The Council Bluffs City Council held a study session and regular meeting on June 8, 2026, via Zoom with Mayor Schudak attending remotely. The meeting covered presentations on insurance renewal and the comprehensive plan update, proclamations, multiple public hearings, ordinance readings, and a tobacco violation hearing. A key item was the proposed repeal of the pit bull ban, which drew extensive public comment and failed on a 1-4 vote.
We're gonna get started. Uh Mayor Schudak is joining via Zoom. We're gonna start with uh Gesture Insurance and Heath Hockenberg. Can you feel touch the button on the microphone to turn it on and you can talk? Good afternoon, everyone. I'm gonna hand these out for you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. All right, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Heath Hockenberry. I am with Gesture Insurance, and we helped the city manage their property and liability insurance needs that are coming up for renewal on 7-1. And myself in partnership with Ron and the risk manager for the city have gone through all of this, and we're just here to walk through it with the council as a whole this afternoon. I don't anticipate a ton of questions. So the document though that we're going to spend our time on is that first one that just says insurance renewal overview, because there's a lot of additional information throughout the packet that if you have time as you go forward in the evening or the next couple days, if you have questions, review it, let Ron know, and then let me know if you can't fall asleep tonight. There's a lot of detail in there. Start reading it, and it'll probably put you to sleep. So again, Heath Hockenberg with Gesture Insurance. We have been the city's property and casualty insurance broker since January of 2023. Some changes within our office in the last year. We actually became part of Gallagher last fall. So there's some positive things with that transition for us that I'll point out as we go through kind of this overview this afternoon that I'm excited about, additional tools and resources that we have available as we continue to service uh the city's insurance needs. So on the review, um, quickly just kind of a general market overview. You'll all in the packet, you also have a separate staple document like this that's five or six pages that goes into more in-depth of what the insurance market uh is doing nationally and then geographically as well. But some highlights uh for the for you folks right now. Um the current conditions, things are from an underwriting standpoint, are changing depending on the line of coverage, and and really the area where we're seeing stabilize and some significant uh rate decreases is on the property side, and and we'll touch on that in more depth uh as we go forward. For public entities areas where we're still continuing to see uh some tightening and and some rate increases uh depending on loss history, are it is primarily in the excess casualty or liability uh line of coverage. So that's body landry property damage, etc. That the city is deemed legally liable for. So we're excited about that and really happy uh with the renewal proposal that we have in front of you for the next uh fiscal year. As far as a um premium overview goes, there's some tweaks in here because I got I received an updated last-minute uh quote proposal from the city's current property insurer. So I'll have you jot down some different numbers and what are reflected uh on this overview, and then I will send Ron uh electronic copies of up all the updated documents that you guys have in front of you that reflect that uh new proposal. So for FY27, total premium will be 1.67 million. That is actually a decrease year over year of 7%. So for the folks that have been on the council the last several years, we we definitely have not been seeing decreases uh in total premium. So very, very happy again about what we were able to accomplish this year at the renewal uh in partnership with Ron. Since we took over as broker in January of 2023, that 1.67 is one percent higher than where the city's premium was three and a half years ago. So I'm really proud of that given where the insurance market has been the last three and a half years. Uh really, really satisfied with uh where we're at today, even compared to where we were three and a half years ago. The decrease in premium is driven by the improving property market. And one thing that we did this year, because the property insurance market is improving, and you may not see it specifically in your personal uh lives yet on your homeowners, but in the commercial insurance space, especially with larger insured values, and public entities have that. We are seeing an increase in capacity with reinsurers, which is driving down the rates. That increased capacity is because knock on wood, we have had some good weather years the last few years, specifically here in the Midwest. We also decided because that was happening in the market, when that occurs, it's a perfect time to market that line of coverage and go out there and see what else is available. The tricky thing is with large public entities, there really aren't that many options that can really provide a competitive option from a property standpoint as far as premium coverages, deductibles, et cetera. So your current provider is APIP, the APIP program, and that's the largest property placement program in the world for public entities. Now that we are part of Gallagher, Gallagher has actually developed their own exclusive and proprietary property program specific for public entities. So we marketed the city's coverage this year with APIP to the GovRo program. If you dig through the proposal, and I'll give some specifics, we still think it makes the best most sense for the city to remain with APIP for this year.