December 2001

In your December 20 Pay Stub/Check you will be mailed health insurance information for 2002. Our current plan ends on December 31, 2001, with the new plan effective January 1, 2002. Please review the renewal information for details of plan changes. The most significant change, other than the approximate 13% increase in health care premium, is that major medical will be reimbursed at 90% instead of the 100% benefit received in the 2001 plan. This change is one factor in the health premium increasing “only” 13% from 2001 plan premiums. Routine doctor office visits will still be reimbursed at 100% after payment of a $15 co pay.

Here is a brief summary of the insurance plan cost for 2002. Medical plan will cost $187.30 per month. for employee only coverage. Medical, vision, and a $15,000 life and accidental death policy is inclusive. Dental Insurance for employees will be $44.25 per month. In order to subscribe to dental coverage, you must subscribe to medical coverage. The deadline for deciding if you want to continue with or commence insurance coverage for 2002 is December 31, 2001. There are no exceptions to this date. This is an open enrollment period and therefore an opportunity for those who have not previously enrolled to obtain insurance coverage.

If you need more information please contact Gene Gordon.

Miscellaneous Receipts

When submitting a reimbursement request for miscellaneous purchases, you need to itemize what the expense is, what it is for, and have your project leader sign your expense sheet. Remember you need to turn in your expense sheet with the original receipts.

Contract Renewal

There have been some inquires about Task Order contract renewal, and funding, and how it is funded. We monitor all task orders very closely with respect to funding and contract length. When the task order is within four weeks of it’s scheduled end date and/or the funding will only support four more weeks of services, we contact tne NMFS Contracting Officer to obtain information on contract extension. The Contracting Offier researches the situation and lets us know, usually within a few days of the future contract status. We will let you know as soon as we are informed about the status of your contract.

December 24 Holiday

Recently President Bush declared December 24th a Federal holiday, closing all Federal offices for the day. We spoke with the Contracting Officer at NOAA for this Task Order Contract to determine the impact this would have on Frank Orth & Associates Task Order employees. We were informed that FOA employees are not to work on either December 24 or 25th. It was added that the buildings will be closed and FOA employees are not to be in the buildings on either of these days.

Please note that our Task Order contract with you each of you indicates that December 25th is a paid holiday. FOA's contract with the Government was bid over 2 years ago. It was priced based on the holidays indicated in your contract. Since this additional holiday was not part of our agreement with the Government, FOA will not be reimbursed for the cost of an additional paid holiday. As such, you will be paid in the normal manner for holiday pay on December 25 but you will not be paid for December 24th.

For those employees that have been with FOA for a year and have unused accrued vacation time, you have the option of taking a day of annual leave.

For employees of the California/Oregon Drift Gillnet Observer Program and the West Coast Longline Program, please see Carolyn Parker concerning your pay status for December 24.