August 2010
- From the Board Room
- Counselors' Comments: Search of Police Officer's Text Messages Reasonable
- The Claims File
- Loss Control Lowdown: Underground Areas Can be Dangerous
- Brokers' Beat: Cyber Liability
- FYI: Underground Storage Tanks
- Coming Events
- 2009 Safety Awards
- 2009 Public Risk Achievement Awards
- Be Smart When Driving with Your Smart Phone
From the Board Room...At the June 21, 2010 Quarterly Board Meeting, the following actions were taken: - Approved the Open Claims and Incurred Losses Report - Approved the 2010 SPEC program with the understanding a new law enforcement section will be added later - Approved funding ($1,375) for five paid memberships to HRSentry, an online HR resource - Accepted the 2009 Annual Report - Approved the PEPIP renewal for the period 7/1/10-7/1/11 with a $250,000 SIR - Accepted the Actuarial Report for the year ending December 31, 2009 - Approved the 2009 Safety Awards (see the article on page 3) - Approved the winners of the Public Risk Achievement Awards (see the insert) - Approved a 2% pay increase for the Executive Director - Approved the Updated Contingency Plan/Interim Program Management Procedures
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2009 Safety
Awards Prior to the June Board Meeting, the Awards Committee meets to determine the Risk Management/Safety Award winners that will be presented to the full Board for approval at that meeting. To be eligible for an award, a member city must have completed one full year of membership. The Overall Award is presented to the city with the lowest dollar losses per full-time employee. A plate engraved with the overall winner's name and the year of the awards is added to a plaque which rotates to the winning city. The city may then display the plaque for one year. The runner-up city is presented with a smaller plaque honoring its accomplishment. Congratulation to the 2009 winners. The overall winner is the City of West Carrollton with zero losses. The runner-up is the City of Tipp City, also with zero losses, but fewer employees. Departmental Awards are given to the departments with the lowest dollar losses per full-time employee. Generally, there are several departments in each category with zero losses so the winner is determined by the department with the most employees. The 2009 Departmental Winners will receive a plaque, and their employees will be treated to a breakfast or other celebration in their honor, or they may choose to receive $250 toward any safety related training that would benefit the department. Individual certificates will be provided for each employee of these departments. The winners are as follows: Police: Centerville Fire & EMS: Miamisburg Water & Wastewater: Sidney Parks & Recreation: Blue Ash Streets & Refuse: Springdale We would also like to recognize the other departments with zero losses. Except for the plaque, these departments will receive the same benefits as the winning departments. Congratulations to the following zero-loss departments: Police Bellbrook, Indian Hill, Madeira, Montgomery, Piqua, Tipp City, West Carrollton, Wilmington Fire & EMS Bellbrook, Blue Ash, Englewood, Piqua, Tipp City, Vandalia, West Carrollton Water & Wastewater Bellbrook, Indian Hill, Miamisburg, Tipp City, Vandalia, West Carrollton, Wilmington, Wyoming Parks & Recreation Centerville, Indian Hill, Madeira, Montgomery, Sidney, Springdale, Tipp City, West Carrollton, Wyoming Streets & Refuse Madeira, Tipp City, West Carrollton, Wyoming Safety Performance Awards are presented to departments with three or more consecutive years of zero losses. Plaques for the period 2007-2009, or longer, will be presented to the following departments: Police West Carrollton (3 years) Bellbrook, Indian Hill & Madeira (5 years) Fire & EMS Piqua & Tipp City (3 years) Bellbrook (5 years) Water & Wastewater Bellbrook & Indian Hill (5 years) Wyoming (6 years) Vandalia (16 years) Parks & Recreation Springdale & Tipp City (5 years) Montgomery (9 years) Madeira (15 years) The Standard of Excellence Award is given to cities with $100 or less per employee. Plaques were presented to these cities at the June 21 Board Meeting. The following cities were the 2009 recipients: Madeira ($0/employee) Tipp City ($0/employee) West Carrollton ($0/employee) Blue Ash ($15.24/employee) Kettering ($34.37/employee) Bellbrook ($47.71/employee) Centerville ($48.56/employee) Miamisburg ($89.78/employee) Piqua ($91.17/employee) Public Risk Achievement Awards were added to the program this year. Please see the insert for more information. Congratulations to all our 2009 winners! back to top |
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2009 Public Risk Achievement Awards The Public Risk Achievement Awards were added to the Safety Awards Program to honor members with creative and successful risk management programs. There are two categories for these awards. The first category is for Innovation in Public Risk Management. This award recognizes programs that are notably innovative, successful and/or well received. The winner will receive $1,000. The second category is Outstanding Achievement for a Public Risk Management Program. It recognizes risk management programs that are particularly timely and effective in reducing or controlling losses. The winner will receive $500. Congratulations to the 2009 winners! At the June 21 Board Meeting, the City of Bellbrook received a check for $1,000 for its Safety Day Lunch, and the City of Englewood received a check for $500 for its IT Disaster Recovery Enhancements. Following are excerpts from their applications: City of Bellbrook's Safety Day Lunch Description: The city of Bellbrook sponsors an annual Safety Day each October which highlights the City's commitment to safety, as well as community, among employees. Lunch is provided by the City while employees from all departments provide material for the program. It is the City's belief that community among employees plays an important part in safety as many jobs are done as a team. After lunch, the Police, Fire and Service Departments each give a 30-minute presentation on safety in their area of expertise on a topic of their choosing. This encourages teamwork and safety discussions. Presentations include Power Point slideshows and videos.Cost of Initiating and Maintaining Program: $300 for a hand-held video camera (one time expense); $150 in food for approximately 35 employees (recurring expense); time and wages for employees preparing the presentations varies. Program's Cost Effectiveness: The Safety Day program