001hand over to Dr. Newton. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, as we're still making sense of all of the implications of our recent legislative recali work that was done by the state, uh, Jed uh, has been putting together some uh, a presentation for this evening on the impact that recalibration will have on our reserve funds. and it was complicated enough and extensive enough that we figured we really just ought to bring it into the work session this evening. So um with that I will turn it over to Mr. Cell. >> Great. Thanks Dr. June. Um so as as Dr. Newton mentioned there's still a lot of facets to work through the recalibration bill. Um, we've talked a lot about how the resources are going to be allocated until the coming fiscal year. Um, and I've
002alluded to a little bit of the changes on how we as a district can um, accumulate funds and then spend those accumulated funds in in different manners. And, uh, last spring, you might remember we took a pretty deep dive into our reserve structure. I won't go as in depth um, those particular pieces, but did want to talk about a few things in particular. Uh the first is what is the bill changing when it comes to the reserve funds in our district. Um there are a number of different structures we have as of today that might not work once we fall into the the new law as of July 1st and I wanted to point out where those might require some u some certain changes. Now, uh, this could be anything from fund restructuring mostly around
003the context of our special building funds, and that's always been kind of our common, um, title for our special reserve funds. It's kind of an old historical, uh, title that we gave these funds long before any of us any of us were with the district. But, um, I also wanted to to focus on things like our insurance reserves that we've relied on heavily as a school district over the last few years. uh as well as um a little bit of a new um fund, what we would call an internal service fund. Uh and I'll get into the details on that here in a little bit. It's something that would be new to our district, at least in recent history. Uh but the district did have an internal service fund uh at least a few decades
004ago. Um and then some other actions that we might need to take as we think about how we want to utilize our resources to make sure that we're complying with with the new structures and the new laws that are in place. So, um, to start, and I'm speaking mostly from the the context of the the recalibration bill, uh, there are three statutory changes that drive most of these changes, and I've kind of boiled them down into these three boxes. Uh, the first is our general fund cash reserves. And I'll talk about that here a little bit more in a moment. Um, but as you kind of look at those bulleted um lists under each of these boxes, I'll remind you that um we had a special provision in statute that um essentially drew a line
005um after those uh landmark school finance decisions that any resources a school district like ours had uh within their funds um that came through local tax collections or other means were really kind of hands-off. They were district resources um and they were carried forward. Uh this also included um a pretty big funding error that was made back in 1999 uh where uh there was a court order for school districts to be made whole. Uh those funds along with these pre97 reserves have always been kind of held harmless I guess is one way to put it. Um and they have statutoily not been counted as our reserve. Um and that's the biggest change when it comes to our general funds that that's no longer the case. those funds will will um now count against any reserve
006limitation uh we have as a school district. Now along the kind of general fund cash reserves um explanation is a change in the reserve limit that we are allowed to carry. So up until the end of fiscal year 28 we'll still operate under the 30% reserve limit. Um after that it'll fall 10% down to 20% um for fiscal year ending 29. Now, that might seem like it's a ways away, um, but in the world of school finance, it's pretty close. Um, you can imagine that we don't want to be up against that 30% barrier as we tip into the new year because then you're going to have a very short amount of time to transition. And, um, I will just kind of remind the board that we as a district have never even come close
007to that 30% reserve limit that we had even um, in this kind of temporary status. The highest we've had is roughly 15.2% 2% um kind of on a modified approval basis. So we've always been pretty significant that more. Not that I wouldn't love more resources for us to cash flow, but we just haven't um had that capacity. Um the other point I I think is important is technical corrections for certain model component funding. You had heard me talk about um we used to have the block grant which included transportation and special education and all the other components that go into funding the basket of goods. Well, the special education piece was peeled off a few years back and resourced separately, but they never adjust our reserve. So, we lost about 40% of our reserve capacity
008because that funding kind of broke off from our block grants. Um, thankfully, um, from a policy perspective, those funds are now part of that reserve. So, we're kind of back to where we started, which means that it brings that reserve capacity up a little bit. Uh, the other piece is foundation dollars and capital uses. Um, and this is uh kind of a theme that you see throughout the recal recalibration bill in a number of different areas. Um, but to kind of boil it down is that um these a district may not transfer or expend foundation programming amounts for major building facility repair or replacement or for a project. Um, and then it kind of defines what that looks like. Um, before I get to that second bullet point, um, what this means is that if
009there's any revenue we've receive as a school district that helps fund the basket of goods, it can't be either transfer or used for, uh, things like enhancements. And as as we know as a board that we've um done some great things with um the ad farm and the additional ceiling heights, we are no longer able to use any foundation dollars um for those purposes. Now, um it's a a little bit of a a nuance term um when it comes to foundation dollars, and I'll I'll touch on that here in a moment, but um we also have what I think is a little bit of an unresolved bullet point, if you will, here. Um it says foundation generated dollars already to transfer into a special reserve fund may not be spent for those major capital purposes.
