Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'd like to call the meeting to order. And I stand in stand by for this.

You have a slight slight. 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 us. There you go.

Okay. Before we get going, please state your name and title and first begin speaking. Follow-up comment will be allowed to the extent that it's on topic. Persons participating via Zoom are currently muted. If you have a comment, then please let Mark know via the chat function. Mark will then inform Chairman Trinkle if we take up the comment in a manner that doesn't disrupt the agenda. And if an executive session is needed, then we'll mute and turn off the video. And when we're done, we'll turn everything back on

You guys want to come on up?

Sure.

I've just got here just basically what we're going to talk about, just something for you to keep as well.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for having us today. We appreciate it. Appreciate you. We'll be brief, but to the point, we want to tell you a little bit about pooling. I'm Colin Holthaus. I'm the COO and staff counsel at KWork. Our offices are out of Topeka.

And I'm Monty Parrish. I am a safety consultant for KWork.

And if we reference, some of the page numbers are in the upper right, so it makes it easy to follow along. But Just a little bit about KWORK. What is KWORK? We're a pool, an insurance self-funded pool. All KWORK does is work comp. We're only on the work comp side. Established in the early 90s under the Kansas Municipal Group Funded Pool Act. And there's a number for the statute there. Dedicated to exclusively Kansas counties. So our membership consists of 88 Kansas counties. We threw in our picture there. That's us with KAC and KCAMP at our annual picnic, first annual picnic. And of course, KCAMP is a sister pool that does property and casualty. And then KAC is a Kansas association of counties that have the conference in December every year. Phase three, K Works County owned and directed by the members through an elected board of trustees. So you can't really get more local than it being the counties themselves. It's administered by my boss, Jim Parrish. And then that's me under there, Colin. And Nicole Jarboe Paxton, she does all of our underwriting back at the office. And Brandon Mann is our environmental safety and health VP that supervises our poor safety and social care. Page four, we've got a nice little map here. The way the membership runs with the Board of Trustees for KCAMP is, you can think of it, the state busted up into a quadrant. And there's four from each region. And then there's three trustees that are elected at large. So that we're trying to get, you know, good membership or representation across the whole state.

And here on page five, if you want to flip over to the next one, you'll see the pink counties and the little bit darker, almost like a red counties. Those are the counties that are under KWork. The darker red is where our trustees are currently located. A lot of the ones that you'll even see there in white are mostly, for the most part, a lot of the bigger counties that self-insure and don't need a service or couldn't use a service like KWork because They do self-insure, which is good for them. It's wonderful. As you see, most of the state is with us, and you've got a lot of people around you that are your neighbors. If you wanted to talk to somebody sort of about what it's like to be with K-Work, and you didn't have to hear it from a person who works for K-Work, you could talk to some of your neighbors if you'd like and see what it's like with us.

On the next page is just... That's a typo on the top part of that yellow over McPherson. It should

Thank you for pointing that out. We'll get it fixed. It should go over and up. Oh, yeah. Sorry, my fault.

I see what you're asking about now.

You're like, why does it get circled in? It's not like a gold star. On page six, all that is, is just an easier alphabetical way for you to look at everybody who's under us. There's also a few other, we have like a, you know, an airport authority and a few other things other than some counties that we also cover.