has been cost effective because the City spends a nominal amount of money in food and equipment to bring together a majority of our employees for an enjoyable and positive opportunity to stress the importance of safety. The program has encouraged employees to be safety-minded in their work and has given them an understanding of how they have contributed to the City's past years of zero losses and lower insurance costs. After sharing the safety benefits of certain equipment, that equipment has been shared across departmental lines contributing to the cost effectiveness of the program. Program Innovation: The program is innovative because it encourages each department to be creative in presenting safety awareness to their peers. The program also encourages employees to practice speaking in front of larger audiences and gives them a chance to showcase talents they may otherwise not be able use in their regular employment duties. Benefits for Others Adopting this Program: Other members would benefit from adopting this program because it is an easy way to encourage safety; it is cost effective and is adaptable to each city. We all operate differently and this program allows for creativity in making it your own. There are few better ways to encourage safety among employees than to have them be the educators. When they are the ones sharing the message, you know they understand it and take ownership of safety in their respective areas. Other Benefits: In particular, benefits derived for the City have been a stronger relationship between management and line employees. Employees across the City are able to see that management truly cares about safety in the workplace by using this lunch as a way to communicate that message. It also lets management see line workers present their knowledge of safety. Line workers sometimes do not realize the impact that safety has on the financial condition of the City; therefore, at this lunch every year, management has the opportunity to communicate the value of safety when it comes to insurance premiums and the cost of doing business. Line workers have commented that it makes them feel more responsible when they can see where safety plays a part in the financial health of the city and is a team effort for all departments. City of Englewood's IT Disaster Recovery Enhancements Description: Information technology personnel have improved the City's disaster recovery capabilities by implementing a backup data center. If a catastrophe, such as a fire, damaged critical technology infrastructure at the government center rendering it inoperable, server operations such as email, departmental record keeping, and police and fire mobile data applications could be restored in a matter of hours via the backup data center located in a remote fire station. Data is synchronized in real time between the two locations so the threat of losing irreplaceable data is all but eliminated. Cost of Initiating and Maintaining Program: First year costs: $42,000 for server hardware and software licensing. Annual operating costs: $5,500 for software support Program's Cost Effectiveness: The servers purchased for this project have an expected minimum lifetime of seven years. By consolidating data and workloads, the city has been able to decommission seven physical servers. It is estimated that the city has saved $20,400 in expected server replacement costs during the next seven years. Additionally, by reducing the number of servers, this project has reduced electricity usage and is expected to save $3,500 in utility costs. The remaining expenses are justified because of the cost of reducing the risk of lost data and lost employee productivity. Program Innovation: This method of protecting data and reducing downtime in an emergency is not a new idea in the private sector. The public sector, smaller organizations in particular, continues to trail the private sector in adopting new technologies. As technology improvements and competition continue to drive down prices, advanced technologies such as virtualization and geoclustering become more affordable to smaller organizations. This project is innovative because it applies advanced disaster recovery and data protection practices in a manner that is affordable and manageable for a small organization. Benefits for Others Adopting this Program: The more dependent an organization is on technology, the more it can stand to benefit from disaster recovery strategies that reduce computer downtime and prevent data loss. By replicating data in real time, the potential for data loss is greatly reduced compared to traditional tape backup methods that run once a night. For members relying on nightly tape backups to protect critical information, a server failure at 5 p.m. could result in the loss of an entire business day's worth of information and employee effort. Englewood's disaster recovery solution limits the amount of data that can potentially be lost to approximately five minutes worth. Other Benefits: In addition to the data protection enhancements, this solution improves the city's ability to provide critical information to public safety personnel in the field. Police and fire vehicles are equipped with laptops and data connections that allow them to access information and communicate with dispatchers and other officers. Many of these services are provided by servers at the Englewood government center. This disaster recovery solution gives the city the ability to transition critical public safety applications to the standby server located at the remote fire station in less than two hours with minimal loss of data. This project keeps public safety personnel working effectively in the field even in the event of a failure or disaster in the government center server room. back to topBe Smart When Driving With Your Smart Phone A recent CareerBuilder survey found that 54% of people check their smart phones while driving In a University of Utah study of driving and talking on the phone, only 2.5% of test subjects were able to to do both safely. For the other 97.5%, the ability to hit the brakes quickly was slowed by 20%, and the tendency to drive too slowly to keep up with traffic rose by 30%. CareerBuilder.com offers these tips: Turn off your phone when driving. Pull over if you need to talk. Set priorities. Discuss the situation with your employer and your family so everyone understands you can't always be connected Have a backup. For work, leave an out-of office voicemail message with contact information for colleagues who can assist callers. |