010Um, so we've asked by we a number of school districts have asked the Department of Education on guidance on what happens to the resources that are already in the special building fund that were transferred there under prior law. Um, to this point we haven't got a whole lot of direction on that. Um and as you know we have um contracts um already to go on the the 56 and um the uh ARB elementary and how will we be able to utilize those resources for those are kind of unanswered. Um and then lastly the dedicated buckets um a little the first bullet points a kind of a carryover from um last session. Uh you might remember that um career technical education supplies and materials funding was similar to special education was pulled out of the block
011grant model and funded as a restricted grant if you will. Um that means it was outside of the general fund. Um and with that uh we as a district had to um postpone moving any funds into a CTE special reserve that we have that we had um created back in 2013 to do things like a paying for um a farm trucks and um other CTE equipment that we would need to purchase as a school district that would require um some significant level of outlay. you know those those welders and those type of things are pretty expensive and so we had created a reserve for that. Um well that grant is going to remain as a restricted set aside amount so it won't flow back into the block grant model. Um and I'll I'll show you
012where we are as far as what recommendations on how to handle those resources going forward. Um, and the next bullet point here is that, um, and I won't talk a whole lot about this tonight because I just don't have a good feel on how this will work yet, but uh, the new legislation says a district may establish an instructional reserve account for instructional purposes carryover. Um, so that's the side that we talked about the last time we were able to walk through kind of the recalibration impacts. Those are those restricted funding sources that can't leave. Um if we are not able to use those resources in a single year, that statute allows us to create an instructional reserve account that'll carry over year to year. Um at this point in time, we don't know how
013that'll look um even from an accounting treatments perspective. Um is that going to live within our general fund, outside of our general fund? How can we use those resources? How do we report those resources? Those are all different questions that we're waiting for some some direction on. um a little outside of the reserve conversation today, but I imagine we'll have some conversations on that uh in the near future. Um I want to just kind of remember or excuse me, remind the the board on how we have um two different um terms and when it comes to reserve, uh general fund operating balance or the cash reserve that I've talked mostly about at this point is really uh the easiest way to explain that. That's our checking account balance. um that's what's left in our checking
014account as of June 30th that we use to capital things like payroll and purchases and federal grants. It's the money that we need just to operate. Um and that's its own separate reserve um if you will. Really what it is is just um the bank account balance um when we end the fiscal year. The next one is the special reserve fund and that's the one that um is synonymous to special building fund and those are restricted for uh very specific or emergency purposes and those have two different statutes associated with them and I will hit the first one um and then go a little bit more into detail on the special reserve funds as we kind of talk about what the structure might look like going forward. So, um, starting with that checking account balance,
015if you will, the cash reserves, uh, we're budgeted to end the current fiscal year about $42.1 million. So, that's essentially that the board is not obligated. That's what we have towards purchases or uh, purchase orders and encumbrances. Uh, and again, that's just a an estimate on where we'll end the current year at. of that 42.1 million, that pre97 balance that I talked about earlier, which includes that kindergarten payment, is just shy of 4.2 million. And that's what's carried forward ever since um 1997. Now, um there's a couple of things and a number of different options that we were exploring and looking into. Ultimately, we have a recommendation that you'll see when we have future board action in the meetings to come. But, um it's going to bleed over into Another aspect of school finance that
016we're working on, and you've heard me talk about before, um, is a self-funded employee health plan, and I won't get us too far into the weeds on on that tonight. Um, we're working feverishly on the the finance and payroll side on, um, structuring a self funded insurance plan. Uh, and we'll have more details. As a matter of fact, I spent a good portion of today working on some of the logistics on that. Um, but what that does is necessitate an internal service fund. um which is an accounting term for um a proprietary fund that's similar to our enterprise fund like what we have for nutrition services. The difference is is that it's really services that we provide ourselves as a local government as opposed to other external parties. Um, you see internal service funds primarily
