Okaloosa County BOCC — 2013 meeting #1122 (date undetermined) — 2013-2014 Look Ahead — reading text

and claims paid out. In Fiscal Year 2012, the County received its first premium refund of $1,132,761 for the first 3 years of the agreement. This ProShare rebate was used to suspend the $40 per month employee contribution for Fiscal Year 2012 and FY 2013 as well as absorb the 3% renewal increase for Fiscal Year 2013. It is anticipated that the County will receive a ProShare rebate in Fiscal Year 2014 for years four and five of the agreement; however, at this time the amount of the rebate is unknown. BCC Employee Insurance $12,000.00 $10,000.00 $8,000.00 Proshare Paid $6,000.00 Employee Paid $4,000.00 BCC Paid $2,000.00 $0.00 FY 2008 FY 2009 FY 2010 FY 2011 FY 2012 FY 2013 As funding has continued to be reduced, the County has looked for additional monies in the budget. Sometimes that has meant rethinking the way programs are budgeted. Historically, the budget for insurance included funding for 100% participation. Since the actual participation rate is closer to 85%, the Fiscal Year 2013 insurance budget was reduced to be more closely in line with this number, allowing the remaining money to be allocated elsewhere within the budget. Leave Accruals and Payouts In 2000, the Board approved major revisions to the annual and sick leave accruals and payouts. These changes included increasing the annual leave accrual rates for employees with 15 or more years of service with the BCC, adding different accrual rates of annual and sick leave for employees working in EMS as well as modifying the schedule used to pay out annual and sick leave at termination. These changes were made in an effort to remain consistent with other public entities, provide incentive for employees to save greater balances to be better prepared in case of serious illness or injury, improve operations and, in the case of departments that operate 24 hours per day, save in funds paid out in overtime for replacements when employees call in sick. Also in 2000, the Board implemented an optional yearly sick leave pay out. In November each year, employees who have a minimum sick leave balance and who have used minimal to no sick leave can choose to be paid out a specific number of hours, up to 24 hours maximum. This policy was implemented to provide incentive to employees to use sick leave only when necessary and improve morale. The benefits of such a policy to the Board were employees using fewer unscheduled sick leave hours and a reduction in the liability of sick leave accruals. The Optional Yearly Sick Leave Pay Out can be found in the Okaloosa County Human Resources Policy, Chapter IX, Section H. Under current policy, employees who have completed their probationary period are eligible to receive payment of unused annual leave at termination or upon electing to participate in the Florida Retirement System Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP). The maximum number of hours paid at termination depends on the employee’s regular schedule. For example employees regularly scheduled to work 40 hours per week are paid for all hours of unused annual leave up to a maximum of 240 hours, while employees regularly scheduled to work 24 hours on/ 48 hours off are paid for all hours up to a maximum of 336 hours. There is no maximum number of annual leave hours an employee can accrue. Under current policy, employees with 10 years of service with the BCC are eligible to receive payment of unused sick leave at termination and are paid at 50% of the first 480 hours, 25% of the second 480 hours, and 20% of all hours over 960 hours. For example, an employee with 1,000 hours of unused sick leave would be paid 368 hours (240 + 120 + 8). There is also no maximum number of sick leave hours an employee can accrue. As of January 14, 2013, annual leave balances ranged from 0 hours to 1,952 and sick leave balances ranged from 0 hours to 2,862. Most employees with large leave balances understand that they will only be paid a portion of their leave upon termination and see it more as an insurance policy if a serious illness or injury should occur. Departments are permitted to allow employees nearing the end of their tenure with the BCC to use their accrued annual leave, but it is determined based on operational demands of the department and is not an entitlement. The Board does not currently budget for terminal leave payout or the optional yearly sick leave pay out. In 2011 and 2012 the Board paid out approximately $320,000 and $171,000 in terminal leave respectively. If changes to the existing policies were considered (e.g., leave accrual rates, amount carried over from year to year, or pay out at termination), it would be recommended that current employees be grandfathered in. Employees with large leave balances are historically your longer term employees who have not abused their leave time. Making changes that would drastically reduce their balances will create dissatisfaction and lower morale. Information Systems Many Information Technology (IT) infrastructure improvements are needed to support the on-going technical operations of the Board of County Commissioners. New equipment purchases have been put off for several years but aging equipment, including Electronic mail servers, may soon fail if not replaced. Annual investment is needed in order to replace hardware and allow for staff to efficiently perform