Commission approves changes to insurance coverage

County Administrator Amy Frederickson, who spoke after the meeting, said a check was made into policies obtained through Byars Wright Insurance, while a "deep dive" was made into each of the individual county properties covered.

Byars Wright will broker the comprehensive insurance, canceling the county's coverage with Lexington AIG and switching the county to Cincinnati Insurance, which will put the county in a national preferred group. It will continue to use County Risk Services for liability through the Association of County Commissioners of Alabama.

Being in the preferred group will be "a bargaining chip as far as making sure their rates don't increase exponentially, and if we have a bad year in the future we won't be at risk of losing insurance coverage, so it gives us a nice safety blanket," she said.

Just the revised auto policies alone will save the county $92,500 this year, Frederickson said. "We've already paid out the full year of comprehensive," so once it is all balanced back it will amount to a check to the county for $92,500, she said. The projected annual premium would be $154,000.

Increasing to a $50,000 deductible for the properties will save an additional $47,000 a year, she said.

The three-year policy premium for the Walker County Airport-Bevill Field will amount to an additional $1,500, at $17,786, but will increase coverage from $10 million to $15 million, which she said was phenomenal. Chairman Steve Miller said that was needed as airports usually deal more in a need for coverage. 

"Cincinnati was really gracious and dropped the way that they are accessing our coverage and cost to us significantly across the board," Frederickson said.

In an emailed statement later, she said, "One of the considerations ... was the increased overall cost associated with building insurance this year due to Alabama's inclusion of the coastal/wind damage warning areas. ... (W)e have completed a deep dive into our coverage needs and implementation of inventory procedures to reduce costs going forward.

"Specifically we were able to mitigate increased costs of insurance by combining comprehensive auto and property/miscellaneous policies under the Cincinnati Insurance Group. In doing so, they have agreed to reduce our cost (the net rate per $100, from $3.25 per $100 to $2.25 per $100). ... (A)s a concession, the County has agreed to implement improvements to the interdepartmental auto inventory processes. And the resulting savings are even more significant in light of our $6.5 million-plus in County autos and equipment coverage.

"Additionally, we have tried to reduce the effect of industry-wide insurance cost increases with a comprehensive property schedule audit, which included the recalculation of square footage, building costs, building content values, and evaluation of building replacement costs on a building-by-building basis; the removal and cancellation of outdated employee/official bonds, among other things."