the richer plan that has a $2,000 benefit, has orthodontia coverage, and it has adult and child orthodontia coverage. The base plan the city pays is a $1,000 deductible with no, or not deductible, but $1,000 benefit with no orthodontic coverage. And you can see that 40, over 40 of your current employees pay extra out of their paycheck currently to have the richer dental plan. I'm sorry? Okay. So for me, it's a positive message, not a lot of disruption. The city has the potential to reduce its cost by about $88,000 or about 84,000 gross if you include the dental in the conversation. So that's two years in a row that the city's budget expense for healthcare has reduced. which you're one of a few of my clients that . So I like this meeting.

Okay.

Awesome.

So if there's no other questions.

Yeah, my part, yeah.

And I'm just thinking there's several employees in the room. Does anybody have any concerns?

Okay.

And we'll be out next month, I think, to have an education session with your employees and make sure they understand the programs that they have.

Okay. Now, do we need a motion?

No.

Okay. Mr. Seitz?

No.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, sir.

These are assumptions. Just like last year, this is kind of the direction we're working towards as far as what we're tentatively planning to do. So personnel cost drivers, right now, as we build the book, and you'll have to forgive me all. Some, as you know, I've been feeling under the weather. So if I cough a lot, I apologize to everyone out there in the community. So right now, we're kind of operating off a 3% increase. And where is that number driving from right now? Initial reports for this year is inflation is going to be up over 4%. You know, there was a little bit of hope there about a month ago, and now it's right back. So that's kind of what we're doing here. And then, of course, fire and police, they operate off of a step plan, which we are planning right. Most cities have a five-step plan. We have a four-step plan. So we're looking to add that fifth step. I did a lot of modeling with AI and research and spreadsheets. And in a perfect world, everything would just go up and you get promoted and you go up. That's not possible right now. And so I'm thankful to Brent and, you know, our chiefs for helping get the step plan we have. But at this point, it's going to mean we add on for that fifth step, but then if they get promoted, we'll just have to do an adjustment. So instead of going from, you go from step five to now you're promoted, you don't go all the way back to one because that would be a decrease in pay. So where's the motivation to be better, be a leader? So anyway, so that's kind of what we're doing there with the step plan just to, again, best practices for them.

I have a question.

Yes, sir.

On the step plan, is there an end date on the step plan, or does it just continue to aggregate as it moves through, as we move year to year?

Well, once you, and there's usually criteria, you know, getting credentials and those types of things, and of course your anniversary dates and all those things are taken into effect. Kind of like, you know, we typically look at a 3% increase during budget season once a year. They operate off of... anniversary date, correct? Anniversary date or promotion date. Yeah, anniversary date or promotion date. So, again, they're structured a little bit different, but it's still kind of that same underlying philosophy behind it. All right.

I just wanted to make sure that we didn't have to, as a council, revisit this entire thing and try to restructure it at some point, or is it self-sustaining?

Yeah, that's kind of the... Does it need restructured? Yes.

Okay.

Are we there to a point that we can justify? Because, again, to do it right, and this is very common in small cities, you know, it's just kind of the nature of the beast. But to structure it kind of the way it's meant to be, it would be an astronomical cost. So we kind of have to do a little bit of an adjustment or a tweak here, tweak there. Okay.

All right.

Any other questions on these assumptions? And again, these are all assumptions right now. All right, so here's kind of the fun. This kind of shows back in 24-25, the budget. This was back when there wasn't cost allocation happening, meaning distributed to the water department, all those things. So when you see these, you know, tweaks and adjustments. You know, some things look like they decreased tremendously. Well, they didn't really decrease. We just assigned costs to where it should be. Again, this was all part of this, excuse me, accounting transformation. And then, so 25, 26 is kind of the, I would call the baseline to really look at. coming into 26, 27, 26, 27, again, based upon that previous slide is mostly that 3%. And of course fringe and all that stuff's kind of adjusted in there. So, um, you know, the, uh, as, uh, um, hold on. I'm looking here. Uh, yeah. Yep. So, kind of things to notice, I guess, is Mayor, I'm sorry to ask you, that new hire, is that, that's adding a person for you, right? Yeah.

Well, she's coming up. What is the CM adjustment?

um is this working because i oh it is working i just can't hear myself okay so sorry the question sir good evening council the including the cm november 2026 i believe that's the cmo uh contract remember we talked about that it's your contract yeah that will be effective the contract last year because you can see it's uh

Again, that's fringe benefit, that's all the stuff. The only question I had was the new hire on the finance side.

