City of San Diego Retired Employees Association
March 12, 2018
Board Meeting Minutes

 

NOTE: All votes were unanimous unless otherwise noted

Call to Order: The meeting was called to order by Vice-President for Programs Dave Twomey at 9:30am.

Board Members Present: Mike Bresnahan, Karen Butler, Shirley Hall, Joan Hernandez, Brad Jacobsen, Joan McNamara, Ty Rogers, Mary Ann Stepnowsky, John Tsiknas, Dave Twomey, Dick Wilken, and Janet Wood

Guests Present: Chris Brewster and Joe Flynn

AGENDA: There were no changes to the agenda.

MINUTES: The minutes of the February 2019 Board meeting were approved.

COMMUNICATIONS: None

TREASURER’S REPORT: Karen pointed out that the website maintenance and operations expenditures caused about $1100 in spending overage.

M/S/C to accept the March Treasurer’s Report.

The Investment Committee reported that we had a very good month; our investments are now up to almost $200K.

M/S/C to accept the Investment Committee Report

RETIREMENT BOARD REPRESENTATIVE’S REPORT

Charlie was ill with the flu, but sent a report by email. The last meeting was very short. Board Chair Val Hoy is termed out, as are two other Board members; two will be appointed by the mayor, and Lou Maggi was elected to represent Active Police and Fire employees. The Board was informed that SDCERS is in the top tier of public pensions systems based on earnings for the last ten years; Gregg Rademacher informed the SDCERS Board that the investments are earning $1M per day. It was also noted that the average retiree benefit is $49,262.

DISCUSSION/ACTION ITEMS:

1.)  The Audit Committee has not met yet.

2.)   Dave reported on talk with Carl Luna about REA becoming a sponsor of Restoring Respect. There will be no monetary aspect, but it will involve both publicity of the event and volunteering as greeters, check-in, etc. In return, our name and logo will be on all promotional materials for the events, which will raise our profile as City retirees in a positive manner. Joan Hernandez will look into getting some classy name badges for us to wear that these events.

3.)  Dave reported that we need more volunteers for our Lunch Bunch, as we’re losing Jodie Monteleone and Alyse Ford in June. He will make a pitch at the General Membership meeting. Dave also found some professional-looking aprons for the Lunch Bunch volunteers at a cost of $6 each plus a $15 charge to have our logo printed on them.

M/S/C to purchase ten aprons with the REA logo.

4.)  Chris Brewster gave a synopsis of the Prop B hearing in the Appellate Court. Briefly, the pro-Prop B attorneys representing the City and Boling tried at first to reargue aspects of the case but the judges weren’t having any of it. Ann Smith did a great job representing the employee groups. The judges seemed to fully accept that the employees hired without pension benefits post-Prop B must be “made whole” as decided by PERB. PERB had also ruled that Proposition B be repealed, with changes to the City Charter undone, but PERB doesn’t have authority to do that and the judges seemed concerned about contradicting the voters. Ann Smith seemed to indicate that many laws are still on the books despite being rendered unconstitutional so repeal might not be necessary. 1

Assuming that the US Supreme Court rejects the City’s plea to hear the case on Jerry Sanders’ First Amendment rights, the Appellate Court’s court ruling will be key to resolving the issue, but it may well be appealed if one or the other of the parties are unhappy with it. A wrinkle is that Lifeguards and Unclassified employees were not part of the unions’ lawsuit, so will they be “made whole”?

INFORMATION ITEMS:

  1. Two dozen water bottles were ordered as speaker gifts; six are in the locker. Scott Lewis will be the first recipient. First-time speakers will receive mugs; repeat speakers will get water bottles.
  2. Joan McNamara is looking around for the next outing, which will probably be in May or June. Brad and others reported that the tour of the Japanese Friendship Garden was long (three hours!) but very informative.
  3. Mike asked if our membership database can be sorted by ZIP code and/or council district. John said Yes to the first, but No to the second.

1 Secretary’s note: An example of this is Prop 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. It’s still on the books after the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.

COMMITTEE REPORTS

Advocacy: Mike and others will meet with Councilmembers Monica Montgomery and Barbara Bry in early April. It was decided that REA will have a presence at both health care events in June. The next Advocacy Committee meeting will be March 28.

Retiree Issues Task Force (RITF): No report

Other Retired Public Employee Associations: Chris reported that an op-ed piece from the Roundtable in response to an op-ed in the U-T was rejected on the newspaper’s principle that they don’t print back-and-forth pieces. It will be reworked and shortened to act as a stand-alone piece. He also informed the Board that he and other members of the Roundtable will be doing a presentation at the California Counties’ Retirement Association on April 16.

Active Employee Associations: No report.

Membership: Membership is now at 1557.

Sunshine: No report.

Newsletter: Deadline for the next issue is March 20 or earlier.

Website: Mary Ann and others are working with Edward to get up to speed on how to post information. There was also a general question about “reprinting” articles from other sources on our website: Does this violate copyright?

General Membership Programs: For the April meeting, Charlie Hogquist will do a presentation of the history of the military in San Diego.

ADJOURNMENT

The meeting was adjourned at 10:50am.

Respectfully submitted,

 

Brad Jacobsen
Secretary