November 25, 2025, Camden County Commission meeting at 1:30 p.m.

I attended the November 25, 2025, Camden County Commission meeting at 1:30 p.m.

All commissioners were present.

The first agenda item was “Lunar IT.”

Commissioner Gohagan explained that Jadon Bianchi performed IT duties for Camden County when he previously worked for Huber and his work received excellent reviews from the Camden County employees so he thought he would invite Bianchi’s new IT employer, Lunar IT, an opportunity to give a presentation to the Commission.

Ryan Newlon from Lunar IT gave the Commission a summary of what his company could offer to the county in terms of leveraging artificial intelligence to make the organization more efficient and secure the county’s network infrastructure. The commissioners seemed satisfied with the information and anticipated they would receive a bid for IT services from Lunar IT when that contract comes up for renewal in the future.

The second agenda item was “County Health Insurance Decision.”

David Von Gunten, Camden County’s insurance broker, summarized the options available to the Commission.

The decision was basically between the current self-funded option managed by Mutual Medical or a more traditional medical plan provided by Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. Anthem BCBS had increased the potential annual surplus share with the county to 66%, but according to Von Gunten’s analysis, switching from Mutual Medical to Anthem BCBS would probably cost the county approximately $500, 000 to $600,000 more.

I’ve explained many times how the county’s current self-funded medical plan works.

Read about if here.

To quote from that article:

“To explain a bit, Billington is the insurance broker who manages Camden County’s self-funded group health plan. Rather than contract with a health plan provider, Camden County funds its own health plan for county employees.

This saves Camden County some money until a plan member becomes gravely ill or severely injured. In this case, the Camden County health plan tells the sick (expensive) member that if they to go to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and tell the ACA that they lost their insurance, Camden County will pay all of their out of pocket costs for the ACA insurance. The employee qualifies for a special ACA enrollment event because they lost their health coverage, but that is not what truly happened. The loss has to be involuntary, usually because you were terminated. How can Camden County possibly justify enrolling ACA insurance for employees who were able to enroll in ACA for involuntary loss of coverage when they voluntarily gave up their insurance?”

Mutual Medical refers to the Affordable Care Act as the ACP. At this most recent meeting, Billington explained that under the current county medical plan, if an employee retires, they stay on the county medical plan until they reach 65. And if they or their spouse are on the ACP when they retire, the county will keep them on the ACP until they’re 65.”

As I have since learned, the real savings from the ACP comes because the expensive employees don’t trigger the stop loss deductibles for the county’s “safety net” Symmetra insurance coverage which is designed to protect the county from significant medical catastrophes. If employees don’t trigger that safety net coverage (because they’ve been dumped onto the ACA), the county doesn’t have to worry about frequent stop loss insurance usage raising their annual premiums. As we all know, insurance companies are in the business of making money, not losing it.

In the end, the Commission voted unanimously to retain their self-funded healthcare plan managed by Mutual Medical with a new deductible of $70,000 for their Symmetra stop loss insurance to maintain the rate cost of that policy.

The third agenda item was “La Riva NID closure.”

The La Riva NID bond has been paid off so that Neighborhood Improvement District will be dissolved. Unfortunately, the tax bills for this year were already mailed out, but any property tax paid toward this NID will be refunded.

The Commission approved this unanimously.

The fourth agenda item was “Budget Amendment – Business District Funds ‘TCLA’.”

This was an amendment to move the $2,776,592.97 of leftover lodging tax money from County Revenue into its own separate line item: the TCLA budget line.

This amendment was approved unanimously.

The fifth agenda item was “GIS Limited License Agreement – Your Lake Vacation.”

The Assessor explained that Your Lake Vacation will pay $500 to use the county’s GIS information.

The Commission approved this unanimously.

The final agenda item was “Discuss enjoining challenge to SB3 and temporary restraining order on property tax.”

This issue came up in a recent MAC conference. (This legislation covers stadium financing, disaster tax credits, and changes to the state’s property tax system that would allow certain counties to vote to freeze or cap their property tax liability. You just know that once you see the word “stadium” in there that this senate bill is going to be another Jeff City boondoggle.)

County Attorney Dickman explained that since this legislation doesn’t apply to Camden County, the county does not have standing to file a lawsuit against SB3 so the issue is moot.

And that was that.