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Merit Appeals Board <br />April 26, 2021 <br />take a look to see what the economy is, looks like, and the only issue that re -open would be for <br />salaries. <br />So, UPW ratified that. Two of the HGEA units ratified that proposal as well. One unit rejected <br />our proposal, so there will be further negotiations with them. And then, we're currently <br />negotiating with SHOPO and Fire those same proposals are on the table for each of those units. <br />And then, the final item is—we're just finishing up our open enrollment with EUTFmedical <br />premiums and benefits. And that will end at the end of April. And, right now, it's kind of <br />interesting. The prevalent plan for most of our employees is the 75/25 plan, which is a new plan <br />that the State started offering about two or three years ago. <br />The premiums are really incredibly low. For example, the HMSA 90/10 for a family plan is <br />roughly about approximately 1,500.00 a month, whereas the 75/25 plan is about $280.00 a month <br />for the same plan. And so, with that—the employees seem to have gravitated to that plan. It's, <br />currently, the most popular plan. It probably has to do with the price, the out-of-pocket monthly <br />expenditures. So, we'll see how that goes. <br />The reason that's important is because the most popular plan selected by our employees set the <br />basis for the Employer package. And for the longest time the HMSA 80/20 plan was the most <br />popular plan. So, that was the plan we based our negotiations—on its amount of premiums the <br />Employer would pay going forward. And that was where that percentage came from. And so, it <br />seems like probably next year or the year after we'll be gravitating to the 75/25 percent plan <br />premiums. So, we'll see how that goes, but I don't foresee any real significant changes with that, <br />right now. <br />We still are doing a lot of recruitments. There's a lot of requests. With the budget submittals <br />and the discussions we've been seeing and hearing through the various departments and the <br />council—we're anticipating come July 1st there'll be a number of new positions that will be <br />coming forward, which is understandable. We're just prepping for that. <br />We thought we'd, kind of, see a lull in the actual recruitment from now until then, but contrary to <br />what I thought, the numbers are still pretty much the same. What I think it is and what's playing <br />a major role is that the baby boomers are coming of age. So, it started about five/six years ago, <br />we've seen increased retirements and that hasn't slowed. I think we're going to continue to see <br />that going forward where our employees are able to qualify for retirement benefits and they're <br />taking advantage of it. I'm not sure if the pandemic, the way that people started thinking that life <br />is—maybe it changed some peoples' priorities. We're continuing to see that. We're still getting <br />a lot of retirements going forward and we're having to fill those positions. And, of course, as <br />someone retires, somebody gets promoted then we're backfilling on the promotion. So, it's a <br />never-ending cycle. So, contrary to what I thought, we're still pretty busy with the recruitment <br />aspect of things. <br />And we just celebrated our office Administrative Professionals Day last week. I have a <br />tremendous staff. There's no way we could be nearly as successful as we are as a department or <br />Page 7 <br />