For those of our membership who may not know or have not noticed, City Director Joan Adcock has attended both our Pension Board Funding Committee meetings as well as our Pension Board meetings for the past several months.  Thus, I believe this report to our membership is probably overdue.  [Read more...]

Unfortunately, my video camcorder was acting up when I tried to record our last pension board meeting.  I am working on learning what went wrong and hope to have it ready for the next pension board meeting.

This Board meeting was not attended by our Treasurer, Sara Lenehan, due to a conflicting meeting with the Municipal League, or our Lobbyist, Roger Smith, due to the death of a longtime friend.  Other than those two absences, all other Board members and regular pension meeting participants were present as well as City Director Joan Adcock. While other issues were discussed by our Board, I shall only report on the two primary issues that I believe are most important to our general membership at this time.

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The last pension board meeting was pretty much the run of the mill stuff with all pension members present as well as City Director Joan Adcock.  However, there were a few brief comments made about matters of general interest to our membership but none of them, with one exception, were of any significant length. [Read more...]

First, I need to explain that our Pension Board received the BEST NEWS that had ever been presented to our pension board during our Funding Committee Meeting that occurred prior to our Police Pension Board Meeting that forms the basis of this article.  With the exception of Mr. Bruce Moore, that meeting and our later Pension Board meeting was attended by all members of the police pension board and City Director Joan Adcock who remained for the entirety of our Funding Committee Meeting and during much of our later Pension Board meeting as well.  Also present during our Funding Committee Meeting were PRB Director David Clark and PRB Actuary Jody Carreiro who produced an excellent new report for our Pension Board that resulted in providing us with several key pieces of information that will be referenced in this article to explain the good news I previously mentioned.  While Mr. Carreiro’s report contains a great deal of other information of interest to our membership that is worthy of review, this article shall concentrate on those pages of primary interest to our pension membership. [Read more...]

The Pension Board meeting began with all pension board members present except for our Treasurer, Sara Lenehan, who had a family emergency that prevented her attendance. [Read more...]

In my opinion, the most important topic of discussion at our last Pension Board meeting was a problem that was inadvertently created by an August 3^rd email sent to all police pension board members by City Treasurer Sara Lenehan who is also the Treasurer of our pension board.  That email stated her intent to refuse the payment of any funds to advertise our half cent sales tax proposal that had previously been approved by our Pension Board and by our pension fund attorney, until she received yet another opinion on that matter from the City Attorney.  The reason I say that the problem was “inadvertently created” is because I do not believe that even Ms. Lenehan was aware that her email would create a problem that would NOT involve her simple refusal to honor that particular expenditure but would involve a much more far reaching issue that forms the basis of my concern in this matter. [Read more...]

If you read the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, you have probably seen the July 14^th front page story, “LR  Pension Panel Floats Tax Idea” that occurred on the day of our pension meeting or their subsequent story, headlined in the “Arkansas” section of that newspaper, Police Pension Board’s Call for Lesser Levy Draws Critics” and already have an idea of what happened at our last pension Board meeting; however, now I shall fill in the  background information that led to those headlines. [Read more...]

The June 9 Pension Board Meeting began with all Board members present and, after the Financial Consultants gave their report, most of the remainder of the meeting was a discussion of only one topic, – the City’s new sales tax proposal.  [Read more...]

Our last pension board meeting was relatively brief and I shall attempt to relay what I believe were the more important elements of that meeting to our membership below: [Read more...]

This Pension Board meeting began with only Sara Lenehan absent from the meeting due to a family emergency and, of course, the absence of our Chairman, Mayor Mark Stodola.  This was also the shortest meeting I can recall our Board ever having which is a welcomed change from the lengthy meetings we normally have. [Read more...]