Archive for the ‘Burnsville’


District 191 to Self-Insure Employees

According to this article in SunThisweek, the Burnsville/Eagan/Savage school district plans to move to self-insurance to help limit rapidly rising premiums. While this may seem like a good idea on the face of things, depending on the age and health status of the district’s employees this could be a real disaster for both the district and especially employees who have health problems.

From the article:

Officials hope that self-insurance – in which the district, not an insurer, collects premiums, pays claims and maintains its own reserve – will help them get a handle on ever-spiraling health care costs.

Under Medica, the district’s premium was capped at a 12 percent increase next school year, but was projected to skyrocket by 50 percent the following year, Schmid said.

Over the last decade, premium hikes have averaged 11 to 14 percent a year, Board Member Ron Hill said.

The school district believes it will be able to better control the associated costs by managing its own health insurance; however, a recent New York Times article notes how these sorts of plans are attractive to employers because it limits premium hikes but these sorts of arrangements could really drive up the costs associated with the healthcare system setup by the federal government:

When companies are self-insured, they assume most of the financial risk of providing health benefits to employees. Instead of paying premiums to insurers, they pay claims filed by employees and health care providers. To avoid huge losses, they often sign up for a special kind of “stop loss” insurance that protects them against very large or unexpected claims, say $50,000 or $100,000 a person.

Such insurance serves as a financial backstop for the employer if, for example, an employee is found to have cancer, needs an organ transplant or has a premature baby requiring intensive care.

[...]

Stop-loss insurers can and do limit the coverage they provide to employers for selected employees with medical problems. As a result, companies with less healthy work forces may find self-insuring more difficult.

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Insurance regulators worry that commercial insurers — and the insurance exchanges being set up in every state to offer a range of plan options to consumers — will be left with disproportionate numbers of older, sicker people who are more expensive to insure.

That, in turn, could drive up premiums for uninsured people seeking coverage in the exchanges. Since the federal government will subsidize that coverage, it, too, could face higher costs, as would some employees and employers in the traditional insurance market.

So while this could help with limiting local taxes and associated levies, if more districts (and other businesses) opt for self-insurance, our federal tax rates could begin to soar in order to cover healthcare for more people.

What do you think about this one? Are you concerned this plan may backfire on the district or do you see it as an excellent opportunity to save tax dollars? If lots of companies begin to offer self-insurance do you see the federal government working to limit their availability if it begins to seriously rise associated costs with the government plan? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Drunk Mother Drives With 4 Month Old in Back

According to this Dakota County Criminal Complaint, a 44+ year old woman was pulled over for DWI with her 4 month old in the backseat at 1:30 PM. With multiple convictions in the past for DWI, one has to wonder whether more should be done to protect this child from the mother.

From the complaint:

On November 21, 2012, at approximately 1:27 p.m., an officer in the City of Burnsville, Dakota County, Minnesota, was dispatched that a reporting party observed a female who appeared intoxicated get into a white Chevrolet pickup truck with Minnesota license plate number XRN950. The reporting party stated that the female had an infant with her and was staggering and walking into cars.

The officer located a vehicle matching the description of the reporting party with Minnesota license plate XRM950, driving in the location of the original report. The officer observed that a female was driving the vehicle. The officer followed the vehicle and observed it weave within her lane and hit a curb. The officer activated her squad lights and the suspect vehicle continued to speedy up. The vehicle continued traveling for approximately two blocks and eventually stopped for a red light. When the light turned green, the vehicle continued driving and eventually stopped north of that intersection. When the vehicle pulled over the driver drove onto the curb and parked.

The officer identified the driver as Christina Maria Thorne, date of birth: 7-30-1968. The officer could smell an odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from Thorne’s person and observed that her eyes were watery. The officer asked Thorne how much she had to drink. Thorne stated not much, and then stated that she had been trying and only had a couple of drinks that day. Thorn admitted that her four month old son was in a car seat in the back of the vehicle.

While nothing is mentioned about the future welfare of the child, with four DWI convictions over the last 15 years, two of which were over .20, one has to wonder whether she should ever be permitted to be with the child. This isn’t only about driving, this woman is likely intoxicated all the time around the child being that she’s very likely an alcoholic and hopefully she has opted for formula instead of breastfeeding.

What do you think about this one? Should the child endangerment charge coupled with the .22 DUI charge dissolve her rights as a parent especially knowing she was carting around an infant while nearly falling over drunk? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Should Burnsville Put Ads on its Website?

According to this StarTribune article, the City of Burnsville is considering soliciting ads for placement on its website but first it needs to gauge the public’s input on the topic and see what they say about it. While some research was done by the City’s Communication’s Coordinator to look into other public agencies with ads on their websites, he found no other cities doing so–at least not yet.