017used for things like health insurance because we're providing that service to our district employees whether they're federally funded, nutrition services, general funded. Um, it's kind of a a centralized um processing of of those costs. Um, you also see it for like fleet um services in cities and um sometimes financial services where you kind of centralize those services to different departments and um pieces of the entity. Um, we did have an internal service fund and we still do. Um, as a matter of fact, it's still codified in our board policies that funds for utilization lists an internal service fund. We just haven't had to use one since the last time the district was selfunded and that was uh the early 2000s um when when we operationalized that fund in particular. Um but before I kind of
018talk about what that proposed action um is really seeking to address is that um we have um a a very significant task in front of us and that is managing our health insurance costs. Um I would tell you that that's probably one of the most most important things that we can address from a financial perspective going forward. Uh self-funding again without getting us too far off onto a self-unding pageant and kind of falling into the administration of a a health plan um allows us to have better cost controls. Um we can do cost containment strategies, lower administrative costs, we can retain our investment earnings for our health insurance plan as a whole. It's just a better fit for our district and it's very pivotal um if we're going to start controlling some of our costs
019um on the health health insurance. Um and it's exacerbated by the fact that um we're having very significantly reduced health insurance revenue into the funding. Um I think I you heard me say the last time we talked about recalibration is is near a third of our um health insurance resources will be eliminated. Um so you can see that the timing is is is certainly imperative at this point. Um, and when we're talking about the risk side of it, and I put it here a little bit in the the district context side, is that um, there's certainly an option to leave these pre97 funds within the general fund, but the risk is the minute we exceed that reserve limit, those funds can be recaptured, um, and never a resource back to the school district. Um, I
020had a colleague uh, from another school district that I think uh, put it the best way was that these funds have already been ran through the school finance system once. Um and to have those recaptured is really um just a loss of resources that the district has um held uh from before the funding model as it exists today uh was was envisioned. So um the proposed action that um you'll see in the coming meetings and uh couple months is uh that we would propose to move that that legacy pre97 amount into the employee health internal service fund. Um and it's really two points. Uh the first is to address those cost structures that um we need. But the other one is just from a cash flow perspective on a health insurance fund. Um as we
021transition from our fully insured plan with our provider um we'll have run out on the old plan um which they'll retain resources uh to pay out those costs um up to about six months and then they'll they'll re uh reconcile those figures and see if we need they need to retain even more funds. So that means if we move into a self-funded program, we need resources right away. we will start having uh claims um invoicing within the first few weeks of July. Uh what this does is it gives us seed money for that process. Um and those resources go to the benefit of our employees. Um if we don't utilize that full 4.1 million, it'll offset future rate increases. So it's really got a double benefit. It helps us cash flow that transition into a
022self funded model and it also allows us to do some rate stabilization with those resources as they move into that. Um I'll pause there a little bit because the next conversation I'm going to shift gears a little bit on us and move into kind of the special reserve fund structure. So by moving that 4.1 one million into the employee internal service fund it's not at risk then I mean it we can put it in that fund and it it can link there. >> That's correct. So it wouldn't be um it wouldn't be caught in that the calculation of those reserve limits >> at all. >> Correct. Correct. That's that's first and there there will be some um some steps that we need to take budget amendments, transfer rules, those type of things if if that's
