City of San Diego Retired Employees Association
April 10, 2022
General Meeting Minutes
Meeting held via Zoom
Vice-President for Advocacy Mike Bresnahan welcomed members to the meeting.
Cynthia Queen reported that SDCERS continues to be vigilant with disaster planning to ensure retirees will be paid during a disruptive event. SDCERS conducts drills to practice and refine the Business Continuity Plan, which details all the steps and contact information staff would need if they could not access their office systems. SDCERS works with a secure vendor who maintains the SDCERS data center and out of state disaster recovery site. The vendor has multiple, redundant data centers across the US.
She also gave a shout-out to SDCERS Board Member Charlie Hogquist not only for his work on the Board but for his concern and advocacy for individual members who have issues with SDCERS.
PROGRAM
The program was Charlie Hogquist, who gave another of his programs on local history, this time focusing on John D. Spreckels and his many contributions to San Diego. Spreckels was a sugar magnate who relocated from San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. In addition to building the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park and the Spreckels Theatre in Downtown, he also completed the Hotel del Coronado and built several streetcar lines that transported people to attractions that he also built, such as Belmont Park, and to his developments in Mission Beach and Pacific Beach. He was also a philanthropist who funded Mercy Hospital, the first hospital in San Diego to serve impoverished residents.
The meeting was recorded, and is available on REA’s YouTube Channel.