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.
City Attorney
The first issue that was of interest to our general membership was a report from the Little Rock City Attorney who was asked to appear at the meeting to discuss the possibility of providing our pension board with legal representation as was recommended by Ms. Adcock. Mr. Carpenter basically reviewed his possible conflict of interest issues and recited a short history of his provision of legal services to other City Boards and Commissions. I asked him a series of questions pertaining to his possible provision of legal services and our Board discussed each of them at some length.
Then, immediately after Farris had responded to a question involving Board member access to the City Attorney, he made another motion [00.25.26 into the pension meeting audio], as he had in our previous pension meeting, that we approve the City Attorney as our legal representative while retaining our current legal counsel. Again, Lee seconded that motion and Mr. Moore asked if there was any further discussion before he submitted the motion for a vote of our Board. I replied “yes” and stated that, a short time ago, we contacted our legal counsel to determine if they would represent us in the event that we hired additional legal counsel after Mr. Moore suggested that course of action. I believed we needed to contact them again with regard to this matter because I see this matter as a separate issue to that previous matter and I did not feel comfortable voting on this motion without first consulting our current legal counsel.
Surprisingly to me, Mr. Moore immediately agreed with that assessment and furthermore recommended that we delay the motion until the March meeting to give Mr. Carpenter time to review our existing contract with our law firm and to obtain the concurrence of our current legal counsel with having the City Attorney’s Office representing our fund. Subsequent to that recommendation, both Farris and Lee again withdrew their motion with Farris stating that he wanted the record to reflect that he wished to pursue this issue because he believed it was important and would save the fund money and that, although there may be conflicts of interest, he believed our Board could handle such instances appropriately. However, I am not as certain as he that our Board has the ability to handle such conflict of interest issues.
It is apparent that the conflict of interest issues involved in this matter are very complex, even for attorneys as is evidenced by the large number of rules concerning conflicts of interest contained in the Arkansas Rules of Professional Conduct that govern attorney/client relationships. Mr. Carpenter even acknowledged that fact during our board meeting. After I asked him, the City Attorney also acknowledged that those rules required our Pension Board to submit a waiver of our rights due to those conflicts of interest to allow his representation of our Board. As many of you know from having dealt with numerous criminal suspects, providing a waiver to any rights may not always be an advisable choice for a criminal suspect and, it is my concern, that doing so may also not be advisable for our Board either, at least, not without first obtaining the advice of our current legal counsel. Thanks to Mr. Moore’s suggestion, it now appears that we will have the advice of our legal counsel before we vote on that motion.
The greatest potential problem I see concerning the issue of conflicts of interest is determining exactly when the advice we may receive from the City Attorney may be in conflict with our own best interests. None of our Board members are attorneys and any response to Board questions provided by the City Attorney would necessarily be primarily made in the best interest of his principle client, the City, and would thus require a more extensive knowledge of the law than is possessed by any member of our Board to be able to determine if that response is truly in the best interests of our Board. That concern would probably not exist with our own legal counsel. Just in the short time that I have been a member of our Board, we have considered many issues that could have gone the other way had we not had access to our own legal counsel.
Just one poor example of that fact was the issue involving the City Manager’s ability to sit as the Chairman of our Board that was originally brought to our attention by one of our pension members. While the City Attorney provided no formal opinion on that matter to our Board or our legal counsel when that issue was in play, he did address that matter at our last pension board meeting and continued to state his belief that the mayor had the right to appoint Mr. Moore as the Chairman of our Board, despite the several contrary opinions of the State Attorney General. That belief is also in direct conflict with the opinion provided to our Board by our private legal counsel at that time.
Perhaps, the City Attorney was correct on that issue but we shall never know because that issue was never litigated. Instead, the City simply proposed and passed new legislation at the State Legislature to address that issue which our pension board did not oppose; however, one thing is certain, such legislation would never have been necessary if the City Attorney’s opinion had been undoubtedly correct.
