2. Preliminary budget approval - Laserfiche WebLink

CASS COUNTY GOVERNMENT RECEIVED August 18, 2014 AUG '18 201k Board of County Commissioners (ASS COUNTY COMMISSION Cass County Government 211 9th Street South Auditor Fargo ND 58103 Michael Montplaisir,CPA Re: 2015 Preliminary Budget 701-241-5601 Dear Commissioners: Treasurer Last week you reviewed departmental and outside agency budgets. It became Charlotte Sandvik apparent that the county would not be able to achieve the goal of the Legislature's 701-241-5611 mandate of "zero number of mills increase". As such, I added 2.57 mills back into the budget that we had figured as a reduction in tax funding for next year. I made Director of the entire 2.57 mill change to the General Fund because that is the fund with the largest deficit spending. The change reduced deficit spending in the General Fund to Equalization $1.2 million—reserves would be reduced from the expected $7.3 million at the end of 2014 to an estimated $6.1 million at the end of 2015, which is still 20% of the Frank Klein expenditure budget. 701-241-5616 Not meeting the "zero number of mills increase"goal does mean that we will have to publish the notice mandated by legislation as well as mailing notices to approximately 6,000 taxpayers who have previously received a notice of increased assessment. The public hearing on the budget will also have to be scheduled to start at 6:00 p.m. on the day the county holds the hearing. A proposed hearing notice is attached. One remaining item discussed during the preliminary budget hearings was health insurance rates. I had estimated rates would go up about 8% for health insurance when I prepared the preliminary budget. I did receive renewal rates this morning and they are only slightly different from what I had computed. I did not adjust the budget figures as the difference was not significant. That said, the year-to-year increase in health insurance costs have a compounding effect—the county will see total costs doubling in about seven years if we don't do something to contain those costs. Unlike a traditional insurance plan, Cass County has a self-funded insurance arrangement. As such, we are in a very good position to affect our health insurance costs. The health insurance rates we set are simply a funding mechanism for the Health Insurance Trust Fund, which actually pays claims, reinsurance premiums, administration charges, and ACA taxes. The rates we set, of course, are determined by all the previous mentioned factors–if we can reduce those factors, or reduce the growth of those factors, we can reduce the increase in our overall insurance costs. Box 2806 My recommendation is that we further explore our plan design and a wellness 211 Ninth Street South program with the goal of reducing overall costs. Fargo,North Dakota 58103 Fax 701-241-5728 www.casscountynd.gov