The Human Resources and Information Technology Committee met 10/26/2022. One of the information items they received was an update on the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City of Appleton and the Appleton Housing Authority (AHA). The MOU allowed AHA employees to receive health insurance and ancillary insurance benefits through the City of Appleton’s insurance plan. The agreement had been slated to end as of 12/31/2022, and it was confirmed to the committee that the agreement will indeed be ending at that time.
Director of Human Resources Jay Ratchman noted that periodically in the past the MOU had been brought to the Common Council so they could vote on whether to continue it or not. This year, city staff met with AHA to determine if a new memo would be brought forward, but the city and AHA ended up agreeing that now was the time to make a separation and not renew the agreement. So, they will be on the City of Appleton’s insurance plan until the end of the year at which point they will move to something else.
City staff provided AHA with a contact at USI which is the city’s insurance broker, but Director Ratchman did not know if they were using that company or had gone off on their own.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) was pleased that the city and AHA had made a nice clean break and mentioned that the agreement “was a bone of contention for me.”
[Frankly, it was a bone of contention for me too, and I also am glad that the agreement has been terminated. Back in 2020, then Human Resources Director Sandy Matz had initially recommended that the MOU between the city and AHA terminate at the end of 2021, but the Human Resource and Information Technology Committee decided to extend that termination date until the end of 2022. When it came before the Common Council for a vote, then District 13 Alderperson Kyle Lobner was successfully able to amend the item to remove any language from the MOU indicating that it would definitively not be extended beyond the end of 2022. While watching both of those meetings, I did not feel that the alderpersons who voted on it adequately investigated the claims of the AHA regarding how the loss of city coverage would affect them. It seemed like some basic due diligence should have been done in the form of requiring AHA to get some quotes from potential other insurance sources to provide a comparison.
It also very much bothered me that, although I reached out to him twice, AHA’s Finance Director Aaron Hilbert was unwilling to respond to basic questions regarding AHA’s insurance options and the process that had gone into them determining that staying with the City of Appleton’s insurance plan was the best option.
So, all of that is to say, I’m glad it’s been resolved, and we can only hope that over the last year none of AHA’s employees ended having claims that cost the city a lot of money.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1007226&GUID=FB747BAD-065F-46C2-8A7E-A0A8A7FBCE8D
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