Yes, that is the extra accountant that I have given justification on. Any questions?

Just so you understand, what we were trying to do this year was not add, again, knowing that we can only adopt the no new revenue rate We had to really face this year as very conservative, okay? So, like, when we put things in, you know, is a 3% absolutely necessary? I like to think so, but, you know, again, that's kind of council's discretion, and we will gladly support whatever decision is made. So we weren't going to add any bodies, but then we decided there was a couple areas that was really kind of critical. And the other one you will see on the next slide. But again, justifying costs, as you can see here, our audit has told us now for several years that we need to add a body in finance. And obviously the goal was to use technology and all those things. You know, once this IRS and the audit and all these things, will that lessen the load? Yes. But things we have to keep in mind, like the Gatsby 103 requirements. So a good example of this is these requirements are shifting what has been done in the corporate world for years, requirements, okay? And now they're shifting it into municipal requirements. So the good news is, a year and a half ago, we're about a year ahead of the curve right now. A lot of cities are scrambling, and the good news is we come from the corporate world, so we were already trying to put these things into place, again, like I told you, so we can see what the real picture is. Typically, cities in the past have audited to receive a grade, okay? So it's all revolved around A, B, C, grading for grants and all those things. And yes, those things are all very important. But the problem is sometimes you lose the focus on the business. So that's how a city can be an A city and find themselves bankrupt and wonder why. And for the record, we're nowhere near that. But with those Gatsby rules and requirements, that means we basically have to be audit ready all the time. just like in the corporate world, except the difference with corporate world and city is we are regulated by state government, right? And so we don't have the luxury of going, oh, well, we can push this out two months, right? So having a CPA in our finance department, I would consider critical and extremely important. Mayor, go ahead and add anything else.

who would like to tell my story.

Yes, please.

Okay, so what I have here is basically I had to I have to give myself a justification why I am the way I am today. And so what I did was I pulled all our time entry since the beginning of February 10th. That was when, so I have three FTE right now. The finance department's made out of three staff. The first one that started was the finance manager, Jacqueline Mejia, and she started February 10th. And that's why, if you see, it started February 10th. And I would like to extend, I guess, the period so we can reflect a full year for everybody. Since I was the last one recruited, 3-31-2025, I thought I'd just run it all through April. But what you see here, basically, you have our names on the left, and it tells you what type of pay that we received this past, from February 2025 to April 2025. And then right after that, in under each sorry underline where it says our names it tells you how many hours we worked and then on the right hand right after that so that's two from the second column from the right it tells you the paid work hours now all of us are exempt employees which means we don't get overtime and the hours on the right hand side reflects the extra hours that we worked my teamwork And if you can see, over the past year, we work 1,380 hours more than what is work hours available, which is 2,080 per person. And I just want to put it out there, because when we talk about audit, when we talk about IRS, I don't think anybody actually understands what my team goes through on a daily basis. This gives you just a glimpse of what we're going through. And so I would like to tell my story because of that. So anyway, over the past four, so what I also have done, is that I've broken out and I did a really quick gap analysis on our processes. A process that involves all finance and payroll. Now mind you, these processes does not involve the utility billing, that's why I asked you Rodney. I do utility billing. Utility billing, it doesn't include municipal court. It does not include community center. It doesn't include the new system deployments, okay? Out of all the finance and payroll processes, we have in total 18 processes. And I divided the gap analysis to where it was before, where it says then, and it says now. So I've broken it out just to give you an example. Out of all 18 processes, Then, back then, before MIRA, 8 out of 18 processes were done in-house and 10 were outsourced. And my team and I praise God, 13 out of 18 processes are done in-house and five are still outsourced. So this is the additional. I understand that the extra hours work is only 1,380. However, there are processes that we're supposed to do that we're still outsourcing. And the last page on that you should see is the GASB pronouncements that I just casually put on there, all the GASB pronouncements that we've had since 1990 and where we are in terms of compliance. So it would be the last page. It would say GASB 34. The description is basic financial statements. Are we doing it? Well, we're working on it. Statement, sorry, GASB 96, which is beta. Are we in compliance? No. So what are we doing about it? We're outsourcing it. That's how you read that. So in general, we're saying four out of seven GASB requirements are still outsourced. And what I'm asking for an extra FTE is to cover so that we can have like a more balanced life and work normal hours if possible. Of course, we'll do what is necessary. but I don't think what we're doing right now is sustainable. If we want to continue, that's the definition of insanity, right? You do the same thing over and over asking for a different result, it's not gonna happen. And so since it's been said for the past two, I guess, audit reports that we do actually need an extra person in finance, and I believe that We have done everything we could. We streamline, we automate where we can, we did everything that we could, and this is at the end, I am at the end of myself, and I have to say, I need help. Thank you. You do. Hopefully, yes, sir. Absolutely, I just didn't have that number because I just did this really quickly today. Come again, sorry?

