MSU-Bozeman Classified Employees Personnel Advisory Committee Minutes

December 9, 1998

• Present:   Jill Allison, Susan Alt, Carol Bittinger, Donna Gollehon, Kathy Griffith, Darcy Halpin, Lloyd Hansen, Roberta Kerr, Dianne Kramarich, Jenny Knickerbocker, Helen McFaul, Sharon McIlhatan, Bluette Phillips, Nancy Topel, Sharon Townsend, Dawn Watkins, and Brenda York
  

• Absent:   Diane Allen, Patty Gunderson, Pete Boharski, Connie Hupka, Joe Miller, and Larry Miller
  

I.  Old Business

• Last month's minutes were approved.
  

• Carol is still working on getting a Bozeman person to one of our future meetings. Someone from the Chamber of Commerce or some other organization.
  

II.  Jerry Coffey spoke to CEPAC today. He talked about the Choices newsletter first. This will continue 4 times a year. There is a yearly budget of $10,000.00 for this newsletter, and it comes to about 34 cents@copy. He has a local printer doing 2 colors for the price of B&W. The quality of paper could be cheaper, however, the state mandates a certain minimum standard for paper and this happens to be more expensive than is necessary but there is nothing we can do about that. It is federally mandated that any changes in medical plans like ours has to be to us within a 60 day period. Our regular benefits book only comes out once a year to once every 2 years. Therefore the newsletter has to be furnished to keep us updated on any changes to the program. Email is not an option and it is not legal to notify benefit changes in this manner.

There was a good deal of discussion about going with the state medical plan. It is not that simple. In order for us to do this we have to come up with the reserves required for our group. This amounts to approximately 81/2 million dollars which comes to $1500 per employee. At the February Interunit meeting it will be recommended NOT to join at this time. The decision will be made at this meeting. I opted not to list the reasons as these reasons will be listed in the next Choices newsletter that we should be receiving in another week or two.

The financial report on the state of our medical plan is good after 3 months. It is still too soon to know for sure tho. 6 months will be give us a better picture. In the future we will NOT lose dental coverage. There has been some talk about a modest vision plan.

Since the filing of the Unfair Labor Practice suit the Interunit restructuring has been put on hold. This was to appoint « of the committee labor appointed and the other « administrative appointed. This will remain on hold until the lawsuit is settled or dropped.

Jerry suggested that everyone look closely at their possible need for Long Term Care and consider the new program being initiated now thru payroll deduction. It is an open enrollment except for the unlimited care level.

The pharmacy plan is still "killing us". 55% of all prescription claims come from retirees. Unfortunately the majority of those using maintenance-type drugs are NOT using the mail order plan. The mail order plan offers incredible savings but for some reason people are not using it the way they should. Someone who would spend $600.00 using the regular pharmacy plan would only have to spend $45.00 if they had used the mail order plan. This is an incredible difference and could save our plan a tremendous amount of money. There have been big difference made in the regular pharmacy plan, however the mail order plan is still exactly the same as initially set-up and VERY CHEAP!

III.  Standing Committee Reports

• Affirmative Action - Darcy Halpin: The committee met twice this month. The first meeting was to discuss writing a letter concerning the two tiered fee process that is proposed by the board of Regents. There was a concern that this fee process would discourage low income students from attending MSU since the proposal makes tuition higher at MSU and UM and lower at the other colleges. Affirmative Action does not condone such separation in the MUS. The other topic discussed was proposed revisions of the Non-Discrimination Policies and Procedures. The one they are dealing with is accommodating persons with disabilities. Darcy will bring the changes to one of our meetings.
  
• Benefits Committee - Pete Boharski, Patty Gunderson, Joe Miller:See Section II above.
  
• Employee Wellness - Diane Allen: No report
  
• Long Range Planning Committee - Kathy Griffith: No report
  
• President's Committee on Strategic Planning - Roz Wortman: Roz provided Carol with the minutes from the 11/30 meeting. The role of the SPBC is to make recommendations to the President A list of proposed commitments for the Additional Tuition Revenue included: College recruitment brochures ($20,000), Market adjustment for IT employees ($18,775), SRM building costs ($180,000) Increased postage costs ($10,000), VisionNet line charges ($16,536), L&S deficit ($250,000), Litigation settlements ($95,000), TRA compliance costs ($15,000), Feb1 Faculty/Prof salary increase ($220,000), and Dept. operations budget adjustment ($100,000). There was discussion on the L&S deficit. The $250,000 will not totally resolve the college's financial problems and this would be a one-time adjustment. The SPBC unanimously agreed that salary increases for classified employees should be the highest budget priority. A mechanism for increasing these salaries needs to be identified, despite state-wide issues. However, caution should be exercised while official negotiations are being conducted. The committee agreed that recruitment brochures were an investment in maintaining student enrollment. Since the IT salary adjustments were approved at the State level the committee felt it was appropriated to fund them from a central University pool. At this time the faculty/professional salary increases implementation date will remain 3/1/99. Spring semester will be closely monitored and it is expected that the implementation date will be moved to 2/1/99.
  
• Provost's Calendar Committee - Helen McFaul: No report.
  
• Traffic Appeals - Jill Allison, Bluette Phillips: At last week's meeting it was announced that the University is creating a new position, "Parking Manager". This person will be responsible for all parking issues. One of the applicants attended the meeting.
  
• University Planning Board - Sheron McIlhattan: The ASMSU Daycare Center requested authority to remove the existing wood fence and replace it with a chain link fence. It was approved. The campus Sculpture Committee needs to be established to review the art work removed from the campus due to the tunnel projects and make recommendations for the placement of the sculpture art on campus. Cecelia Vaniman gave an overview of the Building Naming Committee.
  

IV.  New Business

• Susan Alt said there will be a Banner survey enclosed in our December paychecks. This survey is in relationship to a once-a-month paycheck or twice-a-month. The survey however does NOT mean that anything with change for the present. The deadline on returning the survey is tight -- December 18th.
  

• Cel Johnson is working on distribution lists using electronic email accounts for the distribution of information to cut down on the enormous amounts of papers presently used to distribute information. Carol wanted to know how we felt about every employee being eligible for an university email address. Everyone agreed on this. This would also include the time to train and the opportunity to do this training. Concerns were brought up in relation to those w/o computers, etc., but most felt that everyone could have access to a computer somewhere on campus like the library, etc. Direct communication thru email would eliminate not only the paper presently used, but would help to dispel rumors.
  

• Gordie Pace, staff group at U of M feels strongly that staff needs to attend Board of Regents meetings to present their issues. Someone suggested that we check with the Burns Communication Center to see if there were some way to have live hook-up from campus for these meetings.
  

• The University Governance Council is looking at work load models and differential tuition, pay periods, etc. They are also looking into the recent cheating by 5 students in Computer Science who were able to get signatures from Deans and secretaries to drop this class so they would not receive "f"s. New guidelines need to be set for academic misconduct policy. Rightfully these students should not have been allowed to drop the class. They should have received "f"s.
  

• The university is once again under accreditation proceedings. There is a committee headed by Pam Hill and they came up with a survey to be filled out by MSU staff and faculty. However, in going over some of this survey we all felt it was totally negative and needed to be redone and NOT sent out as it is. Both Carol Bittinger and Susan Alt were going to a meeting this afternoon to go over the survey.
  

• Next CEPAC meeting is January 13 in the President's Conference Room in Montana Hall.
  

Bluette Phillips