023the direction we ultimately go. >> Okay, so now we're kind of shifting away from the checking account and um a little bit more into detail on our special reserve fund. Um this is the slide that we ran over last spring when I was kind of explaining the structure. Um, all of these are like sub funds, maybe earmarking, if you will, within our special reserve fund that are intended to meet very specific needs. Uh, I won't go through all of these. Um, I'll point out a few. By the way, these these account balances um are as are as of the end of last fiscal year. So, those have certainly changed um and continue to change before we we finished the year. But a couple of them that you're going to see me talk about in a
024little bit more detail um are going to be the CTE reserve that I mentioned earlier uh technology reserve a little bit um the insurance contingency fund and then these two funds together and the reason this one is gray is that they've um been co-mingled since the special building fund existed. I'll talk about how those funds got into the special building fund. Um but these ones in particular um are going to be the focus of um some s suggestions on how we can restructure these. Um I will point out we have the music reserve fund that has been um used to fund things like uniforms and um instrument purchases and cleaning and repair. Um we'll continue to evaluate that fund. It's got a cap on it about $300,000 um and make sure that it still fits
025within of our financial planning um and come back to you if if we see some changes are necessary. But at this point in time, we won't have any particular changes to recommend that that fund. So, um maybe starting with the CTE reserve fund, the current balance is $92,189. Uh this fund has a cap of $125,000. Um I'd mentioned earlier that we suspended any transfers into that fund uh for the current year until we could figure out um where the state might go with the the CTE supplies and materials grant. Now, since it is a restricted grant, um, and we can only use the money that comes through that grant for those purposes, if we were able or excuse me, if we were to start utilizing this $92,000, it would never count towards compliance because it's
026not a part of the grant that we received in the current year. It was just kind of legacy money that existed before. Um and and candidly um it doesn't really fit with what we feel is um the district's overall plan on how we want to uh address these larger capital outlays with supplies and materials for CTE within the grant that we receive as a district. We feel that we can manage some of those larger purchases within those funds and we have and will continue to utilize Perkins where necessary for some of these more innovative purchases federal grants if you will. Um but we do feel that this is the best option would be to close the CTE reserve fund and transfer that remaining balance into the appointment or the technology reserve. Um and in a
027sense just completely close this account out. The other option that you'll notice here on the district context side is if it was to move back to the general fund um same issue. It wouldn't count towards compliance with that that grant. Um even if I moved it into the grant, these are separate monies that just wouldn't meet that purpose. So, uh, from a compliance standpoint, there's just really not a need for these funds. Um, and that would be our recommendation on this particular, uh, the next one is the special building fund. Um, which, uh, has a very necessary role to play. Uh, but now we have very different governance principles with the new law. Uh before I get into the changes and how we might um make these these structural um changes and how these funds
028operate, I just remind you that these are funds that didn't just come from transfers from our block grant. As a matter of fact, these funds um really um for the most part started when uh the district would have um the sale of land um bring gamble decisions as well as um excess delinquent tax collections when we would issue bonded debt. um when you pay off your your bond, sometimes you have tax collections that come in after the the timing of that that refunding or that that bond is paid and those funds were directed by the boards at the time to go into the special building fund. And so those would be funds that are not a part of the block grant or school foundation dollars. Um now the the hard part is is it's very
029difficult outside of interest earnings and land sales for us to distinguish what those funds were. This fund existed probably since the school district was able to bond. So, um, decades and decades and decades. So, um, it's it's almost comingled in a way that we wouldn't be able to tell how much it was just block grant dollars, how much of it was non-leacy foundation dollars. Um, I mentioned here that it's kind of a mixed reserve and it functions in a number of ways. Um, capital planning for things like enhancements was certainly one of them. um cash flowing things like our um recreation district reimbursement timing is is an important uh service that this fund provides. So um just to remind the board uh the rec district operating independently as the governing board approves projects then we