I'll get down to two, or what's your?

I think it also, I think we need an extra employee, an accountant, and there's also a lot of training. I think that's something that I never understood, you know, coming from where I came from. The standard is the standard. We don't have to pivot. In a year, there could be two or one or three GASB that we have to comply to, and you have to always pivot. And then between you understanding it, between whether or not you have the system, If you notice here in the process, I actually noted that we actually don't have a fixed asset module. Everything is still very manual. So I think it's also, it's adding more system, it's training, you know, it's training the staff, and then I think, you know, eventually we can reduce the outsourcing.

Well, go ahead. I think you did a great job. Thank you.

Thank you. That's the first time she's asked for it.

And I want to state this, too, because, again, this is a growing city, and I need my finance director to be helping guide these decisions, and I can't right now because she's busy. And she's supposed to be the director, and right now she's the doer, and I'm very thankful for her staff and her support, but we need that actual accountant on her staff so that they're kind of doing those things to keep us audit ready versus her, because right now she's doing it all.

And I want to thank her for this, because we know that you're covered up, but this really tells the story. It shows it. Yeah. There's no way around it.

Good job presenting it.

Bless her heart.

I have a question. Based on something that you mentioned, you said you mentioned the word CPA, having a CPA, and that is not part of what she's asking, correct?

No, that is what we're asking for is a CPA. Oh, okay. We want to look for a certified public accountant.

Okay.

Someone that actually speaks CPA audit.

Okay.

And actually, again, is the one kind of preparing everything, you know, for audit. Okay.

So any idea how much money you're going to have to pay this person?

What did we put in, Mira, 70? That was my next question because I didn't feel like that was going to be enough.

So right now, I think you see, I think it's on the third page.

Oh.

One, two, three.

Oh, is that a separate? Yeah, that's another.

Like the next one, the next one. Yeah, see that, that is 71. That's actually, it says, we did say CPA. I just want to let you know, I think I've spoken to maybe a few of you, just how very scarce skilled accountants are in municipal government. Very, very rare. I think the last GE vote that I attended, they referred to us as, you know, your... What do you call it? Well, there's not endangered species. That's what they said. They said that we're endangered cities because it is a very specific skill that you're looking for. And out there in the world, they're saying 40%, they say in 10 years, most of the directors we have, all the accounts we have in the city would have like depleted. because we don't have enough people coming in, young people coming in and joining. They don't have finance degrees. I think most young people, Keith, most actually go for a communication major, marketing, something else or other. There's not a lot, there's not many even in a private sector or finance. So there's like so many other things at play. To answer your question, I believe the salary is 66,000 and that number is including fringe benefit. So go ahead, yes. This is 70%. That's correct. Yeah, so it's about 100-something. Yeah, that's including French benefit.

So, Mira, is this person going to be kind of within range of wanting to come with the job, or is it going to be like he's been fighting the whole time he's been here, which is people aren't getting paid enough for what they're doing? We're starting to get that better, more well-rounded, as you all know, but is that going to create the problem all over again? Do we need more money? Are we okay with it?

um really great question i think what we're trying to do here i would rather have someone um that comes in that have some experience but not all the way there because let me let me tell you not all cpas are created equal not all cpas can do what we do and so it's not really just cpa you have to understand fun accounting and that is You can pull someone from IBM. IBM accountants cannot do what we do because we do fund accounting. So it's very, very specific. And of course, I have ideas. I even have names, but we'll see. I think I envision this person as someone who's younger, someone who is willing to work and willing to learn and be a quick study. And maybe one day when Mira moves on, we'll see. What's your plan? Yes, any more questions? Good?

