Hello all CMERA Members!!
It was great to see CMERA members in person at the General Meeting last month. Our Vice President, Steve Dietrich did an excellent job of selecting the donuts for the social hour. I overhead some members discussing the “old days” at MSD. Others were telling their tales about their most recent surgery. Indeed, it’s good to have a place where co-workers can gather occasionally to get reacquainted.
The Executive Committee members provided updates on activities (communication, record storage, budget status, and credit card acceptance) The information regarding the Cincinnati Futures Report and its possible impact on retirees was the most important segment of the meeting. Yes, once again, retirees are the target of a business-oriented group who view the pension fund as a hindrance to their vision for the City. The Futures Report exhibits little regard to the Collaborative Settlement Agreement. This document is currently under review by the City Manager. The deadline for her review is July 1. Eventually, the Mayor and City Council will determine the fate of the recommendations contained in the report. Please be prepared to respond to any suggestion that is contrary to the CSA.
You can view the meeting by going to:
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The Retirement Board of Trustees had busy May meeting. Their agenda packet totaled 139 pages! Most of those pages were data-oriented charts and graphs summarizing the financial health of the CRS. The financial report stated that the pension account was at 68.8% funded at the end of 2023. There was one report, however, that focused on operational/management issues. While this report made some recommendations, I did not read any major flaws with the CRS. The meeting documents and minutes are posted on the Retirement’s page on the City’s website.
Election for two retiree members of the Retirement Board will be conducted later this year. CMERA takes no position of the section of retirement members of the Board so be sure to vote for those who will best represent your interests.
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During the General Meeting last month, the topic of communicating (or inability to communicate) with members using e-mail was briefly discussed. Here is what we found.
- Our database only has about half of the e-mail addresses of our active members.
- Our database is incapable of sending out e-mails even if we have all the addresses.
- Our home computers have limits on the number of e-mail messages we can send at out at one time.
- Our chat room for active members who have elected to join uses a different computer service and remains operational.
- Reaching us with e-mail at [email protected] has not been reliable recently.
So, the Executive Committee is:
- Working with a vendor to correct our e-mail service.
- Seeking a service or app that can send out bulk e-mails to all or selected members using our existing database.
- Encouraging more members to update their files so we can get more e-mail addresses.
If you have any experience with website design and/or management, sending bulk e-mails, or working with computers in general, and want to volunteer your knowledge, please reach out to us.
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Until next month.