their mission and to comply with Sunshine requirements for backup and archive of valuable databases. A well-planned annual approach to funding IT needs will avoid costly and protracted expenditures to meet the needs of County departments. Information Systems: Many of the 600-plus personal computers (PC) need replacement. Also, a large number of servers and backup systems that are required by Sunshine Law to backup valuable email and county data are old and need to be replaced. Additional disk space is needed in order for staff to manage changes and support request. Over 210 County PCs are 6 years and older. To compensate, over 100 used computers have been repurposed in the past 3 years to allow for continued County operations; another 50 will be replaced this year. Even with these beneficial actions, over 150 more machines will need replacement in Fiscal Year 2014. One issue in particular that will increase the need to replace old systems is that Microsoft Windows XP will no longer be supported after that year. To sustain requirements, the County must modern operating systems in order to get support and utilize new technologies. Further delays in necessary upgrades will have mission-impacting results and replacement estimated cost is $90,000 per year. Systems and Networks: The section’s 80 servers are the workhorses of County operations. Entire departments rely on the function of these servers which provide applications, data and database management. Of these servers, 16 are more than seven years old and need to be replaced as soon as possible. A few of these can be moved to a virtual machine (VM) environment; however, many of these systems are not conducive to VM and must be replaced. The number of antiquated machines grows from 16 to 21 in Fiscal Year 2014. The cost for replacement of these aging units in Fiscal Year 2014 is estimated at $48,000. The current tape library is over 6 years old and parts are no longer available. Staff continues to juggle tapes and this old system needs to be replaced as soon as possible before valuable data is lost. The modern way to manage backups is through disk storage systems. The BCC needs to backup all VM data, and County databases and files to meet Sunshine requirements. With current software, an estimated 100 terabytes (100,000 gigabytes) of disk space is needed. This will meet County growth over the next three years in order to keep 60-90 days of information on hand. The cost of such a system is estimated between $150,000 and $200,000 for a solution, depending on the section’s ability to utilize current backup software. Okaloosa Fiber Optic System: Implementation of the Okaloosa County Fiber Optic project began in 2001 with the purpose of reducing the growing annual communication cost incurred by local governments while providing for an avenue of growth as the technical needs for bandwidth rapidly increase. Technology continues to be the primary mechanism leveraged by departments and constitutional offices to increase efficiency and lower the operation cost of local government. The fiber optic project is a proactive measure taken by the Okaloosa Board of County Commissioners that has curbed communication costs and provided an avenue for future growth. The fiber optic system has expanded to connect all of the departments under the Board as well as the Sheriff’s Office, Tax Collector, Property Appraiser, Clerk of Courts and the Supervisor of Elections. The Judiciary, State Attorney and Public Defender also are networked utilizing the fiber optic system. The Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, and Traffic operations also benefit from this system. Communication cost for each of these entities is markedly reduced as a result of the high speed network connections. Not only does fiber play a major role in the support of the communication lines; but all telephone traffic is now routed across the system as well. To offset some of the implementation costs, the County has partnered with the military and colleges on several occasions. This partnership has helped fund the system and created redundant routes and expanded capacity. In as much as the fiber optic system continues to save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, and in order to fulfill contractual obligations that have brought millions of dollars to the County,  it is necessary to continue to sustain the system. Maintenance on the system warrants an estimated budget of $325,000 annually. Public Works Stormwater Projects COMPLETION PROJECT DESCRIPTION DATE COST Tooke Street Emergency repair of pipe collapse 2/2010 $22,330.00 Retention pond repair/pipe Dairy Road replacement 5/2010 $17,029.00 Repair of failed structure/gulley Old Bethel Road repair 8/2010 $204,402.00 2010 Total $243,761.00 Auburn Road Cross drain failure 2/2011 $25,321.00 Old Bethel Road Slip lined failing cross drain 3/2011 $32,124.00 Madison Street (Baker) System repairs 4/2011 $37,922.00 6th Street Pipe replacement 4/2011 $27,464.00 Fairchild Road (FEMA) Replaced old pipe with new pipe 5/2011 $15,683.00 Removed sediment from path of Helms Farm Road creek 5/2011 $20,612.00 De La Parisienne System repairs 6/2011 $70,091.00 Ridgewood Avenue Pipe slip lined 6/2011 $16,138.00 CR2 east of Hwy 393 Pipe slip lined 6/2011 $9,672.00 Melton Road @ #955 Replaced failing culverts 6/2011 $16,364.00 Aaron Baker Install drop box and repair swale 7/2011 $37,439.00 Dorchester Place Holding