From the article:

But the website would be a more visible location for ads, raising such questions as: Would it cheapen the city website to have adds alongside official information? Would it imply a city endorsement of the business or product advertised? Would advertising be limited to Burnsville businesses and organizations?

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The city has asked residents, community organizations and businesses to take a survey at http://surveymonkey.com/s/webads. It asks: What are your thoughts about advertising on the website? Would your business or organization buy an ad if the city opened the website? How much would you be willing to pay for advertising space on the city’s home page?

While City Councilmembers are currently ignoring the paper’s questions about the topic for now, or outright refusing to comment, hopefully it’s because they don’t want to influence the public’s input and not for some other reason. One person commented on the StarTribune article and noted:

It’s fine as long as long as the advertising brings revenue to Burnsville AND the revenue from the ads is used to reduce taxes and NOT offset additional spending.

kruzelc/Apr. 21, 13/10:47 PM

As someone who gains revenue from ads and pays fairly close attention to that revenue as well as the traffic which creates that revenue, I have to say that if I were a Burnsville taxpayer I would want to see those numbers broken down as pageviews/visits, impressions, and revenue to the city. I would want to know the rate scale for the ads and how much each individual ad paid the city. While I’m sure the city is willing to do some of that, those sorts of stats might end up costing the city even more because they may have to resort to a third party vendor to track those necessary stats instead of doing it in-house.

What do you think about this one? Should the City of Burnsville put ads on their website? Is it really a possibility to ‘cheapen’ what the City has done already? As a business owner and knowing the City’s website abilities, do you think you’d bother paying them to put ads on their website? Best photoshop job of ads on the City’s website wins a pat on the back and a +1. Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.

VenuWorks Remains BPAC Management Company

According to this Burnsville Patch article, the City of Burnsville had the opportunity to change management companies away from VenuWorks and to another company to manage the on-going money loser, the Burnsville Performing Arts Center. Unfortunately for residents of the city, a unanimous decision was made by all involved parties to keep going with VenuWorks, mostly because no one anymore viable presented themselves for bid.

From the article:

The city began exploring new management options in late summer of 2012, with one year left on VenuWork’s contract. Over fall and early winter, the center attracted two suitors in addition to VenuWorks, said BPAC Advisory Commission Chair Sal Mondelli. Only one of them, LHR Hospitality Management, submitted a full proposal before the deadline on Jan. 10, 2013.

VenuWorks was the clear winner for both a special panel selected for the exploratory effort and the BPAC’s Advisory Commission. Both bodies unanimously voted to recommend VenuWorks to the council.

[...]

“Gone are the days when we’ll accept a $200,000 or $250,000 operating loss. I just don’t believe anyone has the stomach for that,” said Council Member Dan Kealey. “No one really believes that’s acceptable.”

[...]

“As of Wednesday, the (projected deficit) is $239,000 for this calendar year and that’s with a lot of runway. We believe we will significantly beat the forecast and perform better than we did last year,” Mondelli said.

Congrats to VenuWorks for taking five years to get back to the point they originally said would be the entire operating loss for the first year and missing the fact that it was estimated that in 5 years it would be running at break-even.

While it’s cute and cuddly for Kealey to claim he’s fighting for the common man with such empty threats as “gone are the days when we’ll accept…”, NO ONE EVER accepted the losses except the city’s politicians and its staff. While the City Staff repeatedly noted they were not experts in running an enterprise like the BPAC and it should never have been opened in the first place, it took YEARS to get a citizen commission off and running and they HAVE NOT DONE ANYTHING POSITIVE at all with the BPAC. The BPAC Commission continues to do the only real thing it was meant to do–to take heat off the City Council who should have immediately stepped in after the first year with VenuWorks and booted them out on the street for losing two times what they originally projected.

Hey Councilmember Kealey, please do us all a favor and let us know what you personally plan to do when VenuWorks comes around again with another $200,000 deficit this year? Are you going to spew more empty threats or are you actually going to start putting forth some motions to immediately remove them and force City Staff to solicit RFPs from viable companies who can do the job instead of allowing for the bidding to move forward without any companies actually doing the bidding (which the first time around was garbage and everyone, including members of the BPAC Commission, know it).

Best of luck Burnsville taxpayers! You’ve got another few years of teetering along losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in operating costs, let alone the money lost due to depreciation of the building, because the Burnsville City Council and its shield, the BPAC Commission, aren’t doing enough to ensure your money doesn’t go down the drain with a management company which has only one proven track record: losing money.

What do you guys think about this one? Whatever you have to say go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.