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Mr. Kelly asked if staff had any anecdotal sense of how Eugene's experience compared to that of Salem or Bend, for example. Ms. Daut said anecdotally, she thought Eugene had done well. Mr. Graybeal suggested the council could examine the studies and benchmarking done by the Public Risk and Insurance Manage- ment Association (PRIMA), which compared premium to population and total budget, for example. He said his firm planned to examine its customer base and attempt to benchmark different entities in the state to each other by schools, cities, counties, etc., to get a better understanding of that information. Mr. Kelly asked what sort of claims were federal claims as opposed to state claims. City Attorney Glenn Klein said typically, a civil rights claim was a good example of a federal claim. He said such things as unreasonable search and seizure or violation of due process also triggered such claims. In response to a follow-up question from Mr. Kelly, Mr. Klein said the Danebo Properties liability claim involved a claim of inverse condemnation, which are not limited by the Oregon Tort Claims Act. Ms. Nathanson asked who assigned the experience modifier for Workers Compensation. Ms. Daut indicated the numbers were set by the State of Oregon's Workers Compensation Division. Ms. Nathanson inferred from those numbers that Eugene's claims experience was a good one. Speaking to Mr. Kelly's interest in comparing Eugene's experience with liability and equity claims with that of other communities, Ms. Nathanson suggested that the services delivered by a particular jurisdiction and the condition of its assets had a bearing on the issue. She said there were many variables to consider. She asked if the ICMA tracked those variables. Ms. Daut indicated the organization tracked many variables. She said that the ICMA produced an array of data that broke information down by categories such as population, but she believed it required more investigation to determine if one was actually comparing ;;apples to apples." Ms. Daut said that in future risk reports, staff would fold in the ICMA benchmarks into its reporting on service measures, and would focus on mean and median numbers used in that process. Ms. Nathanson asked if the City was proactive in avoiding claims. Ms. Daut said the City had a very proactive safety program and had won recognition from the League of Oregon Cities for its good loss history. Almost every department had its own safety committee and there was also a joint labor- management safety committee overseeing those committees and the City's safety program. The issue of risk was discussed in employee orientation, and the message of loss control and prevention from both a liability and Workers Compensation perspective was consistent from the first day of employment. Ms. Nathanson said a good track record reflected the money and time the City spent on being safe and avoiding claims. She said what seemed most troublesome in regard to the Risk Fund was outside of the council's control. She asked if there was anything staff would advise the council to consider in terms of risk that it should be considering. Ms. Daut said she could not think of anything. She said that sometimes the council chose to take a risk, such as when it adopted the Telecommunications Ordinance, and that was appropriate as long as the council acknowledged the risk and considered the risk analysis in its decision making. Mayor Torrey hoped that eventually staff would find a point at which it could judge whether it was doing as well as it could. Speaking to the work session scheduled on the Health Fund, he said he would be interested in knowing about the experience of communities that expected their employees to share in the cost of medical insurance; had there been a difference in the experience when employees had more responsibility for their premiums. MINUTES--Eugene City Council September 13, 2004 Page 5 Work Session