Over on page seven. K-Work, by the members being the pool themselves, it's as local as you could keep the workers' comp insurance. So like a traditional market insurance company pays a, an agent, a commission. We have salaries, of course, but we don't pay commissions. The funds and the profits and the revenue stays in the pool and those trustees decide how and where it's going to be spent for the most part. But a lot of times what will happen is if you're trying to keep the business local or a county says they want to keep business local, They might keep a certain slice of the pie, like a small 10% or so that is the insurance agent's commission, but a good 90% of the profits and revenues will likely go to some large insurance company out of state often. In the pool, we love to keep the money in Kansas, working for Kansas counties. And there's our trustees, just in case you see any familiar faces or, um, any neighbors that we got sent on the top left, got Sandy Barton, Stanton County clerk. Then Wayne Wilk is our president, Talley County commissioner. And Julie Dunkel is from Jefferson County. She's our, uh, VP. And then there's Chelsea Schmidt from Morris County. She's a clerk. And then she serves as KWorks controller. Mike Cleveland's a commissioner from Cloud County, serves as the secretary. George Pretz is from Miami County and Stan McAvoy's from Decatur County. He's a commissioner as well. Those commissioners compose four different committees and they meet quarterly. The trustees meet once a month, but the committees will meet quarterly and Personnel committee goes over and reviews staff personnel issues or things related to staff personnel. The investment committee, what it sounds like, it manages the finances of the pool and makes recommendations for the rest of the trustees to vote on regarding the dollar signs part of it. The audit committee oversees the annual audit that a third party conducts for us just to make sure all the paperwork and financial documents and everything are squared away. And then we have a nominating committee as well, just so there is a method and a forum for nominating new trustee members. Because just like anything, it churns and revolves every so often. And you always want to have good people that are interested in possibly serving someday and know who those folks are. On page 10, we've got, that's the whole K-Work team, the staff, Jim up there on the top left. That's me, of course. That's Brandon Mann, our senior VP for environmental health and safety. And that's Nicole, our VP for underwriting. And then on the bottom, you have four gentlemen that all report to Brandon. You've got Monty, Andy Brooks, Sean, Harold, and Ben Wohner. They're all environmental safety and health consultants. And they travel the state all the time, week in, week out, putting on some trainings and different things that Moni will tell you about here shortly. But KWORK is a partnership, and we're there to provide services for the counties for free with their membership policy.

they're all aimed at keeping workers safe and helping reduce claims severity and frequency which nobody wants to see anybody get hurt so but we have a lot of programs that help assist with that we do we do on the next page this is just the guys again but we like to put the health and safety team sort of by themselves so you get an idea of especially the guy up top there brandon you know if you were to be a part of k work he's our boss and he's always out following around what we were doing checking in on counties so it's not just us But the other guys, we have the whole state split. So each of us have around 22 counties, 21, 22 counties. And I am the gentleman in your area. So if you got with K-Work, you would be hanging out with me. Over on the next page was where I'll talk to you a little bit about why you get services from K-Work, what environmental health and safety as it pertains to K-Work does for you as a service. So these safety trainings that are down here on this page. So our defensive driving course, the forklift safety and the road and bridge safety, those are some certification classes. So like the defensive driving, we can come out and we teach that to anybody in the county that wants to. The forklift safety course is a good one because the Kansas Department of Labor likes to see forklift certifications. If they come walking into one of your buildings, they want to see those cards. Well, what you get from K-Work is enough, is what will pass. And then we have the road and bridge safety. We can really tailor safety presentations to issues in your county. So we have the general ones that we do. if you were to call me and tell me that you're having issues with certain things can you please come out and talk about this or we want to really talk about workplace safety and so we'll do ergonomics and all those things for like an office building we can do all that stuff too so we have our base of what we teach which is those three courses and then lots of other uh things that are available to you um i we have written there that kdol compliance that's that's why that's there for the forklift certification If you've got the Department of Labor getting ready to come out and they give you a call, you can call me and I'll come out and I'll do a walkthrough before the Kansas Department of Labor comes through. And so hopefully we catch a few things before they do, before they come tacky over the head, right? So think of, if you were to come with K-Work, think of the environmental health and safety team and somebody like me as a service for you, okay? I'm not gonna be trying to give you work. I'm gonna come try to give you a hand. On the next page here, It kind of just gives a little a few more descriptions of the other things we do. So our services that we specifically do is I'm going to be in your county or whoever you were to have would be in your county at a minimum three times a year to come through and do building inspections for you. We also will do any of that safety training. All of the visits, all the safety training are all at no extra cost. These are all services that are just part of your membership. At the bottom there, these are other things that we do to try to really actually bring down injuries and try to bring down costs for your county so helping you organize whether you have the. staff to have a designated safety coordinator not everybody does, but what most counties do have the ability to do is at least get a safety committee to get. And what a safety committee can do is do two things. We can be, unfortunately, we're going to have to react to some things, but we can also be proactive to things that are happening. So they meet monthly, discuss injuries. Maybe we look at what's been going on. what do we need to focus on? Maybe it's seatbelts. Maybe it's we're jumping out of the backs of beds and trucks and turning knees. Let's stop doing that. Just different stuff like that. And then at the bottom, we'll come out and do safety meetings with your folks too. Getting something like that started takes time. And a lot of times they already have a lot to do. And so they're like, You're just giving me more work and I already am under it. Well, I'll come out and help you get it started and get it going. Because the idea is something like the safety committee, when it runs, I don't need your department heads to be in charge of that. They're already in charge of too much. But somebody that they trust right under them, whether it's the health department or the road and bridge, that's the person that we're looking for. Somebody that you trust, somebody that you like, that has the best intentions of your county at heart. So that's a good little overview on what the environmental health and safety team does.

