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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPub Prop Feb 25, 20151 PUBLIC PROPERTY COMMITTEE February 25, 2015 The Public Property Committee of the Grant County Board of Supervisors met on Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at 9:00 a.m. in Room 266 of the Administration Building, Lancaster, WI pursuant to the previous meeting of January 28, 2015. The meeting was called to order by John Beinborn, Vice Chair at 9:03 a.m., Carol Beals, Chair came shortly after the call to order. The County Clerk, Linda K. Gebhard verified that the meeting was in compliance with the open meeting law posted in three places and published on the County Web Site. Members present: Carol Beals, Dwight Nelson, Donald Splinter, Vern Lewison, Dale Hood, and John Beinborn. Lester Jantzen had asked to be excused. Robert Keeney, County Board Chair was also present. Agenda: Dale Hood, seconded by Vern Lewison, made a motion to approve the amended agenda as written. Motion carried. Minutes: Dwight Nelson, seconded by Don Splinter, moved to approve the January 28, 2015 minutes as written. Motion carried. Correspondence: Linda K. Gebhard, County Clerk shared with the committee two requests that had been relayed to the County Clerk’s Office. Don Splinter, seconded by Dwight Nelson, made a motion to approve the request for the Lancaster Jaycees to use the Courthouse Lawn on Saturday, March 28, 2015 to hold their annual Easter Egg Hunt. Motion carried. John Beinborn, seconded by Don Splinter, made a motion to approve the request to use the Courthouse Lawn as a designated site in at Geocaching Event. This event can be tracked on the internet to determine how many hits the site got and track how many visitors came to the site. In one year the committee will revisit this arrangement to monitor how many people visited the site in that time if changes need to be made the committee can alter the arrangement. The committee also approved a second site location at Orchard Manor contingent on the approval of the Orchard Manor committee. Motion carried. Insurance: Jenna Goodrich from A.J. Gallagher reported the claims had been reviewed; one open claim she will be checking on. Jenna suggested training on patient handling may be needed, she will report back to the committee in March. Randy Peterson, TRICOR, all looks good. Randy discussed the Local Government Property Insurance Fund that is mentioned in the 2015 Governor’s Budget that could be discontinued. He stated that the replacement coverage the fund supplies the Townships, Villages, Schools and County would be hard to beat and suggested that correspondences be sent to the legislators. Brent Straka, TRICOR, reported that on February 8th IRS released the rules and regulations of the Affordable Care Act. TRICOR has been working with carriers who will need to supply the employee tax information with appropriate statements for accurate reporting on this program. The Personnel Department will be working with TRICOR to make sure all the needed documentation is reported correctly to avoid any fines. There will have to be a system put into place as to who supplies the needed data because now every employee, spouse and dependent will need to be tracked, the cost will be 2 different for each recipient based on their usage; what format will be used to collect and store this new data that will need to be reported, and what forms will be needed to be supplied to the employees. This tracking will have to be a high level of coordination because each individual HRA payment per person will have to be tracked and these amounts will all be different. Excised Tax was touch on which is scheduled to come effective in 2018; the law was put into place in 2010 with no escalators in place for future cost. The law states if the employer’s cost for health insurance premiums are over a certain level there would be a tax placed on those dollars. They are waiting to see how the legislators translate this law for implementation currently. Carol Beals asked a question on the possibility that will there be less money available at the Federal level. Brent explained that because Wisconsin has used a Federal Exchange instead of making their own, in the event that the terms are stated that it is not legal for recipients of Wisconsin to receive a subsidy or benefits, those people could get kicked out of the exchange. This could mean that there would be a large percent of people not having Health Insurance coverage. The impact to the county that Brent can see is those people who would be kicked out of those subsidy programs such as Badger Care; the county would have to pick up these people on the County Health Insurance Plan. Courthouse and Administration Building Maintenance: Linda K. Gebhard, County Clerk reported that all is working well in the Administration Building and Courthouse at this time; no major issues have been reported. Update on Courthouse Renovation: Robert Kinney stated that 95% to 99% of the stone has been set at this time. Bamr is still working on