While that issue may have been of little importance to some of our general membership, I believe it is indicative of the problems our Board may face if we utilize the City Attorney as our legal counsel because, without the assistance of our own legal counsel to provide us with guidance on the complex issues that come before us, I do not believe our Board members have the legal training to recognize the important difference between the two types of attorney representations and, therefore, we may never know if a decision we make based on the City Attorney’s advice to our Board was actually in the best interest of our membership.
However, because of Farris and Lee’s extensive experience in pension matters, perhaps such complex conflict of interest issues appear more apparent to them than they do to me. Still, I have concerns about that matter which I hope will be resolved during our March pension board meeting by our current legal counsel.
Treasurer’s Email
The next thing on the Agenda of possible interest to our membership [01.00.30 into the pension meeting audio] was the issue of our Treasurer, Ms. Lenehan’s, August 3, 2011 email to our Board members wherein she stated her refusal to issue checks that had been previously approved by a vote of our pension board after the Board had first obtained a review of that matter by our pension board attorney. In that email, she claimed her action, in part, was because she has a fiduciary responsibility as a CPA and did not believe the expense authorized by our Board was justified since our fund was declared to be a “projected insolvent fund” by the PRB and that she was awaiting an opinion from the City Attorney before issuing those funds. Of course, she is still waiting for that opinion that is not likely to be produced due to our Board’s subsequent decision to support the City’s sales tax proposal. To better understand this issue, I believe it is necessary to first review the facts that have unfolded since we received that email.
Ms. Lenehan’s emailed statement caused me considerable concern because I reasoned that, if she alone could deny a payment previously approved by the pension board based only upon her personal opinion that it was unjustified due to our “projected insolvent fund” status, there would be nothing to prevent her from also deciding that previously approved pension benefit increases were also not justified for that same reason and thereby use that excuse to reduce our memberships’ benefit checks by the amount of those benefit increases which I feared may be her next decision to minimize the financial impact upon the City for their years of serious underfunding of our pension plan.
The reason for that concern was because our original employment contract with the City had never provided a mechanism for any benefit increase after pensions had been provided to retired officers. That provision was only added in 1979 due to the passage of Act 839 of 1979 as amended that is currently codified at A.C.A. § 24-11-102. While that legislation may appear to solidify the issue of our pension benefits under law, I believed there was ample reason for concern that, because this issue had never been challenged in Arkansas courts, the City may attempt to withhold such benefit increases until such time as a ruling from a court of law could be obtained. If the City had acted in that manner, the impact on our pension membership would have been devastating.
I first alerted our membership to Ms. Lenehan’s email and my concerns during our General Membership Meeting held on August 8, 2011; however, that fact seemed to become lost by the members present who were primarily concerned with overturning the Board’s previous sales tax proposal. While the membership was successful in stopping any further action on the Board’s sales tax proposal by stating they wanted the Board to support the City’s sales tax proposal, the issue of Ms. Lenehan’s email was not further discussed by our membership, thus, leaving that issue to be resolved by our Board.
For that reason and due to my concerns about this matter, I began searching for a possible solution to that problem and thought I had finally found one under Arkansas law that authorized our fund to use a bank as a “custodian” of our funds that would have eliminated the control over our checks by both the City Manager and the City Treasurer just before the pension board meeting of September 8, 2011 (see my report HERE); however, after presenting that possible solution to our Board for their consideration, I was very disappointed to learn that my fellow pension board members, with the exception of Don Wood, were not interested in that solution and I then withdrew my motion, that would have allowed me to check into that option and report back to our Board, from further consideration. As a result of that meeting and the lack of interest shown by my fellow Board members, I decided to simply let the issue of our Board finding a bank “custodian” to die after none of our pension membership showed any interest in it either; however, because there had been no answer to Farris’ question from Ms. Lenehan, that issue has remained on our Agenda for subsequent Board meetings.