Cool. Thank you, Mary. Okay, so I do apologize out of respect for Rodney because he does have a commute to get home. There was one thing I need us to shift gears back to the insurance part. There was some talk about adding council to our insurance plan. I think we need to discuss that while he's still here.

Okay. Why? I guess my question would be, council is voluntary. Are you talking about putting them on city?

Insurance.

Insurance. Why would we want to do that?

That's what I was going to tell you.

There is a provision in the local government code that allows for it, that officers, directors, council members can be offered and eligible for the benefits that are provided to employees under, I believe it's chapter 272.

Okay, but we're not, we're volunteers. Exactly. And so the city would be paying for our insurance?

Correct. That is an option.

Okay.

And that is covered in the local government code. I believe it's chapter 272.

Well, it would appear.

That's why you all get to talk amongst yourselves.

Yeah, I really, to me, I don't think we should. Because first of all, the city right now is not in a position to do that. When the city gets to a position to where they can hire us on and pay us a salary, then yes. But we're volunteers. We know we didn't have those.

benefits when we volunteered to do this and so that that's just my personal opinion you know when when the topic comes up and it comes up frequently um larger cities have paid councils and they have benefits and so forth yeah we don't have smaller cities do not have paid council or board members depending on But the benefit, although volunteer position, is actually a benefit that is available, but the governing body makes the decision as to whether or not it is offered to council members, even at the volunteer level. It would be the same cost as your employee's pay. So if you were just covering yourselves, it would be $920. $29 a month. So was there six of you? There would be a total of seven. So that would be $929. It would be $11,000 times seven. So it would be $77,000 a year. And if any of you had family members, it goes up from there.

But we're kind of in and out. I mean, we're voted in. We're voted out.

If you're voted out, you lose the benefit.

Well, I know, but I'm just saying I guess I find it hard to think that we need it when we when we volunteer. Yeah. Yeah. I think we have people who need it worse than we do, like better upgrades for our police and our fire department and our employees than for volunteers. But anyway, that's my opinion. Sorry.

Again, my purpose in this is to tell you that it's available. And it is legal. That's my one purpose.

If the city can afford it. Now, Mira, can we afford it?

So if you would like, I can send a staff what the local government code says about it. Okay.

Thank you.

I'm just saying, I'll just say my piece about it real quick. So I actually, I kind of like it honest to goodness. So, uh, and the reason why is one, I mean, let's face it, we get $10 to be here. Right. And I know that I'm not going to sit here forever, but. the people that follow me and the rest of us up here, if we could give our council the added benefit of decent health care, well, guess what? It means that they're going to be in these chairs to be able to deliberate and take care of city business, you know, when they need to. Instead of, I'm sick, I'm hurting, I've got this problem, and now they're not. Now there's a... You know, and they may not have health care, right? I mean, Chuck, you're a, you know, you're, I don't, I know you're your own contractor, right? So you're either going to pay for it, you know, out of your own pocket, but you sit here today, right? And so you have an opportunity. And me too.

Well, you're self-employed, right, Troy?

True, yeah.

And I'm self-employed. Chuck is self-employed. We all volunteered. Yeah. Yeah. I give mine to the police and fire department.

Which is why a couple years ago I tried to double it for the people that sat up here. I thought, well, at least we could give them a meal to be here.

Well, we get meals all the time.

Really?

Yeah. But, Rob, what do you think? Yeah. I have something I don't think you know yes I agree that it would be a nice benefit to anybody that sits up here and to have it however I think you know that in meetings you've heard me talk about how what's it look like yeah what does this look like to the people what does it look like to our constituents I think it looks bad And I don't want anybody hating me or anything, but I just think it looks bad.

It does.

The city money and their taxes are paying for it.

Well, and the other thing, then, you get people who just come up to get the insurance, and they really don't care what happens to the city. And to me, that's wrong. You know, we... Yeah, yeah, we're here. We volunteered.

You've got to get voted in first. Well, yeah, I'm just being real about it.

But I'm just saying, you know, it's I'm a woman alone and I can afford my insurance and I volunteered to do this.

So, but I'm glad that you brought it to our attention. I do appreciate that.

Absolutely. And I'll share that side us with staff just so you have it for record in case the time comes up. You have the information. And that it is out there. If you chose to do it, you are not breaking the law. And if you choose not to do it, that is your choice. Thank you for bringing that up. I don't want us breaking the law. It has to be done by council resolution. Right.

