Having been busy learning about transparency and one's rights as well as QSAC and curriculum and legal bills and certifications and, well, all the things I have wrote about so far, I must confess that until recently the district's insurance and its brokers were far away from becoming a topic on this blog. And let's face it, looking at insurance cost and choices is not exactly the easiest thing for someone who has never looked into the complicated matter of public entities's insurance.
Looking at the district's insurance started when an anonymous reader sent me a comment about the lenghty presentation of insurance brokers at the December 20th, 2011 school board meeting. I also remembered someone posting a comment at one of our local blogs about wanting to approach the school district with the Citizens' Campaing insurance new model that is being adopted at many places. I think the city council just adopted the CC model, didn't they?
Then there was also at a recent school board Work and Study meeting a small presentation on the cost of insurance. This was made by the district's Busines Administrator. Mr. Ottmann provided us with a page that contained the expenses for the last two school years, the estimated cost for what this current year's expenses will be ($19 Million) and the names of the two brokers that handled insurance services for the district.
Between two insurance brokers, Willis and Nathan Lane, premiums and claims expenses for the district are as follow:
FY09-10 - $15,414,575.89
FY10-11 - $17,550,639.55
FY11-12 (Thru Dec 11) - $9,862,342.20
That is a lot of money for claims and/or premiums.
What is more, if you, like me, don't know how insurance for public agencies works then reading about it from the Citizens Campaign's "Best Price Insurance Contracting" will be a wake-up call.
I am ever so grateful for the school board to have these kind of presentations made in public as until now the selection of insurance brokers was pretty much a done deal approved by school board members at the organization meeting.
Now it is time to get the meaningful information out of this new topic. Is there anyone here in Plainfield already following up this matter? Do you know?
3 comments:
Maria,the people have to get involved!Too much of our money is being wasted from poor planning and incompetent administrators! This would not happen in Cranford. where is the county or the state? They have left Plainfield to crumble.Oh by the way Dr.Bilal case has now settled how much will this cost us? Who will discpline our board members and administration for breaking rules and not following proper steps if they wanted to non renew him?
12:41,
In order for the people to get involved they will need to be informed so they can form an opinion and based on their values decide whether they want to, or should, get involved. As far as I can see there is no more information coming out of the district or board unless it is extracted.
As for Dr. Bilal's case, we will have to wait and see if those documents ever become available to us, until then, we really don't know whether the board and administration were right or wrong. Let's not judge anyone guilty until we see the documents. Thanks.
Maria,
Your readers may want to read a blog post I wrote on March 30, 2011 titled "Insurance Reform May Save Plainfield Taxpayers Millions: The Citizens' Campaign Model Ordinance," which focused on insurance reform for municipalities--there is a link to an article on Perth Amboy, which had adopted it and saved $261,000 in broker's fees and projected that they could save upwards of $3million.
http://rebecca4plainfieldcouncil.blogspot.com/2011/03/insurance-reform-for-may-save.html
The city council passed this reform ordinance just this past November: MC 2011-13.
Best,
Rebecca
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