General Meeting Minutes – 7/10/2023

Vice-President for Advocacy Mike Bresnahan welcomed members and introduced incoming Board Member Greg Woods. He also reported that our food drive contributions far exceeded our $5000 target and thanked Helen Phillips and Joe Flynn for their efforts to reach out to non-REA retirees.

Gregg Rademacher reported that SDCERS is doing well. They are still phasing in Prop B employees, now reaching out to employees who are no longer working for the City. He assured members that despite the recent hacking of the State retirement services, SDCERS accounts are secure. He announced that Cynthia Queen is planning on retiring and is busy producing a package of information for her successor.

Jessica Taylor advised members who want in-person meetings with SDCERS staff to call ahead and confirm that the staff member will actually be working in the office at that time.

The program was Dr Tim Lueker from the Scripps Institute for Oceanography where he has spent 40 years researching and tracking CO₂  in the atmosphere. He explained that the amount of CO₂ varies by season because of plants cycle of absorbing it in Spring and releasing it in Fall. He showed slides of their research lab at the summit of Mauna Loa, a site chosen because there is no foliage at the top of the volcano, only lava. He explained the air sample collection process and also showed how a recent eruption of Mauna Loa isolated their laboratory and affected some of their data.