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6. Change Effective Date for Health Insurance Plan and All other Benefits - Indian River County is cognizant of the ever rising costs of health insurance and works very hard in order to offer our employees a quality insurance product, yet still keeps the premiums reasonable for both the County and the Employee. The health benefit plan is offered to all eligible permanent employees who normally work 30 hours or more per week. There is currently a thirty (30) day "open enrollment window" during which a new hire may enroll in the health insurance plan. Failure to enroll during this thirty (30) day window which begins upon date of hire may mean that the employee has forfeited enrollment until the next open enrollment period. The current system places a significant administrative burden on the agencies (County & Constitutional Officers) in processing new hires and enrolling them in the medical plan and all other benefits within the 30 day window. Therefore, staff recommends changing the effective date of coverage to the first day of the month following sixty (60) days of full-time employment. In addition to reducing the administrative burden, this will provide a moderate amount of savings to the health plan. Based upon 10% turnover, the annual savings from this change would be about $150,000 per year. This change will only impact new hires. 7. Employer Premium Adjustment — For fiscal year 2016/17 budgeting purposes, the employer premium has been increased by $150/month for both Single Coverage and Family Coverage. This adjustment provides additional funding of approximately $2.4 million based upon the current number of budgeted employees (including Constitutional Officers). - If all of the measures are approved, the employer premium increase could be reduced to $100/month, which would reduce the financial strain on the proposed FY 2016/17 budget for County departments and Constitutional Officers. 8. OPEB Advance Funding - While OPEB costs are accounted for separately from Health Insurance Costs, the two items are interrelated. For instance, the OPEB Trust provides funding for a portion of retiree healthcare expenses. Last year, the OPEB Trust contributed $1.9 million to the Health Insurance Fund. If not for the OPEB Trust contribution, the loss in the Health Fund would have been substantially larger. Staff is proposing that an additional advance payment be made into the OPEB Trust Fund. This would reduce the amount of the required OPEB contribution going forward. Based upon our actuarial valuation, for each additional $10 contribution this year, annual contributions would be reduced by $1 going forward, meaning that the County would realize a reduction of about 10% of the additional amount contributed. Staff proposes making an advance contribution to the OPEB Trust in the amount of $9 million. This would reduce the annual required contribution by approximately $900,000. It should be noted that based upon the most recent actuarial valuation, the ARC is increasing by about $400,000 for next year. Therefore, the net effect of this would mean a reduction of about $500,000 in ARC, which would offset the increase in healthcare costs. This would provide additional relief for the FY 2016/17 budgets for County departments and Constitutional Officers to offset (partially) the increase in health insurance costs. 242