Okay, just a few more things here we'd like to tell you about. There are some sidebar benefits on page 14. KWORK has some scholarships. So one is called POET, post-offer employment testing, where KWORK pays up to $75 or half the cost depending on the overall cost of the testing, of the POET testing. So post-offer employment testing, it's good to know and get an assessment. Kansas Jail Training. We provide $250 each for up to three employees per member county to attend the Kansas Jail Training Academy and the Kansas Jail Association Supervisory Training. That's per county per year. And then another one is the Kansas Sheriff's Association Jail Training Scholarship, which covers, it's an affiliated training support specifically targeted at environmental health and safety and operational risk as they relate to a sheriff's department. Now on the 15th slide here, I mentioned the trustees have monthly meetings. It's all about accountability and integrity. All financial transactions are reported and the board reviews the financials, much like many not-for-profit that you see that runs with a board. Checks over $10,000 must be co-signed by a trustee and the executive director. So anytime a lot of money is being spent, it's definitely being looked over. We have a third-party claims review company. I'll tell you a little bit about in a minute. They're called Mariner. Loss prevention review. K-Work staff does that as well as Mariner. And then the quarterly financials and the claims report are always made available to members, but members will find those claims reports helpful a lot of times because you tend to see trends in certain areas. And just like Bonnie said, if everybody's getting hurt doing something similar, it'd be a good thing to probably train on that. And then a He mentioned the three times a year, regular meetings and inspections. But they'll also come out anytime. Anytime you have something where you need a custom tailor, they just need a little bit of a heads up.

And really and truly, that is exactly how we work. They'll come out anytime.

Slide 16, a little bit more on K-Work. We carry a specific excess and aggregate insurance. So it's called Safety National. It's the company we get that through and any claims that go over $850,000. the secondary insurance through safety national kicks in and starts paying for it. Um, that's, that's just another way of protecting member counties from catastrophic claims that are very high like that. Uh, and then on the bottom of that last bullet, is it just something important to note? Um, K works never had an assessment on the pool since its inception in the early nineties. So, um, and assessment would be like an extra fee charge levied on members. Um, to cover some type of funding shortfalls. We've never had to do it. And the financials are strong, so hopefully we never will even have to consider it. Seventeenth slide, Mariner. Mariner is our third party administrator that Amanda Chamberlain is their person who does lost time injuries. And Jenny Mitchell covers medical only injuries. what they do is manage those cases they work closely with uh uh with the pools uh attorney and uh she they provide excellent customer service the whole thing is taking care of the employee but also getting them to heal as quickly as possible and then hopefully getting them to work as back as possible the statistics the longer you stay out of work after you get hurt the statistics are usually not that good for a quick recovery after that, which makes perfect sense. I mean, the more serious it is, the longer it takes. But they handle disposition of claims on a full and final basis. So this is what they're going for. So they're constantly reviewing the boards, reviewing our cases with them and making action plans that go from there.

Yeah. Amanda and Jenny are extremely popular. with whoever it might be in whatever county. It's not always the clerk's responsibility, maybe HR, but they're extremely popular with our member counties. So on the next page, page 18 here, this is a really great view of how long people have been with KWork. Kind of gives you an idea of people coming and going. Do people really trust you? Well, if you take a look here, most of the members we have have been with us over 20 years. Um, and so many that, that come really leave because the services that you get along with the rates that you get is really going to be hard to find. Once you get used to what K word does, no one else will provide that kind of stuff for you. Um, and so, uh, we, we like to give you this visual of those who have been with us for a long time, because, uh, if you want an accounting for K works record, I think it speaks for itself in a way when you look at how long some of those people have been there. And then you even have, look at all the charter members that have been there since the day that K-Work came into existence. So K-Work has retained people because it does what it says it will do. And that's one of the main reasons why it retains so many members. This page, we like to leave this here because I like to remind you that K-Work truly only exists because of its members. Really important fact, because if Bull didn't exist, there'd be no K-Work. So when K-Work is your workers' comp company, you not only get a workers' compensation company, but you also get a service. You also get somebody who's going to come to your county, who's going to care about your county. My pops went to community college here before he went to K state. So, I mean, I've got my mom's from Cedarvale and my dad's from Great Bend. So from out in this direction, and we love Kansas, we love all the counties in Kansas. And that's 1 of the main reasons why we put this page here is because we want to remind everybody that the only reason that we're here is because of our members. So. With that, do we do we have questions so far? And the test will be in just a few moments. It's multiple choice. Yeah, select the best answer. Multiple answers may be correct. Yeah, I know that's a ton of information, and we don't expect you necessarily to remember all of that right off the top. But what we want to do is we want to get in your mind, and we want you to think about us when you're getting ready to go shopping, okay, about somebody who will come out and take care of you.

