City of San Diego Retired Employees Association
March 13, 2018
General Meeting Minutes
The minutes for the February 2018 meeting and the February Treasurer’s Report were approved.
Cynthia Queen of SDCERS introduced new CEO Gregg Rademacher and Deputy CEO Marcelle Voorhies Rossmann. Rademacher said that he is enjoying working at SDCERS and is retiree himself, of the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association. Rossmann stated that her in new position she oversees 70% of SDCERS’ operations.
Queen also reported that SDCERS and the City’s Risk Management Department are currently in negotiations with various health care providers for this year’s open enrollment. She noted that in years past, these negotiations resulted in the inclusion of programs/benefits requested by both employees and retirees, such as wellness programs (ie, Silver Sneakers).
Joe Flynn encouraged members to attend SDCERS Board and committee meetings and to introduce themselves during the non-agenda comment portion of the meetings; this lets the Board members know that we are interested in their proceedings.
PROGRAM
The March Program speaker was Scott Lewis, CEO of Voice of San Diego. He spoke about the changes underway at various local/regional quasi-governmental agencies: SANDAG and Civic San Diego are being reorganized; the Airport Authority may be re-integrated into the Port Authority; and MTS as a separate entity is now able to put transit-related initiatives on the ballot. He pointed out that some transportation infrastructure projects that rely on Federal funds may be in jeopardy due to cutbacks in DC. Lewis gave his prognostications about five regional political races:
The race to replace termed-out County Supervisor Ron Roberts is going to be “mean” because local labor organizations are split between two of the candidates.
Because there are only two candidates for District Attorney, that race will be decided at the June primary.
Too many Democrats are running to replace Darrell Issa, which could result in the top-two candidates being Republicans.
The national GOP is encouraging Republican candidates to challenge Duncan Hunter.
The four people most interested in running for Mayor in 2020 are current City Councilmembers Chris Cate and Barbara Bry, Congressmember Scott Peters, and Assemblymember Todd Gloria.