CLARK COUNTY — The Clark County Commissioners picked up where the Clark County Council left off on Monday during a joint meeting Thursday.

Clark County Insurance Agent-of-Record Diane Swank presented health insurance renewal options at the council meeting Monday, but the county’s fiscal body decided to recess its meeting in order to review a proposal to move the county to a self-insured plan.

Clark County’s insurance is set to expire in August and concerns have been voiced about the county being able to cover the costs to continue its insurance program.

Swank explained the option between self-funded insurance and fully-funded insurance is that self-funded insurance gives the county an opportunity to save a substantial amount of money in a “good claims year.”

For a fully-insured program, the entire premium goes to the insurance company and even if it is a “good claims year” the money does not return to the county.

“Based on the past couple of years you would have what we consider good claims,” Swank said.

She presented figures that showed the county, under a fully-insured plan, would total $2.7 million. And in a worst-case-scenario with a self-insured plan the county would pay about $2.63 million, a savings of $62,886.

However, she said if the county hits its expected claims, the amount owed would be closer to more than $2.18 million, which would save the county more than $512,000.

“This is with no significant change to the employees ... and their contribution?” asked Council President Barbara Hollis in confirmation.

Swank said the only changes to the county employee insurance were a higher cost on a premium prescription drug plan and that there would be four, with two being high deductible, plans being offered.

“I view it as the only hope that you have for retaining any money that you would normally have to spend in full premium,” she said, referring to the self-insured plan.

The council approved moving to a self-insured plan by a vote of 4-1, with Councilman Brian Lenfert voting against and Councilmen Chuck Moore and Danny Yost not in attendance.

The commissioners subsequently unanimously approved moving the county insurance to a self-funded program.

Lenfert admitted the first year of a self-funded policy and the potential savings is intriguing, but said he was concerned about the next two to five years of the policy.

He explained that if the county has year in which there are a high number of claims, it will have additional exposure in the next year. With a fully-insured plan the risk is pooled among various entities, so even if there is a bad claims year and the premiums are likely to increase, they are mitigated by the other groups in the insurance pool. The self-insured policy bases all of the premium changes on the county’s claims.

“I think there’s more risk involved when you’re self-insured and Clark County is not in the financial position to take on additional risk,” Lenfert said.



Corden Porter plans

The commissioners also followed-up on a request it made to the council Monday night to appropriate $189,000 to purchase the former Corden Porter building from Greater Clark County School Corp., which was tabled by the council.

Brent Williams, architect with The Estopinal Group, presented a rough draft of a plan to transition the former school building into an annex to the Clark County Government Building.

He said the company has not done an exhaustive investigation of the building, but offered a number of possibilities of what the building could become.

Among the options were converting the building’s gymnasium into a conference center or meeting area, turning areas on the first and second floor into a wellness center and converting several old classrooms into courtrooms or space for small offices that would be available for lease.

In addition, room was considered on the second floor of the building to be used as file storage.

“We have not explored any of the costs yet,” Williams said. “I think right now we’re kind of at a point where we’re just trying to figure out what kind of service we want to go in there. And then once I think we tie that down, I think we can do a better job of coming up with some costs.”

Commissioner Les Young asked Williams to do a cost estimate and break the renovations of the building into phases.

He suggested the first renovation would be a proposal to increase parking on-site to 78 parking spaces and two vestibules that would act as entrances to the building.

Young also asked for a separate breakdown of the cost on renovations to the first floor and the second floor of the building.