030utilize the expertise of our planning and construction team to um go out for bid on those projects and project manage those um and then ultimately expend those and that's why those motions come to you as a board and then the recreation district would pay the district back those projects once they were um near or at completion and I'll talk about how we we intend to address that. Um and then just another note certainly there are some foundation transfers over the the last few years um 10 15 20 that have allowed us to do a lot of these um projects as well. So um a couple of things too that I would um point out maybe for reference later is that the uh the new law still allows some funding to go into these special reserve
031funds uh specifically non-foundation dollars. What that means are resources that aren't counted towards our block grant. Things like half of the interest earnings now um rebates from credit cards or refunds of prior year expenditures. Uh and probably the next biggest one being indirect costs from the federal grants. Those are outside of the calculation for our block grant. So those that do come into the general fund um are allowable transfers that could still go towards these funds, but signi significantly less than what we used to be able to to move when the general funds were um not restricted. >> Yeah, that if we were to sell some of the buildings that are coming offline or on them, does that count towards our foundation dollars? >> Um our pre97 buildings would not. um and press the you'll
032actually see um as we kind of structure our recommendations on what kind of on our funds going forward how that might provide those resources into this fund. So, the short answer would be um we would propose that when we restructure our special building fund that it would um it would accept the resources and proceeds for those pre97 sales um to help build up um what I'm going to keep calling corpus um so that we would have the interest earnings that would be available for expenditure. >> So, the building itself is pre97, not the sale itself. the the the the building and or land as long as it's pre97, we could we could record those revenue in a in a special reserve. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Currently, absolutely. Um when we look way down
033the road um when we start looking at Yeah. new buildings, but certainly the ones at least in current conversations are um so what we would envision is kind of a a reauthorization of these um special building or special reserve funds and I'm going to try to start um moving to the new nomenclature but uh using the old here a little bit uh is we would have the special building fund which would um represent a board restricted preservation reserve. Uh so um I was talking about treating as a corpus not to the extent that it's a legal trust but um in order for us to utilize those resources we would preserve the existing balance um we wouldn't bring any foundation deposits and this is appropriately by law uh non-foundation land proceeds that you just mentioned trusted
034ashby would would go into this fund any of those local revenues that are still allowable um and those earnings are retained unless the board specifically authorizes appropriation on Um, so we would we would build that fund over time um until some of those appropriations are needed for projects that uh would fit within the allowability of that fund. >> But half those earnings have to go in lose half those earnings though, right? The interest earnings. >> Great question trust. U fortunately these are outside of the general fund clawback on the interest. So these would be able to be retained within this fund. >> Okay. >> Yeah. But the the revenue that can come into it um is is impacted by that on the general fund side. >> The other piece of it too um would be
035to spin off the recreation district uh portion of that kind of mixed purpose fund and create a clearing account. Um and what this would do is reimburse the district for those administered projects that the planning construction team does. Um but in order to do that, instead of using what the resources used to be built up on this side, uh there would be a temporary advance um or a revolving loan. Um and what where those resources come from um ideally would be from the recreation district. It is a separate authorizing board. Um, I certainly can't speak to um whether this would be approved or not, but uh what I would envision is um a portion of our our agency funds, which are our our recreation district funds being advanced so that we could fund these projects
036and reconcile those out. So, we're still using the recreation board's funds on a kind of a loan basis from from an agency fund into a special building fund. Um >> yeah, certainly, absolutely. Trust me. Um it's it's an interesting one that we're working through. Um we feel this is better than just using our reserve fund as a checking account and this would uh keep all the interest earnings staying within the new special building fund. Um the rec district wouldn't be able to benefit from those interest earnings or anything like that. U the other piece of this kind of new architecture is the insurance loss reserve fund. Now um this has been a very important fund for us. I think we created it um maybe four four or five years ago. Um this year is a