[NOTE: The best possible review of this mater can be obtained by listening to this 33 minute audio HERE that begins with our Board attorney asking me what I wanted to know about this matter and continues throughout our Board’s subsequent discussion including Farris’ question posed to Ms. Lenehan and her request for only another month to consider her response.]
During our next pension Board meeting on October 13, 2011 (see my report HERE and read from the fourth paragraph from the bottom), Don Wood brought the bank “custodian” issue back up after our pension board administrative personnel mentioned that Ms. Lenehan, who was absent from that meeting and apparently tired of waiting for the City Attorney’s opinion, was no longer waiting for the City Attorney’s opinion but was instead now waiting on a response from her CPA licensing authority to respond to Farris’ question. That statement prompted Don Wood to make a motion, which I seconded, to authorize me to check into using a bank as our fund’s custodian; however, we both discovered the same lack of interest as our Board had expressed in the previous meeting with only me and Don voting for the motion’s approval. While Don openly complained about that vote to other Board members, I reminded him that our motion had been defeated and was no longer available for further discussion.
Since that time, this issue has remained on our pension meeting Agenda each month due to the fact that either our Treasurer or Chairman was absent from subsequent meetings or Ms. Lenehan had not yet received any response either from the City Attorney or her CPA licensing authority. At our pension board meeting of December 8, 2011 when this matter again came up on our Agenda, Ms. Lenehan still did not have a response from her licensing authority and I mentioned that, as far as I was concerned, it could be removed from our Agenda because our pension fund was no longer classified as a “projected insolvent fund” by the PRB, as of the previous month, due to the increase in pension funding provided by the City from the recent sales tax increase. However, Farris expressed an objection to its removal so the matter remained on this month’s Agenda.
While Ms. Lenehan was again absent from this month’s pension meeting, she did finally have a response from her CPA licensing authority that was presented to our Board by Mr. Moore and can be read in its entirety HERE. With only a few seconds to read and review that three page document during our meeting, there was little discussion of its contents except for Mr. Moore stating that it really didn’t say much but he hoped it would finally allow our Board to lay that issue to rest. While that may have been Mr. Moore’s hope, Farris still had concerns about that matter because he was “hoping for a better resolution and answer” to this issue because Ms. Lenehan and Mr. Moore had “arbitrarily . . . undermined the authority of this Board to approve expenditures” and requested that his statement be noted in the Minutes of our meeting. I stated that I agreed 100% with Farris’ concerns and Don Wood brought up the fact that this issue was previously considered during our September and October board meetings that resulted in our Board’s denial of me and Don’s suggestion to obtain a bank custodian for our fund and he questioned why we were even examining this issue again, in light of those facts.
Therefore, because Farris and I still have concerns regarding this issue that have been unanswered and because it is interesting to note, after having time to review her CPA licensing authority report, that the report our Treasurer has waited so long to receive from her licensing authority importantly states, in its second sentence, that “First and foremost, any legal concerns and/or questions should be communicated with your legal counsel,” this matter shall remain on our next pension meeting agenda and subsequent agendas until such time as Ms. Lenehan has the opportunity to properly respond to Farris’ previous question and some determination is reached on this issue by a majority vote of our Board.
With regard to this issue it is important to note that Farris told Ms. Lenehan in the September board meeting when he originally asked her his question, “we’ve got to resolve this in some manner. Hopefully civilized and easy as possible, to where we can be assured that when this board, the majority of the board, makes a decision that involves you writing a check, fulfilling your duties as treasurer, we’ve got to know that that’s what is going to happen.” As of our last Board meeting, that important issue has not been resolved and, upon our next Board meeting, it will have been six (6) months since that issue arose.
New Retirees
Finally during that meeting, our Board approved the applications for the retirement of Randy Reaves, Charles Simon, and Richard Smith and we welcome all of them to the ranks of ‘retired guards.’
