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Logan County Board
Special Regular Meeting to discuss insurance
[April 01, 2026]
On Tuesday, March 31st, the
Logan County Board held a special regular meeting that was set to be
held in the second-floor courtroom of the Logan County Courthouse
but due to technical issues it was moved to the third-floor
courtroom. The meeting started just after 6:00 p.m. Of the twelve
members of the board, eight were in attendance including Chairman JR
Glenn, Vice Chairman Dale Nelson, Lance Conahan, Michael DeRoss,
Hannah Fitzpatrick, Gil Turner, Joseph Kuhlman, and Kevin Knauer,
who was present over a Zoom call. Absent were Kathy Schmidt, Bob
Sanders, Keenan Leesman, and Jim Wessbecher.
The meeting started with an invocation by Gil Turner who prayed over
the board and the meeting. Glenn additionally added a prayer for
board members that were currently going through a rough time. After
the prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance was performed.
DeRoss stated that, due to Knauer appearing virtually, the board
needed to vote to approve his attendance in this manner. The board
approved Knauer’s virtual attendance unanimously.
Next was the action items, of which
there were only two. The first item, the primary reason for the
special meeting, was about insurance. Nelson made a motion to accept
the Blue Choice plan that had been presented. This plan would save
the county $180,000 per year compared to the current plan and would
split doctors in-network into tier 1 and tier 2. For more
information on the details of the plan and tiers please refer to
LDN’s previous
article.
Nelson continued, saying that since the county was saving so much
more money than they were planning on spending, the board could
consider increasing their contributions to employee insurance. He
then offered an amendment. This amendment would set the county’s
contributions to non-union employee insurance at certain percentages
depending on the plan that the employee chose. A plan for only the
employee, or the employee and their spouse, would be covered at 60
percent, while plans covering the employee and their child(ren), or
the employee and their family, would be covered at 75 percent.
Nelson stated that, previously, the county provided a $950
contribution to each employee regardless of what plan they were on.
With this amendment, Nelson argued, plans that cover more than just
the employee would be made more affordable. He continued that this
change would only require the county to contribute $20,000 more per
year than the $180,000 they had already budgeted for.
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Michael Engelhardt
of Aleras Group was present for the meeting. He stated that, in
the future, his company can help the county in planning county
contributions if that is something the county wanted assistance
with. DeRoss
stated, on this plan, the family plan would be cheaper than the
employee plan by about $200 per month and was not sure that would be
the best way to do what Nelson wanted. Nelson admitted that DeRoss
was correct but stated he was open to changing the percentages,
suggesting 75 percent for all plans.
Glenn then added that, since this new plan would bring the county so
far under budget, they should consider giving some back to their
employees. Some math was done, and it was determined that, if 20
more employees were to sign up, putting all plans at a county
contribution of 75 percent would cost the county approximately
$30,000 more than they would save. Turner clarified that, if less
than 20 employees were to sign up for the plan, it could cost less
and was informed that this was the case.
DeRoss then made another amendment to increase county contributions
to 75 percent across all plans. This motion superseded the other
amendment. A vote was taken and the amendment was passed
unanimously. After this, a vote was taken on the original motion as
amended and was also passed unanimously.
The last item was a resolution to approve an electricity aggregation
program agreement. A vote was taken and the motion was also
unanimously approved. The meeting was then adjourned.
[Matt Boutcher]
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