I make a motion.

Motion to approve.

Now second.

All in favor say aye.

Minutes approved.

Okay, Mr.

Holmes.

Good afternoon, Council.

We are here on the rarest of council committees for you.

As you recall, this committee meets every fifth Tuesday, which there appears to be no rhyme or reason for when the fifth Tuesday of the month falls.

It tends to happen about four times a year.

I'm offended.

And we knew that there wasn't going to be another one until I mean May or June, except for one in I think of December that was canceled because of another holiday.

And so at that time, uh Mr.

Tiner, I believe you and Mr.

Busby asked if we would schedule a specially called.

We'd initially intended to do it kind of towards the middle of January, but we know that the our biggest insurance policy, our our general liability coverage and property insurance renews the end of February.

It seemed as though if we were going to have a specially called insurance litigation committee, we should we should have the big policy uh appear on it.

So we moved it back uh back to this week.

Sure.

Um the first item is that that big policy, and this covers our fleet, our uh our various assets, our property, our buildings, um, our general liability and is a beast of a policy.

Um this policy to quote takes probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred uh staff hours between uh between our staff and other city staff members in Mr.

Mesco's time.

Um Hudson Cheshire has led this in OCA the last couple of years, and so I'm gonna let him uh take over here in a second, but this is something that goes through every department.

We've had great success with having our departments participate.

Um it's hard for us and for Mr.

Menesco to know when departments have bought new assets or disposed of assets that we're insuring without sitting down and going through them.

Um and so I will let uh I'll let Hudson kind of walk you through this.

Okay, Mr.

Manasco is is here, so if there's anything that that Hudson leaves out that you would like Mr.

Minesco to answer for you, then he's available to do that as well.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Scott.

Afternoon, council.

Afternoon.

Um as Scott said, this is the big policy.

It's fleet property liability and and a handful of other things.

Last year the premium was 1.95 million dollars.

This year it is 2.39.

So it's gone up.

I'm sorry.

Give me those numbers again.

Last it's in there.

Oh, okay.

The the change is 457,000 or 457, 581 dollars.

Um I don't want to get too far down into the weeds, but I did want to point out some big contributors to the to the uh increase in the premium.

The first is property value.

So in short, one of the big reasons the premium is up is because our property values are up.

There's a couple reasons for that.

One is that every year um we do what's called what we call the three percent inflationary adjustment.

So we take all of the properties that we're currently insuring and increase the property value by three percent to uh try to keep up with inflation.

The second is that we have added 28.4 million dollars in property to um to uh the city in the past year.

So you think about the improvements that we've made, Mr.

Tyner, to the tennis center.

Um think about the new warehouse that we just bought, fire station six, uh, all these add up and are reflected in the in the property schedule.

Um the second reason is that our general uh liability policy has gone up a little bit.

Um general liability is calculated by expenditures that the city makes.

And I'm I'm talking out of my depth here, but uh the more the money the more the city spends in certain areas, you're gonna see an increase in general liability uh in the premium.

So we were up by 5.6 million this year compared to the year before, and you're gonna see um uh a premium adjustment there.

Uh lastly, rates are higher.

Um the metric for gauging um the premium last year was 13 cents per hundred dollars.

So per 100 of insured value, you would have 13 cents uh for the premium.

Uh this year it's gone up to 16 cents per hundred dollars.

So there's there's a little bit of a bump there.

Um my understanding is that's that's normal.

And Amic has tried to work with us to make that increase gradual.

Lastly, this is this is within the budget that Carly has set aside for insurance.

So we're satisfied with the result.

Lastly, I want to point out Rick and Drew, as Scott already did.

We we sat down with all the department heads and and worked through every piece of property in every vehicle in fleet.

As y'all know, more about uh city properties, maybe maybe than Tom Bobbitt.

Um so we're we're very pleased with how responsive um they've been and and with them helping us put this together.

Happy to try to answer any questions or or have Rick field any questions y'all have.

So you said the 13 to the 16.

How is that determined?

Um that's just a rate adjustment, and Rick could speak speak more to that, but that's going to be across the board for all for all property and casualty um commercial policies.

It's just it's just going up.

Yeah, well, that's true.

Well, I know my residential policy.

Oh my gosh, my home insurance has gone out the roof.

Okay.

Rick, do you see anything in the future that would be as we go out, it would be different than what we've always done.

Um I really don't.

Uh the um the thing that we have done, especially at the mayor's direction after uh the 28 and 11 was that I was charged with making sure that I'd already done that pretty much before meeting with all the departments to make sure we had everything done.

But the council and mayor then says we want to make sure that we've identified everything we should be insuring out here to make sure that if we have another catastrophic event to come through, we want to make sure that we're adequately covered.

Uh thank good Lord we haven't had another one of those, but uh, we think uh with the ongoing things that that we do that we've identified all of the various properties.

Uh one thing that we did do this year that I think is important uh at the gateway, for example, we had a uh very high number uh on the contents in that building because when the gateway was first built, uh Mr.

Steiner, you know, we had a real large uh uh event out there where we demonstrated all of the programs that the gateway was going to be sponsoring a lot of contents in there.

Well, we have reduced that this year.

Hudson and I went out and we met with the uh the two ladies there that was working, we viewed everything.

We reduced that down from about two million dollars to I think to 250,000 in uh material and things that you had in there.

So we do those things to help try to look at the things that we have here.

Uh the other thing that we do as as a city and uh on the automobile, uh we take uh a rule of thumb of any vehicle that is five years of age and older, we try to drop it back just to liability instead of having copy collision coverage on it.

Uh unless the department head says no, that vehicle is you know got low mileage, still really good shapes.

We leave that on.

Uh so we try to do that.

We took a 50 some odd of 53 off of those uh vehicles this year, but you added 51, and the 51 you added were for full coverage, they were higher valued vehicles, which definitely impact the cost of the insurance on that.

Uh so we did that.

Uh we you know, the city has added, like let's have stated we've added a lot of property during the course of this year with the uh building and things that they've done here.

It added parks and that has really been a major increase there.

That was part of the 28.4.

Yes, it was.

It sure was.

Okay.

All right.

Anyone have any further questions?

Mayor?

Okay, I'll make a motion.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Uh aye.

Resolution passes.

Okay.

Thank you, Hudson.

You don't think you have this one too?

Yeah, I'll have to do the hard one.

I'll take this one.

Uh this is a renewal for our uh flood coverage for the Mercedes Benz amphitheater.

This is an increase of about $2,800 year over year.

It's a uh last year the policy was $17,775.

This year it's increasing to $20,661.

This is not something we can even get competitively.

This is the national flood insurance program.

So the the rates are what what they are.

What they are.

I sure understand that.

But it is uh a significant amount of infrastructure we have right on the banks of the Black Warrior River, and we think it is worthwhile to insure for flooding.

I think you're right.

Are we gonna have to add to this with the savings center?

I mean I know that'll be a new building, but will it be further?

Insurance also.

I don't know if it will be within the within that plane or if it is higher.

There is a generally an elevation that sets whether that's required or not, but it's certainly something we'll look at.

Mr.

Fell, did you make the motion?

I did.

I'll second it.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

And that resolution's approved.

Anything else?

Anything being brought before the uh litigation insurance committee?

If not, we'll won't meet again until part of the five months or so.

I'll make a motion we adjourn.

Thank you.

Now I'll second it.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.