the new deadline list. Scaffolding will be completely down by the end of this week. The cleaning process will continue in the spring. By March the awarding of the bid for the jet crete process will be decided. April 15th is the date set for the workers to be back on the job. July 15, 2015 is still the completion date projected. There has been no further progress from the structural engineer who has been invited to inspect the Courthouse and submit a two phase recommendation for installing a flag on the Courthouse dome. Robert Keeney stated that there are other options being looked into for a flag to be installed on the dome. Carol Beals asked that this issue be placed on the agenda for the March meeting to further explore the options. Courthouse Video Conferencing: Jeff Anderson, Information Technology Director, reported that some new cameras had been installed at the Sheriff’s location; they have done some work on the second and third floor internet connections in the Courthouse. A new link was installed on the Administration Building point to point wireless on the 11th of February; all seems to be working between all the sites for the video conferencing. To date, no issues have been experienced. Administration Building Internet Connection: Jeff Anderson gave the committee a short overview of how all the facilities in the county are connected currently in receiving their internet service. All the facilities of Grant County are linked to the Administration Building via the towers for internet. There have been problems with tree interference making the service very slow at Orchard Manor, Social Services and the Highway facilities. Currently this system costs the county $525.00 per month supplying 5 mega bits per second. This system is very slow and does not service all the facilities in the most effective way. Jeff gave the committee an alternative that he would like to go forward on. The Wisconsin Internet Network (WIN) Company has installed a new fiber line underground into the City of Lancaster. This company is very strong in the northern part of the state, services hospitals, schools, etc. Jeff has heard nothing but good about the company. Jeff would like to link into this fiber line at Elm Street to connect onto the Administration Building. Jeff would leave the old system in place that can be 3 used as a back-up in case the new system would go down. The cost would be $1500.00 one time set up fee to connect and $1,000.00 per month to increase to 100 mega bits per second for a 5 year contract (60 months). There will also be a maintenance agreement that will be in place that WIN will service the equipment, within so many hours of a service call, if issues are encountered. This would increase the IT budget to an additional $475.00 per month which Jeff stated he will be using some carryover funds to pay for this added service for the remainder of 2015. Jeff feels this upgrade would benefit all county facilities with much faster internet service. Carol Beals suggested to Jeff Anderson to look into the possibility to have each department who will be receiving this faster service to help pay for a portion of the cost. Vern Lewison, seconded by Dwight Nelson, made a motion to approve an upgrade for IT to connect into the fiber cable made available by the Wisconsin Internet Network (WIN) Company for a cost of $1500.00 on time set up fee, $1,000.00 per month for a five year contract. Motion carried. IT LTE: Jeff Anderson, Information Technology Director, requested approval from the committee to hire an LTE position for the remainder of 2015 for 28 hour per week. At the end of 2015 Jeff will dissolve the 28 hour per week position and implement a full time position for 2016. The total cost to the county for this position would be $19,644.00 for a period of 03/31/2015 to 12/31/2015. Jeff stated that he does have this additional cost available in his IT carryover money if need be for the remainder of 2015. In 2016 he will work the cost for a full time IT position into his budget, at that time the projected cost will be $59,065.00 with a start date of 01/20/2016. John Beinborn, seconded by Vern Lewison, made a motion to approve the hiring of an LTE for IT for 28 hours per week, at a cost of $19,644.00. Motion carried. Request for $13,410.00 from General Fund for IT LTE: Jeff Anderson, Information Technology Director, submitted a request for the committee’s recommendation to approve the sum of $13,410.00 be taken out of the General Fund for assistance to the IT Department for the additional cost for an LTE position for the remainder of 2015. John Beinborn, seconded by Don Splinter, made a motion to send to the Executive Committee for their recommendation regarding the request made by IT for an amount $13,410.00 being taken out of the General Fund for assistance in financing the LTE position for IT for the remainder of 2015. Motion carried. Public Comments: None Adjournment: Dwight Nelson, seconded by John Beinborn, made a motion to adjourn the meeting pursuant to the next meeting on March 25, 2015 at 9:00 a.m. Motion carried.