So in what was presented tonight does not include seven people meeting on council, correct? That is correct. Okay. So this would be an additional cost. Correct. At minimum. And that is correct. So let me ask you this based on B that we have to discuss here in just a little bit, we have to vote on that. And if we, and if, I mean, whether we have a consensus here or not, we don't have those actual figures yet. So do we have, do we have to vote on this tonight? in light of this new information? Or can we have that and say, we would like to choose plan A, plan B, plan C, kind of like we did last year.

You can table or select plans tonight. And then again, you have to, for the council part, you have to do by resolution. We did not have a resolution prepared, so that can actually be decided on another meeting night. But tonight, if you wanna just select the plan to offer employees so that they can finish the budget book that we're gonna talk about, you can, again, or you can table it.

Okay. I'm just trying to figure out the legal ease on that, so.

Well, and Sandra, so all of our employees are happy, as far as you know, on our insurance that we have for them. And there's very little change on the cost of that to our employees and everything. So we keep it the way it is would be the best thing for our employees then.

Well, going from the max of the PPO, yes.

OK.

So I think if there were a motion, it would be to vote to renew the curative program with the selection of the PPO as the baseline plan. And if an employee elects to continue the PPO max, they may do so at their cost to pay the difference.

Okay. Do I ever hear a motion to that?

We're not there. I just went back because he's got a long commute. No, no, I'm fine. Well, I just wanted to allow him the opportunity because I knew, like I said, the note, it's kind of a last-minute thing. Okay.

Okay, sir.

Thank you. Thank you, Rodney. You're welcome. So no more questions for Rodney? All right. So feel free to head home to enjoy the rest of your evening. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, so now, I apologize. Moving back to the screen. So again, right now, based on our estimates, you know, we're looking at a... So you also remember we added fire staff this last year. As time goes on, that will be a cost that will increase just because the grant will run out eventually with ESD. And again... We should be fine, again, with a no new revenue rate that's really thrown a little bit of a monkey wrench into my plans on how to navigate. But at the bottom, you'll see there that there's a $285,000 increase with all staff and all the items. Water sewer, again, you'll see their cost goes way up, but just like the reverse, We saw things drop because of cost allocation. That means we allocated it to them to cover costs. So that's the big increases right now. And again, part of that allocation is to help with an additional person in finance. And then you'll see city maintenance department, that's really just a COLA increase. You'll see the water distribution department that jumped up. But if you look to the sewer department below that jumped down, that's because Derek did some restructuring. So we did some reallocation. So again, at the bottom, you're looking on the water sewer enterprise side of things. based on these assumptions that we're talking about, we're looking at a $220,000 increase year over year. All right, so this is the kind of the total financial implications. So adding the accountant, is that a revenue generating position? Because as you all know, creating revenue in our city outside of increasing taxes, which is not a goal. It's sales revenue, those types of things. This is not a revenue-generating position. This is just the cost of doing business. The three firefighters, that is a revenue-generating position. And again, with more people, we should be able to help more people, therefore generating more revenue. The fire marshal, just like the code enforcement, all these other things that the city hasn't traditionally done a good job of necessarily generating revenue in some of these positions, that should be a revenue generating position from ticket writing, making sure people stay in compliance, those types of things. Water and sewer general maintenance. Help me, Mayor, why is that a... revenue generating position? Oh, water, sewer, thank you. Sorry, I'm thinking as individually, yes. Again, I got medicine headed, y'all have to forgive me. So again, total financial impact, that's basically the two sums of those two different previous pages. Subsidy of that $579,000 total, $195,000 of that is getting funded through other means. Total cost to water and sewer to help with that 579,000 is cost allocation to the water and sewer, which is 109,000. So total cost or increase for this year's budget is 275,000. And again, this includes fringe benefits and included budgeted over time. Clear as mud, right? Any questions? All right. Thank you very much. And we're going to, at the end of this, we're going to talk a little bit about the revenue portion on Thursday.

Good. That'll be on Thursday. Do we want a motion now? Okay.

Now we're to that portion of the evening.

OK. Rob, do you want to make a motion on this?

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that we approve the curative PPO plan for our employees' health care with the option that they can upgrade to the PPO max plan at their expense. I'll second.

OK. I have it.

And dental stays the same.