037good example. We were able to respond to those major hail and wind losses that we had on vehicles and those type of things. And what's important is that bill is specific to major building um maintenance and and structures, not minor. So, um, this fund could potentially be used things for like low deductible costs, like if we have broken windows or something like that that we wouldn't be able to file an insurance claim for. Um, equipment losses, just like when we we lost a number of the white fleet vehicles with the with the hail damage, those type of things. As a matter of fact, later tonight, you'll have a an agenda item that um ties directly into that um and using those foundation amounts that have already gone into that fund. Now, there's going to have
038to be ongoing discussions on major insured losses. To give you the the reader digest version of this, um you know, in an effort to control our property um insurance costs that continue to rise, uh we had to get away from lower deductible plans for our property loss. Um and we're carrying about a 1% shred value as the deductible on our our building. So, we can imagine that a roof replacement, most of that money is going to fall on the district. Um, I've looked into uh buy down policies to bring that deductible down and it gets out of reach pretty quick. Um, to even bring our policies into half a million or a quarter million dollar deductible, we're looking at spending three, four, five, 600,000 more a year on property insurance. So, um, when we initially
039created this fund, it was to cover those um, large deductibles. Um, working with Mr. NAP and and others will will have to look to um the state to how they can backs stop those those major hail events because as it stands right now the language that prohibits the transfer and the the expenditure of capital construction would prohibit us for even using the general fund to cover some of these major insured losses. So we're kind of stuck in our place on how we're going to to deal with that. Um and living in Hail Alley is something that we have to do. >> What is that? What is the thought behind that? I mean, what what did the legislators think we're going to do? I mean, we have to be able to function and repair our buildings
040and >> the statement was you have insurance for that. We're going to listen to the fact that >> I know, but if we can't insurance that they're recommending that we get, then we have to ask for, you know, I mean, it just makes no sense. >> Well, and that's really kind of where we're struggling. um even if if like we're able to utilize a portion of our major maintenance that we receive, that means that there's less major maintenance for projects that Mr. Nap and his team need to completed. So um conceivably if we were able to earmark a portion of our major maintenance so means those are funds that we can't use to maintain our buildings um subject to waiting for a hail event that we would need to tap into those. Um and we'll
041look into other options as far as emergency funds, but there's a lot of steps there. We're a little unique because of the size of our district. Um, and quite frankly, just the risk factor that comes with our district in particular and a few others in our area to it's going to be a problem that we have to sort of figure out some solutions for. >> Is there an option if some there's a male major hail? Is there an option to go back to the state legislature and request additional funding for stuff like this? Yeah, Trusty Burn, I think um we we're exploring the the possibility going to the school facilities division for those emergency requests um if we have a major events or something like that. So, um here's a quick summary of what the
042reserve structure might look if we were to to complete a lot of these changes. Um you'll notice we're less one um fund which was the CTE reserve. um a little change in the the nomenclature like I mentioned um we would have the minor insurance loss reserve uh which would cover those property loss expenditures for non-building related um costs as well as this legacy capital reserve fund. Um and that's really that kind of interestbearing account that would u provide additional um proceeds for appropriation and then the the recreation district project clearing fund which would um help address those um those projects that we need to manage the school district and then have that resource available to us. Uh, candidly, the reason that um I think it's important that we spend these off is that um I
043don't want to have any question that as we're spending recreation district money on things like capital facilities that it's in any type of violation of those new those new laws. So, this would keep those separate and distinct and I think in a better position. >> J. >> Yes. To me, it's interesting that the music reserve I mean that there's a separate category of the music reserve from equipment reserve. There's lots in there. So, what was the thinking behind that? >> Yeah. Um Trusty Cook, I think the the main um thinking behind that was that it was a fund that has existed for 20 15 20 years. Um and it was um created before this equipment reserve was developed. Uh this gives uh the the music coordinators a little bit more flexibility on some of those
