While I have a video of this pension board meeting, I have not yet removed it from my video camera, converted it to MPEG, or uploaded it for your review because I was working on the FOP article for this website that I believed was important for our membership. However, because I also wanted to get “My Observations” to our membership within at least a week of the meeting, I decided to go ahead and upload this article today without the video but shall now get the video done sometime this weekend because it will take me approximately four hours to produce even though this pension meeting was relatively short.
The Police Pension Board meeting of April 19, 2012 was the shortest meeting I’ve ever attended and lasted under one hour. That meeting was attended by all the Pension Board members except Rusty Watson. Also absent from that meeting were our Lobbyist, Roger Smith, and City Director Joan Adcock.
The first item of interest to our general membership, although it was not on our agenda, was the presence during that meeting of two new candidates for the police pension board which I took the time to congratulate before the end of our meeting. The first was James Arnold who was recruited to run for my uncontested seat and the second was Kevin Tindle who was recruited to run against Don Wood for his seat on the pension board. In my opinion, both candidates will make excellent additions to the police pension board provided they will think for themselves and not simply go along with the thoughts of other board members unless those thoughts are truly their own. Unfortunately for Don Wood, he actually agreed with me on a few pension issues that caused Farris and his two comrades to attempt his replacement by recruiting an opponent for his position on the police pension board. I am quite certain that had I not refused to run again for my seat on the police pension board, they would have attempted to secure an opponent for me as well, rather than a mere replacement, due to my strong disagreements with Farris on multiple pension issues. Thus, I now warn our two possible new pension board members that you oppose Farris at the risk of your seat on the pension board but I would also remind them that opposing Farris or others on the pension board when you sincerely believe they are wrong is exactly the duty you are assuming for our membership.
The next item of interest to our general membership was the appointment of the City Attorney as the pension board’s chief legal counsel. While the City Attorney had not yet finished his new “contract” that our Board members will have to approve and that fact resulted in simply passing that item until the next pension board meeting, I found it rather humorous that Mr. Moore stated he wanted to have a “conversation” with Ms. Adcock, who innocently first proposed this ridiculous option, and the City Attorney during our next meeting about the increase in workload for the City Attorney’s Office that such appointment would entail. Obviously, he has legitimate concerns in that area because the increase in workload for the City Attorney’s Office would likely delay obtaining most legal opinions or work for our pension board due to the fact that the City Attorney’s first obligation must be to answer the City’s requests for opinions and work which would relegate our Board’s requests to the end of his list. That process could easily result in Mr. Moore’s recrimination and claims of intentional and deliberate delays in obtaining such opinions or work by our police pension board that Mr. Moore would be forced to deal with due to his statutorily required Chairmanship of our Board and, for that reason alone, I laughingly feel his pain.
The last thing I thought was interesting was the discussion of the new pension board website. Farris asked Mr. Moore if we would have to bid it out and both Mr. Moore and Ms. Lenehan said, “no.” Then, Farris claimed he had talked to two production companies but the first one charged “well, it was considerably more” so he called a second woman that he claimed he had never met but called her “two or three times” about the new website and she told him she would build the website for $500. That is an excellent price, provided she actually has the skills to do it, and is consistent with the price I mentioned in my previous article on that topic. Then, Farris smugly said she would only charge “a maximum of $100 per month” to administer the new website which greatly surprised me because I had thought it would surely be between $200 to $500 a month or more to cover everything that Farris mentioned in his email to our membership.
However, after I asked him because of my disbelief, Farris admitted that he did not discuss videotaping our meetings with her and I’ll bet he also didn’t mention uploading the audio files or the need to upload any articles either which will, of course, increase that fee rather substantially. Even Mr. Moore stated he doubted that anyone would videotape our pension meetings and perform that maintenance for only $100 per month and wisely recommended that we first obtain a proposal for the construction and maintenance of the new website before hiring anyone. That was certainly an obvious requirement that Farris had apparently overlooked but everyone agreed to place that item on our agenda for the next pension board meeting and Farris said he would attempt to have his woman attend that meeting to answer any questions. I cannot wait for that issue to come up during our next meeting which will be the last pension meeting I will have to attend as a pension board member.
Listen to the audio of this Pension Board meeting HERE
Watch the video of this Pension Board meeting HERE
