City of Marietta 2026 Benefits Open Enrollment Presentation - October 14, 2025
City of Marietta 2026 Benefits Open Enrollment Presentation
On October 14, 2025, the City of Marietta held a benefits presentation for employees regarding the 2026 open enrollment period. Tom from NFP, the city's benefits consultant, led the presentation, which covered medical, dental, vision, life, disability, flexible spending accounts, and voluntary benefits. The key message was that most benefits remain unchanged, with some enhancements and carrier changes, and no premium increases for medical, pharmacy, and dental. The open enrollment period runs from October 13 to October 31, 2025.
Discussion Items
- Medical, Pharmacy, and Dental Plans: No changes to plan design or premiums. The medical plan is a PPO with a $1,000 deductible, 20% coinsurance after deductible, and copays for office visits and prescriptions. The Anthem network is used. The dental plans (base and buy-up) remain unchanged. The prescription drug plan is through Express Scripts, with tiers for generic, brand, and specialty drugs.
- Vision Plan: Now administered by Anthem, with enhanced frame allowances. For the base plan, frame allowance is $150 (or $200 if using a plus provider); for the buy-up plan, it is $200 ($250 with plus provider). The buy-up plan allows frame allowance every 12 months instead of every 24 months. Premiums are slightly lower.
- Life and Disability: Carrier changed to Lincoln Financial for basic life, optional life, short-term disability, and long-term disability. Basic life is employer-paid at 3x salary up to $300,000. Short-term disability pays 60% of salary up to $2,500/week for up to 26 weeks; long-term disability pays 60% up to $5,300/month until retirement age. Both are voluntary (employee-paid). Pre-existing condition limitations apply (look-back 3 months, treatment-free 12 months).
- Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs): The health care FSA maximum increased to $3,300, and the dependent care FSA maximum to $7,500. Up to $660 can be rolled over in the health care FSA. The city offers a health benefit waiver for employees on other insurance: if they contribute to a health care FSA, the city matches up to $500 (must submit affidavit by end of November).
- Voluntary Benefits: AFLAC accident and critical illness plans remain the same. Legal plan (about $20/month) includes will preparation, power of attorney, and ID theft protection. Employee Assistance Program (EAP) provides three free consultations per issue category (counseling, financial, legal).
- Employee Clinic: Free access for employees, with $100 incentives for completing health assessments and treatment plans.
- Enrollment Instructions: Use the B Swift portal (username: first initial + last name + birth year; passwords reset). Current elections will roll over, but employees should verify. Enrollment assistance is available in person or by calling the NFP Service Center. The deadline is October 31, 2025; changes take effect January 1, 2026.
Key Outcomes
- No votes or formal decisions were made; this was an informational session.
- Open enrollment period: October 13–31, 2025.
- Employees are encouraged to review their coverage, update beneficiaries, and consider FSAs and voluntary benefits.
- The city will match FSA contributions up to $500 for employees who waive city health coverage (affidavit due by end of November 2025).
- All benefits become effective January 1, 2026.
Meeting Transcript
All right, we're gonna go ahead and get started. Thanks, everyone who's joining in the room and everyone online. Um this conversation today is going to be going over the 2026 uh benefits from the City of Marietta. Uh this is going to be hopefully conversational. So if anyone has a question, please don't hesitate to put up your hand. Uh typically the way that works is if you have a question, someone else in the room mathematically has thought about it or is thinking about it. So there are no silly questions. Um open enrollment is one of those times where we get we kind of think about benefits once a year. So this is that time to get any of those questions that you had. Um and if there's anything uh personal that you'd like to talk with me afterwards, um happy to do that in a more private setting. We also have some enrollers that can um physically help you with the the technical aspect of signing up. Um the uh the gist of the the conversation today, uh most of the benefits are staying the same. There's a few improvements that we'll go over the same enrollment site to use to sign up for benefits. Um the enrollment period is from yesterday until the end of October. Um so you've got a couple weeks to make any decisions. Uh most of your current elections will be carried over. So it's still best practice to go into the benefits Swift. You'll see the the act um the shorthand version called B Swift. Uh it's still a best practice to go in there and make sure that you have signed up for everything that you want, make sure that your beneficiaries are updated. If you've moved recently, it's a good exercise to go in there and change your address so that you're uh ensuring that you're getting all of your EOBs and any sort of benefits-related uh materials sent to the correct uh location as well, too. Um but just to reiterate open enrollment period is from yesterday until the end of October. We've got enrollment assistance, the schedule for the enrollers uh you can see on the screen today. There is also a app that you can use to sign up for appointments so that you don't have to wait and you can just walk right into to having a discussion with someone that can help you uh uh review your current benefits and make any changes that you'd like to for 2026. Um that's most of the housekeeping. Um so getting into the meat and potatoes, uh the main the main thing that we wanted to kind of really highlight the chain there's gonna be no changes from your medical pharmacy and dental benefits. That's from a plan design perspective, and we were actually able to um hold the rates consistently. So there's no rate increases on any of those lines of coverage, which is great. Um the vision plans are also moving to anthems. So now we have the medical, dental, and vision all with the same carrier, which I think you'll notice uh will make the employer portal process better. You don't have to remember multiple systems to get into now. So if you ever need an EOB for uh your medical dental or vision, you can all you can get all that from the same place, which is nice. Uh the vision plan is actually uh enhancement too. I'm not for those uh that need glasses or contacts, you'll notice that the frame allowance for the vision plans has been increased for both the base and buy up plan uh pretty significantly uh along with a couple other uh enhancements that we'll talk about as well. The life and disability plans, uh those are the same exact plan designs as you're used to seeing. Um the difference, the only difference is that the administration of those, the the carrier for those plans is now Lincoln. Um we did that to prevent uh some rate increases as well. And then the axe the AFLAC, the accident and critical illness plans. We're gonna go into the details for all these um lines of coverage if you have any specific questions on those, but just to reiterate the AFLAC accident and critical illness plans are the same as well as the legal plan. And then there's some uh just some updates to the maximums that you're allowed to contribute to the uh regular FSA as well as the dependent care FSA. So, any questions on that before I keep moving? Okay, great. I love having this clicker. And it's got a laser point on it too. Oh, I'm Tom, sorry about that. I'm from NFP, so we work with Keisha and Sherry on the uh not only the acquisition, so we go to market and try to make sure that we're getting the the best rates, but um also the longer term strategy, things around wellness and how to ensure that everyone's getting all the information that need to make um you know healthy decisions in their life. But I'm Tom, nice to meet you all. Yes. Oh shoot. Streaming in the microphone for the stream here. So for Callie's microphone, can we have a little bit of microphone feedback?
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