Listen to the audio of this Pension Board Meeting HERE
Steve,
I have to agree with you on the issue of using the City Attorney as our attorney. To say there would be no conflict of interest seems ludicrous to me. If any issue were to arise where we had to bring legal action against the “City” he would have to represent the City. After all, that’s who pays his salary. Not to mention how long it seems to take to get any kind of opinion from his office. It seems obvious that the info he furnished the Board about whether Mr. Moore could be the head of the Board was not right: otherwise why would the City have the law changed? He has to look out for the City first and anyone else would take a backseat. The City Attorney’s Mission Statement states in part “….to provide legal services for the Board of Directors, City Officers, and City employees….”. I’m not sure, but does the Pension Board fit into one of these categories? Since we are no longer employees can he legally represent us?
Steve, though I am in full agreement that our financial situation dictates that the board save money wherever it can and utilizing the services of the city attorney would further that goal, I feel we should decline his services for a reason other than fiscal. The city attorney has demonstrated, through his performance in the situation related in the second point of your message that his is not capable of rendering opinions in a timely manner. Assuming that Ms. Lenehan was being truthful in her statements that 1) the city attorney’s opinion had been requested and 2) months later the opinion had not been received, the legal issues confronting the psnsion board can not be postponed indefinitely. Since the Honorable Ms. Adcock proposed this cost saving measure, I would be interested to hear her opinion of the performance of the City Attorney’s Office in this instance.
I do not believe it is to our best interest that the city attorney represent our pension concerns.
Members,
I would like to make just a couple of short comments concerning legal representation of the Pension Fund. During my past twenty three years of service on the Board I have certainly had occasion to be involved in numerous issues where conflicts of interest would have existed had the City Attorney been our legal representative. Clearly, I would expect that similar issues will assurdly arise in the future. That is precisely why I would never consider using the City Attorneys office for the Boards legal counsel without also having private legal counsel to use when those situations occur. That is why I included a stipulation in both of my motions to always have private counsel and use them anytime the Board believes there is a need to do so. I would consider that need to exist, if the Board believes there could possibly be a potential conflict, with any issue.
When thinking back over various legal issues during past years, I am unable to think of one that would not have been identifiable. Given the fact that almost $100,000.00 of pension fund assets was spent for legal representation just last year, it becomes obvious that a considerable amount of money could be saved for future use of benefit increases, by simply using the City Attorney for legal counsel on various matters where there is clearly no potential conflict of interest. I do believe that situations involving a potential conflict of interest are identifiable, or at least become clearly identifiable.
That is just my humble opinion, and thanks for allowing me to be your representative on the Board.
Thanks again,
Farris
Farris, though I didn’t mention it in my pervious post I do agree w/ you that there are numerous legal issues confronting the board that do not pose a conflict of interest AND that the board members are sufficiently intelligent to recognize those issues. My point is that I doubt that the City Attorney’s Office will see any urgency in dealing with pension board issues. It makes no matter how cheap the roofer is…if your decking has rotted by the time he arrives w/ the shingles.
In my opinion the city attorney could care less in the urgency with pension issues. Unless of course it helped the cause of his employer the city of little rock not us.
Unfortunately, I too believe that Farris’ stand on this important issue is honestly misguided although for a somewhat different reason than the previous two posters.
While it is true that most of our board members have some limited legal knowledge and experience, making determinations on attorney conflict of interest issues that are among the most challenging in the legal profession are undoubtedly far beyond that knowledge and experience.
For that reason, relying only upon a vote of our board to make a determination on such complex legal issues for referral to our other legal counsel, as Farris suggests, offers me little comfort when none of us have the legal expertise, training, or experience to know or even suspect when such a need may arise as a result of the possibly tainted advice to our Board from the City’s attorney.
Thus, at this time, it is my humble opinion that our Board needs our own attorney who is undoubtedly free of any conflict of interest issues to properly protect the rights of our membership and I should also mention the indisputable fact that no benefit increases will be possible for “at least ten plus years” for our fund according to the PRB Actuary. [See my previous report HERE and read the sixth paragraph down from the start of the article.]