I do have a question. So if there is a claim, how does that,

does it work yeah like a quick summer you don't have to take me through each step but how does that flow so that's the best part about like amanda and jenny yeah what we do once you come on with k work is they will establish that relationship with you and your county you pick up the phone and call okay um that's the other great thing about k work is like if you call our office it's not an automated message for one and for two you're only looking for like nine people It's not like there's some gigantic corporate office somewhere where there's a bunch of people you don't know that are running numbers. It's just a company that if you need Nicole, you can call Nicole and she'll answer the phone. You have really good access to the underwriter, to the claims adjusters. Like I said, Amanda and Jenny may be some of the best at what they do that I've ever known.

We get compliments all the time on their communication, their promptness, getting back with people. And we've had some members that, you know, have gone with private insurance and struggled with that. It was a different person every time they called or the left hand didn't know what the right was doing. You know, it's Amanda and Jenny with us and that's who you get and they're good.

And what they'll do with you if you'd like is set up a provider. So we have a system. So when somebody gets injured, we know exactly what happens. We know where they go. She knows where they go. She has an Amanda. And so you really, she might already even know that if they've already been to the hospital before the stuff has even come in. So that's the great part about it is, is you're only dealing with so few people. There's not a lot of webs going everywhere. That's what I really like. So claims are super direct.

Super direct. Yeah. And if you think of any questions as you look stuff over, our contact information is on the cover and then the last page in there. So please feel free to reach out. And again, we thank you for your time. Thank you for having us and letting us tell you a little bit about pooling and K-Work.

Do you guys get a percentage or a flat rate?

We're just, we don't, like commission-wise, we don't.

Well, I mean, what's constant?

Oh, it's just a flat rate. You're billed in December for the next year, a premium invoice based largely on the county size or overall payroll, and then something called your experience mod, which comes from this third party.

I understand.

Yeah, yeah. And the two kind of join together, and then you get your typical invoice in December. Gotcha.

Yeah.

Do you know how many counties? that you guys have. So we were previously with K Camp and K Work shortly after I think I came on, went back into the market. Are most of your counties K Camp, K Work or do you have, is it not uncommon for there just to be a K Work and then private on them?

Most of them go with both pools. They have 87. We have 88. I want to say they're sitting there. 82, 85, something right in there. Just because same reasons, the most competitive pricing you're going to get and great services that other insurance companies just don't provide. But when we do it together as both pools, counties often see tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings, depending on the size of the county.

Especially with the partnership. that's why both of them will stick together a lot of times are they coming in um i haven't been contacted yet i think he just happened to be in the area he wanted to be in here it was a paperwork nightmare for our employees so that's the main reason we got rid of because the clerk was doing all the paperwork and sending it to him it just wasn't worth it

I got you. I will say this. The page is turned over there. They have a new executive director or CEO as of about eight months ago. Some new team members. They're wonderful. His name is Ken Canning, and I can put you in contact with him if you'd like. He can call you later today if you'd like. But he's great. He's easy to deal with, makes himself very available. And so I just don't want you to have the impression that it's the same as it was five, eight years ago. It's not. Things have changed there, too.

Some of those are reasons why somebody like Ken Canning is now available.

It was quite the hassle.

