President’s Message
by Tom Gamel
All retirees should be able to live their retirement time without worrying about their pensions and healthcare. Realistically with today’s climate we all know that does not necessarily hold true. CMERA’s Board is concerned about securing benefits for all retirees and making sure we all get the benefits outlined in the CSA.
During the CSA we represented the retired population at the time. We were equally concerned with the benefits of the Active employees who are currently retired even though their representatives were negotiating on their behalf. Now that the CSA is in place with just a few components that need addressing CMERA is trying to once again focus on the needs of all retirees regardless of when they retired.
All retirees whose COLA holiday (suspensions) started in 2016 will see the first COLA starting in Fiscal year 2019 at their normal COLA months. That means retirees will get a 3% simple COLA increase with 2015 pension being the base year with no limit. For other retirees who retired after 2016 they will have a four-year waiting period before they see their first COLA increase using their retirement date year as their base.
Healthcare is a major concern for all retirees. Healthcare in our system is very complex since there are many plans out there that apply to different segments of retirees. This was in no way an objective or recommendation on the part of CMERA. It was strictly a position that the City was taking before and during the CSA.
At our October meeting we will have James Gest, with SpliceNet Legal Tech & Legal Marketing as our guest speaker to talk about cybersecurity and how to detect threats. With today’s climate we hear more and more about breaches of security. We felt it to be important to get some up to date information out to our retirees regarding these issues.
I would like to inform you that Don Beets has resigned from the CRS Board for health reason. Don has been on the board for 12 years and has always been there to support the CRS and its members. I am happy to say that Don will continue on being a part of the CMERA Board as well as a Retiree Plaintiff representative.
With Don’s departure from the Board that leaves his position vacant for his unexpired term. The CRS will have a special election for a retiree representative. Kathy Rahtz, CMERA’s vice president is planning on running for that position. We hope you will support Kathy in the upcoming election. In order to get Kathy on the ballot she needs to collect signatures. Please contact Kathy and sign her petition to run as well as vote for her in the election.
This month we will have our election for the positions of Vice President currently held by Kathy Rahtz and Secretary currently held by Alison Posinski. Both incumbents are interested in running again for their respective offices. Paul Smith will be chairing the election process this year. If you are interested in running, please contact Paul by email: [email protected].
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at (513) 921-5967 or email at
Vice President’s Message
by Kathy Rahtz
What is the future of CMERA?
Our organization has been around since 1980, longer than many of its members worked! Over the years, CMERA successfully advocated for improvements to the pension benefits of retirees, and more recently CMERA has helped us keep some of the benefits jeopardized by underfunding of the system. With the advent of the Collaborative Settlement Agreement (CSA), CMERA has advocated for retirees and pushed for implementation of some provisions, such as a funding policy for the health care trust, that have not happened yet. Many friendships among former co-workers have been maintained and made through CMERA activities.
But CMERA’s membership has been declining of late. In recent years, the Retirement Office has wavered on their willingness to share information about retirees, hampering our ability to reach out to new retirees. So many recent retirees are unaware even of the existence of CMERA. The good news is, through the efforts of Treasurer Don Beets and the CMERA Board of Directors, we have recently acquired names and addresses of newer retirees. This month we are reaching out with a mailing, describing our organization and inviting them to join.
It’s my sincere hope that we will see an uptick in our membership from this effort. But what will this mean to CMERA the organization? The lawsuit that resulted in the CSA divided us into two classes: the Retiree Plaintiffs Group and the Current Employees Group. During negotiations, each plaintiff group worked toward its own interests. Compromises were made by all, and the CSA is, in my opinion, a very reasonable settlement. But the reality is that the CSA provides for benefits for the Retiree Plaintiffs that are different in many ways from the benefits for the Current Employees Group. If we can bring newer retirees into CMERA – people who are members of the Current Employees Group – we will be seeing people who got a deal different from what most of us know. What are their concerns? Will they be different from the concerns of the long-standing CMERA membership?
As we add new members we can’t help but bring in new and different viewpoints. But I believe that we all have more in common than we have in differences, and we all share an overarching interest: for our retirement system to be sustained and funded at a level necessary to meet all its obligations to current and future pensioners. It is in no one’s interest for the CRS to fail. I think we can work together toward our common interest.
My belief is borne out by our Constitution, where we have defined CMERA’s purpose, below. There’s nothing here that depends on when you retired or which CSA class you belong to:
To work toward enhanced quality of life for all retired members of CRS, by:
– advocating for the interests of retirees;
– offering information and education for retirees on their retirement benefits, rights, and other topics of interest;
– monitoring implementation of the 2016 Collaborative Settlement Agreement (CSA);
– partnering with the CRS Board of Trustees, CRS administration, and all other stakeholders to work to assure long-term stability of the CRS.
CMERA President Tom Gamel has repeatedly emphasized that CMERA is an organization for ALL retirees. Its members are not defined by which CSA Class they happen to fall in. I totally agree, and I believe we can welcome new members into CMERA and support them as we continue to support and advocate for our existing members. Meanwhile, our organization will always evolve and change, but it will be better, not worse, with new ideas and fresh perspectives.
So, if you know someone who retired in the past several years, please talk to them about CMERA. Encourage them to join. If you meet a new member at our October meeting, please extend to them a warm welcome. After all, to state the obvious, without new members, the organization of CMERA will not survive!