Scott,
I agree, and as previously stated believe that board members can adequately make such determinations. At least that has been my experience over past years. I do firmly believe that sometimes we tend to make such issues far more complex than they actually are, and as a result end up shooting ourselves in the foot. With that being said, please keep in mind that I am just an old retired guard who is trying my best to make it through the remainder of my life.
In addressing your second concern, let me say that I believe with the recent financial comittments the City has made, and the very close attention and involvement for Director Joan Adcock, there should be an additional level of latitude given while working with them. At least to the extent of making a concerted effort to work with them, while also in the process of saving some serious money. Again, that is just my personally opinion.
Benefit increases are always actuarially determined based on assets that the Fund has, and is projected to accrue. So therefore, saving or making money from any revenue stream or reducing expenditures is calculated in all actuarial studies. Therefore, when expenditures are reduced it can significantly impact when benefit increases may be given.
Finally, the Pension Fund is in remarkably better actuarial financial condition than it was just a few months ago. And, I just believe that we need to seize opportunities, and adapt to circumstance as they change. I know that it requires a certain level of trust from members, but that is what I firmly believe.
Please keep in mind that we will always have private legal counsel available, and can go back to private legal counsel at any time.
Most importantly, such issues will ultimately be made by the majority of the seven member Board that has five police members on it, and I have no problem living with that decision.
Thank,
Farris
Scott,
I wish to respond to Farris’ comment to you because I believe he neglected to inform you of several relevant facts that are important to this issue.
In the first paragraph of his response, he again relied on his extensive “experience over past years” to claim he can determine if a city attorney conflict of interest exists just as he did in his previous post to our members. However, that experience cannot possible include attorney conflict of interest issues because, by his own admission in his first post, that issue never before existed. The City Attorney has NOT been our board’s legal counsel during the past twenty plus years, therefore, his stated “experience” could not possibly have included it. He also stated that “sometimes we tend to make such issues far more complex than they actually are”; however, sometimes those issues really are complex and the issue of attorney conflict of interest is one of those instances. That later fact was confirmed by our current pension board attorney when I called him about this matter just yesterday.
In response to your concern about the delay on opinions our pension board may encounter from the City Attorney, Farris states in his second paragraph, “I believe with the recent financial comittments the City has made, and the very close attention and involvement for Director Joan Adcock, there should be an additional level of latitude given while working with them.” Thus, I am first compelled to remind everyone that the City’s “recent financial commitment” to our fund was NOT the result of any new found generosity but was instead due only to the fact that they knew they had underfunded our pension plan by approximately $70 million over the past twenty years and clearly saw a lawsuit over that issue on their horizon.
That being said, as the lieutenant over the Planning and Research Unit of the LRPD, I distinctly recall that then Chief of Police Louie Caudell instructed me to provide him with “legal opinions,” even though I am not an attorney, because he could not obtain any opinions from City Attorney Tom Carpenter and he respected my legal research abilities. That fact begs the question, if a Chief of Police could not get opinions on pressing police matters from the City Attorney, how likely is it that our independent pension board will receive them on pension matters? Much more recently as you stated, the City Treasurer requested an opinion from the City Attorney on her email question that is covered in my article which she is still waiting on almost six months later. That fact formed the bases of your question and Farris’ response to that question begs the additional question of just how much “latitude” on such issues would be appropriate? Would six months like the City Treasurer has waited be sufficient or longer?
Like you, I do not believe our pension board can wait so long for a legal opinion that may be required before our pension board can make a determination on an important issue raised by our board or our membership. Of course under Farris’ proposed motion, we would have the option to finally refer such an issue to our independent legal counsel if there was any significant delay from the City Attorney. However, such probable referrals would have a cost to our fund which would seem to defeat the whole purpose of using the City Attorney in the first place and would undoubtedly lengthen any such determination made by our board.