And dental stays the same. Okay, in Mr. Shaw, you did the second, right? Okay. Okay, all those in favor? It's carries. So do we have any other discussions? No executive session. So any requests for future agenda items? So

So this is where I'd like to discuss a little bit of Thursday. So what is that saying about the best laid plans?

There you go.

So, again, the whole goal was to save the revenue portion until the end because by then we have certified values and all those things. And the goal was to be able to show you, okay, this is any increase, where do we want to apply or adjust CIPs, Do we want to adjust? We can save money by getting rid of this, those types of things. So certified values did not come in on Friday like they were expected. And then they came in late yesterday. And I'm going to read you the letter I received so that you can understand why we're hesitant to do revenue on Thursday. Yeah, Central Appraisal District. Yeah, Central Appraisal District of Johnson County. So we are not the only ones that are trying to upgrade systems and processes and get better data. So it's nice to know there are other people that are struggling with implementation and growth like we are. So the letter that came with some documents was, attached is the 2026 certified estimate of taxable value for your jurisdiction. prepared pursuant to Section 2601 of the Texas Property Tax Code. As of the date of this certification, the remaining unresolved protest appraisal value is 5.22% of the total appraisal value of all other taxable property. Consequently, the Appraisal Review Board has not yet met the requirements of Texas Property Tax Code 41.12 to approve the appraisal records. Therefore, in accordance with Section 2601 the Central Appraisal District of Johnson County is providing the certified estimate of taxable value for use in the tax rate calculation process. You will notice that the attached total reports differ from those provided in previous years due to changes in implementation of our appraisal software vendor. The reports now include three separate summaries. Grand total, which means includes the total appraised value for all properties, including those with active protests. ARB approved totals includes only properties for which the appraisal review board has completed its action and they are no longer under protest. And then under ARB review totals includes only properties that currently have an active protest pending before the appraisal review board. To assist with this transition, we are preparing a reference document that maps the fields used in the truth and taxation worksheets from the previous report's format to the corresponding fields in the new report format. We will provide that document as soon as it is complete. Please contact us if you have any questions or need additional information to complete your tax rate calculations. So what does this mean? The report is completely different looking. It's incomplete. In reaching out to people that have been helping us, reaching out to even Scott Porter, Everyone right now is trying to read and understand this new report. And so, and starting all the way back this summer, these numbers have been jumping around like crazy, all right? So right now, for me to do a presentation on revenue, even if we get the numbers tomorrow, that gives Mira and her staff one day to try to pull information together. She can do it. I know she can, but I'm trying to protect her mental sanity right now. We want to keep her. Respectfully, we still have to have our meeting on Thursday because these maps, jurisdiction maps, ward maps, is critical that we're all here Thursday to vote these things in. But right now, you've all heard me say it, timely and accurate information. So for me to give you timely information that's not accurate, goes against the very core of how I like to manage and do things. So I don't have a great, I'm hoping by Thursday we'll have some sort of update that we can actually apply. And just FYI, we have to present the budget book in a week. So right now, we may not be talking about revenue until we give the book. We're just kind of in limbo right now. So, and even $100,000 swing, that's a CIP. So. Best, worst, I should say best case scenario is we have everything tomorrow and we can move forward. Worst case scenario, it may come down to a budget book that says this is what we think it's going to be, and any adjustment up or down may require to come from fund balances. I don't think that we have to buy a lot of things. So Mayor's question is, by law, do we have to submit a budget book by next week?

no no she's saying we don't yeah what was supposed to be presented on august 6 to the council was the certified appraised values um i think we had we had scheduled on our budget calendar to present a preliminary proposed budget book and then we still have some time before it has to be the proposed budget has to be formally submitted we still have a few weeks

so so really again i'm just asking for a little bit of leniency from how things have been done in the past right now what i can tell you is is that we will stay in compliance we will do what is required but it may not be historically on the timeline that things have been done in the past and that's i guess what i'm asking is that good mirror

So does that beg the question? So for our August 6th meeting, do we need to make sure we have an August, a third week in August available for any of those kinds of?

That may be. We can discuss that at the August 6th meeting. Yeah, but I mean, it needs to be on that agenda so we can talk about that.

Right. Yeah.

Anything else for the agenda?

For future, yeah.

Does anyone have anything else for the agenda?

Is counsel good with our plan of action right now? Thank you.

You did good. Okay. Our next meeting is Thursday, July the 30th, 2026. This meeting is adjourned at 748.