What's been great about the recent partnership with KCamp, the working relationship, I should say, is much more proper way to say it. The working relationship with them is just wonderful with Ken. He's very involved and also very open to us calling and saying, hey, we don't like this kind of thing going on with KCamp, and you can call us and tell us the same thing. And he's open to having a conversation and talking with you. It's very, very nice.

Yeah, well, thank you again. Stay on your time. Thank you.

I'll send that test in a few minutes. Okay.

Am I sneaking in? Yep. Okay.

Well, gentlemen, I just got a six month

about six month raises basically there's six here uh yes a few of them are or i'm behind on a couple of them that's why they're grouped together but i did i missed some so um get them caught up and then obviously the others are on time but

No, I'll make a motion to give Timothy Thompson his six-month raise from 17 to 18. Joshua Small from 17 to 18. David Sharp from 17 to 18. Brent Smith, 17 to 18. Do you get this million, please? Ryan Russell 1751 to 1851 and Lucas Baldwin from 1751 to 1851.

I'll second the motion but moved in second and we give the road department employees that Rick led up read off the range that they were due for six months all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion carries

stuck here for the next 10 years right sure sure while you're doing that i just inform you that we got uh two lawn tractors down still oh yeah waiting on parts no

You heard anything on the new ones yet?

Nope.

Heard anything on the new mowers?

Nope. Both are saying October.

Where are you going?

Hopefully before the end of the year. They take a little longer. Well, that depends, I guess. One time I had one very quickly.

You make a cup.

She can have them all and I'll collect from her. So we'll get mowing and we'll get to sealing. We are wrapping up, so I think we'll make it off the roads before the heavy corn harvest hits. In fact, I suppose here in the next day or two, we'll be wrapping it up, so.

Sounds good.

We did, oh, you already made cogs.

I can tell you. Saturday morning. They were not going very fast with all the sand on the road.

Yes.

We're not very well liked during this time of year. I imagine that was a little slick. We were all taking it slow. Nobody was doing anything. We will get it broomed off here

We don't like to take it off too quick, especially with these hundred degree. It'll bleed. And so we'd like some remnants there to, to catch that enough tracks in there.

Now they'll take it.

Follow. Yeah.

With Saturday. Yeah. I'd slow down and they'd stick both feet out.

Well, yeah, I even have it. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's why all of our faces.

Well, they were on their way there.

Yeah.

anyhow um anything else for me i don't think so okay yeah i can't do anything about the rain thank you thanks yeah thanks yeah i'll make a motion with improvements from august going forward to 1026 okay we're moving in second we approve the minutes from august 24th all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion carried have we done anything before with this that you could find sessions

since we didn't get the records okay i haven't done anything about it since you didn't get what the records all right pass the records longer 100 plus 10 minute executive session for attorney from my privilege to discuss kkmk work we'll make that motion

I'll second it. We move and second and we go into executive session for 10 minutes to discuss K-Work and K-Camp. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Motion carried. make a motion to come out with checking assessment no action taken oh second they're moving in second we come out of executive session no action taken all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign we're back in open session i'll make a motion to pay the vouchers so we're moving in second we pay the vouchers all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion carries

was it hot in here this morning when you came in it was muggy right the court didn't start screaming yeah they were they were it was pretty good you get 100 people up there it gets steamy pretty quickly when this building is just like a hot like leaving an infant child in a car

unattended it's probably hard telling when it went off over the weekend too yeah yeah i remember last early spring late winter they said the chillers were in good shape yeah they are this is the outside units that we're having issues Oh, okay.

Yeah, and I don't even know. I think some of it's computer. I think some of it's, I don't know.

I think some of it's just been running 24-7 for the last two months straight, like my air conditioner.

Yep. I know what that sounds like.

It shows up on my electric bill, too. Yep.

It certainly did on mine.

Actually, mine was not as high as I thought it was going to be.

It was still pretty high.

certainly wasn't outside doing anything his office stays at a steady 34 degrees

But yeah. Learns. Not too many.

Well, I saw that on the ceiling, 160,000. I saw that. I can't even wait to see my future. It's coming.

Mm hmm.

I heard this morning gas was down two cents, but feeding oil was up 15. So you know that was diesel.

Yeah, they sent me a contract for propane at $100.67.

Yeah. Yeah, but it hasn't changed.

And that's fire.

well we got anything else no i'll make a motion to adjourn to get session out of here no second they're moving second and we adjourned all in terms of