Then, Farris apparently forgot that it was not you but I who mentioned “benefit increases” after he did in his post to our members. His discussion of that matter was clearly made in an effort to discredit my comment in my previous post but the following fact still remains. We will get approximately two and a half million dollars per year of new revenue into our pension fund from the City and the State and, even with all that additional revenue, the PRB Actuary still stated it would be “ten plus years” before we could get any benefit increase. Thus, even if we saved an additional $100,000 per year from legal expenses, that savings would probably not shorten that time to even ten years. Additionally, it is the stated intention of our board to merge with LOPFI with a cost of living adjustment as quickly as possible. Again according to the PRB Actuary, that will likely be possible within seven years which will negate the possibility of any benefit increase being obtained unless that benefit increase occurred in less than seven years which is even more unlikely.
Finally in his last statement, he states, “Most importantly, such issues will ultimately be made by the majority of the seven member Board that has five police members on it, and I have no problem living with that decision.” Unfortunately, I do not share his over confidence in our Board’s ability to make a proper determination on an issue that is clearly outside their knowledge and experience any more than I would expect our Board to be able to make a proper medical diagnosis of a member’s illness. However, I fully expect that the City Attorney will be appointed as our board’s legal representative in our March pension board meeting due to Farris’ influence on our board but that likely event will not involve a unanimous vote of our board, unless these issues can be properly laid to rest.
I am not influenced by any one board member. I would be influenced by more opinions from our mmbership. I wish you would respond on the web site or give me a call or e-mail. I do listen to all the opinions of the board members and so far all has had good reasons for and aganist using the City Attorney.
We will get a response from our existing Attorney this next meeting if there firm will stay on board as our second Attorney. This will greatly influence my vote.
Any on of our board members can call our Attorney for an opinion any time. This may not save us any money if our board members check the opinions that the city Attorney gives on matters we bring before him. I am for saving this fund money. I greatly appreciate Director Joan Adcock in her efforts to find ways to help this fund and find ways for us to money. In my humble opinion the best way to save money on using the Attorney is to make it a board decision befor using the Attorney. It may slow down the process but it is not that fast now.
THANKS
Don
P.S. PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOUR OPINION
PLEASE FOR GIVE ME I LEFT THE E OUT OF MEMBERSHIP AND SAVE OUT OF ONE OF THE SENTENCES BUT THAT IS WHAT YOU GET FOR BEING 73 YEARS OLD.
THANKS Don
Members,
It just seems to me and many of you that I have spoken with, that far to often our Board has been dealing with almost every single issue as thought it were a matter of life or death. In my humble opinion, it is not in our best interest to continue taking such an approach. There are obviously times to dig in, but there are also times to work together and accomplish things that can not be achieved by slugging it out.
I believe that about everything concerning the legal representation issue that could be said, has been. This issue like others will be decided by a majority vote of the seven member Board, with the five Police Member representatives that you have previously elected. Again, I can live with that decision, and would much rather have it that way than my good friend Steve, or myself for that matter making the final determination.
I believe the most serious concern now facing the Board and our Fund is what general overall attitude we are going to have while moving forward. Is it going to be one of constant contention or one of working together on most issues to find resolutions to problems facing us? Although our Fund is now in a much better financial situation, we are certainly facing some very difficult world wide economic conditions that is most concerning, to say the least. Those economic conditions will assuredly become a challenge for us to deal with.
I intend to focus my attention on a LOPFI consolidation with at three (3%), cost of living adjustment (COLA). Until that can be achieved, and with the assistance of Director Adcock the Pension Board is working on an additional immediate local supplement to be paid to members monthly or annually. Again, in my opinion we simply have to get our members some immediate relief to offset the ever increasing cost of living. I probably don’t have to remind any of you that food cost alone increased approximately fifty percent (50%) just last year.