044costs um and allows us to budget for those. How that that particular fund is um built up is through contributions from my budget, the music coordinator at each of the schools and that's how those funds have been allocated. And trusty cook my my history with this um the like choir ropes for example it's a cost that buildings you know buildings can't save their money because general fund money recycles every year and so it's also a cost they don't need very often but when you need it you need a lot of money and so it was an ability to pull money um into that account because when we do make purchase in that music reserve. It's usually a pretty high dollar amount. Choir robes for 100 kids. Um it so it was a way to make
045sure that we were saving year by year for an event that only happens happens very infrequently. But the year you need it, you need it >> because under the reserve there's athletic uniforms. You think the same thinking would go towards that as well? Yeah, Trusty Cook. Um, good point. I I think, um, the idea was that it allowed the music coordinator to create that that rotation cycle that that Dr. Newton's mentioning that we know that one of the high schools will need them this year and they could manage those funds. Um, and that's part of the ongoing review that we'll we'll continue with is if if this maybe is a better fit within this equipment reserve, we'll continue to look at it and see where where the the future of that fund might go. So
046to summarize the the actions that you'll see um coming from from my department over the coming months uh would be first to formalize the transition to the self-funded health plan. Um this is going to require some work not only um establishing that internal service fund um but developing a a third party administrator agreement. Um there's a lot of implementation documents around this. Uh we stop loss insurance all the things that we need to to manage our our health benefits plan will be a part of what you see in the coming months. Uh the the next one you'll see here is that move the pre97 balance into that health service fund. So those are uh tied together. Uh we just talked about what that amount would look like and this is going to help again with
047that claims volatility and those reserve needs. Um, and I just mentioned here that it'll require some budget amendments uh to make that happen. Um, close the CTE reserve, transfer the balance, um, and we'll look and evaluate where those funds would be needed most, whether that's in the regular equipment budget or the technology fund. And then that combined special reserve reauthorization that would uh, align our insurance loss reserve fund with that new language and authorize that clearing account from the recreation district. Um, I know I keep saying that over the next couple months, but um, it occurs to me that we only have a handful of meetings before leading to the fiscal year until early budget development. Um, so we'll likely be working quickly. A lot of pieces. Um, we'll try to parse them out and
048certainly provide more context and depth and detail as needed on those, but that's really kind of the road map how we're going to get into compliance with a lot of these changes. So, Madam Chair, I'm happy to address any other questions. Any questions? >> And do all these things have to happen before we vote on the budget? >> Trust Engle. Yes. As a matter of fact, I um so we're ready to go on the selfunding plan. Um you'll likely see approvals for us in the coming meetings for that soft loss insurance carrier. We have to have those ready to go and in place. Jed to administer the self-funded employee health. Are you gonna have to bring on more people or how will that look practically? >> Um, another question. Um, Trusty Clawson, we feel that
049between the finance staff that we have the capacity to to run the program. Part of the the the gap that we needed to fill was that um assistance from our our health insurance consultants that we brought on about a year ago. they've been doing a lot of behind the scene work to help us get ready for this. Um, for the most part for our employees, it's going to seem seamless. Um, so at least for the next year, we'll still have the same carrier. Um, the plan will likely have some changes, but for the most part, um, an employee won't know if we're self-unded or fully insured. Uh, even our benefits team on the human resources side shouldn't be heavily impacted. It's mostly going to be on the operation side on the financial pieces of paying
050claims, shopping that stop-loss insurance, um reconciling our payments. Um all those things will will be done within the the capacity we currently have. >> Questions chair, that is it for our work session topic this evening. >> Thanks. >> No, thank you Jeff. Um it is 5:40 and um I'll add our work session.