I have spoken with many of you concerning these very important issues, and clearly understand your concerns. I fully intend to keep my attention focused, and make every effort to avoid any ”tit for tat” distractions. If I or any other member representative of the Board fails to provide the leadership or direction that is expected, then that is precisely why elections are conducted annually.
Again, I thank all of you for staying in touch and allowing me to be one of your Board Member representatives.
Thanks,
Farris
Okay, guys, I have kept silent on the issues before our board so far, because it seemed to me to be a simple disagreement between two highly respected members of the board. But, here comes this old woman with her opinion now. We need to present a united front on our pension board – not a front that is divided. I am sure you all know the very apt saying “A house divided against itself will not stand”. That is what you are doing right now and I ask you to stop. Please use common sense and come to an agreement that will hold up in your board meetings, and quit nit-picking every single sentence.
We, as retired policemen and widows, will NEVER get a raise on our pensions as long as a tremendous amount of money is being spent on attorney fees for items that are not necessarily of huge importance. I personally think that the City Attorney will give us his honest opinion in almost all cases, and if he doesn’t, then action should be taken. In those cases where our differences are with the city of Little Rock, then an outside attorney would be more sensible if the outside attorney would agree to this.
I am reading your comments with a heavy heart — because you all are still my heroes.
Joan
I agree with almost everything my good friend Farris’ said in his last post.
Certainly whenever possible, we should all work together toward a common goal but that does not mean that we should sacrifice of membership’s best interests for the achievement of that goal. In the case of the City Attorney being our Board’s legal counsel, it is my current belief that the City Attorney is not the best choice we could make for our membership’s best interest for the reasons that I have previously stated. I believe it is my duty, as your reprehensive, to explain those reasons for that belief and not simply ask that you blindly trust that I am correct.
While blindly trusting your representatives may have been necessary in the past, I believe that the technological improvements in our society today, including this website, make such action foolish both now and in the future. Providing blind trust to our elected representatives is a large part of the problem our nation faces today and the recognition of that fact is our only true hope for tomorrow. Your representatives, both on our board and in our country, should be open and accessible to everyone they represent and you have the duty and the responsibility to know what they think and why they think it on any topic of importance.
I have always believed we should not follow the path of constant contention with city government; however, there is considerable difference in being “contentious” and standing up for the rights of our membership if we perceive that those rights are threatened. In the instant case, I believe there is such a threat from the misguided notion that it is necessary to submit to our board’s unwitting control of our memberships’ legal rights only for the hope of some future political gain. Make no mistake, this issue would not have occurred except for the good intentioned recommendation by Ms. Adcock that Farris truly but foolishly believes we must support to maintain her good will. I disagree.
Finally, I had to laugh at the not too thinly veiled threat that I may be replaced on our pension board. That threat does not scare me in the least because I spend far too much time on pension matters that could easily be devoted to other pursuits. My term will be up in just a few months and I shall not beg to remain or seek anyone’s forgiveness for what I have done during my term in office. If it is our memberships’ wish that I be replaced, I will simply step aside for my replacement. Until that time, I shall continue to represent our membership to the best of my abilities.
Joan
Thank you for your honest opinion. I greatly respect you and your opinions.
THANKS
Don
Joan,
I too, have always had a tremendous amount of respect for you and will always value your opinions. Once again, you offer encouragement to the Board and provide more guidance than you probably realize. I do have to disagree with the “old woman” comment. I would like to always be able to have your energy and down to earth wisdom. Thanks for all of your past help on numerous issues and coming out to help us when called. You are always there when needed.
Thanks again,
Farris
Ms. Boles,
I apologize for not seeing your previous post but was busy performing extensive maintenance on this website and responding to Farris’ post. As you may recall, there is no “Comments” box in the WP backend and I simply left my computer in that mode as I later attended to several “wife” chores.
Like Don and Farris have said before me, we respect your opinion on any pension matter and you certainly have every right to engage in ANY discussion on this website, including pension board matters.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to this important issue.
Steve