Audit Committee - Regular Meeting

Karen? Yes, good to go. All right. All right. Very good. Since I've got this at my disposal, I'm going to go ahead and use it. Yes, ma'am. It is 1.02 in the PMs on June 29th, and I will go ahead and now call to order this special meeting of the Ocala Police Officers Retirement Fund Board of Trustees. For the purposes of the record, this meeting was noticed on June 16th. And we've got a couple more board members coming in here right now, which will be just fine. I am Lenny Eptegraft. I am board chairman. And I think we'll go ahead and start the introductions down here to my right. Mike Summer, plant administrator.

Holden Powell, board member. Brian Creedle, board member.

Dave Lehman, board member. Austin Ridge, secretary. Virtually.

Bonnie Jensen, legal counsel.

Larry Cole, investment consultant. Do we need, it's sort of unusual seating for us, Bonnie, do the folks out here in the viewing gallery, do they need to be introduced? Bonnie says they don't need to be introduced. I'm just double checking so that we do it right. So Bonnie, you said you wanted to go ahead and start just to go ahead and go over some procedural things. Would you like to?

Yeah. So I just, you know, we have them set for like half hour segments, 20 minutes for presentation, 10 minutes for questions. I don't generally cut the trustees off, right? Like if the trustees continue to have questions and we run over time, I won't stop you unless you want me to.

Okay.

So just give me that, let me know if you want me to keep you on track. If we go over a little bit, then the firefighters will have to wait out in the hall just for a little bit till you all finish.

I've had to wait in the hallway for them to finish before. Okay, all right. That's a fire police joke, not a retirement joke. And I should have double checked. Is there anyone else joining us virtually who did not get a chance to introduce themselves? I'm seeing this G on the screen down here. I'm not sure who that is. Sorry. I think they were there for the earlier one. Okay. Okay. Very good. Do we want to go ahead and kick it off, Bonnie? Do you want me to bring Foster and Foster in?

Sure. Yes. That'd be great.

Unless anybody else has any other...

It was really official. I'm kind of intimidated. It scares me.

I feel like I'm dressed up in daddy's clothes playing a role.

I have, it's going to be a day from now. I have this, and then I go to work at 6 p.m. I work until 6 a.m., and then I have a homicide trial at 8.30. I'm sorry. So I'm going to be comfortable. I don't blame you.

We're ready.

Hello.

Thank you, ma'am.

Everyone's ready?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, wonderful. Well, good afternoon. Thank you so much for the opportunity to present today. Just by formal introduction, my name is Beryl Jenny. I'm with Foster & Foster, and I head up our plan administration division. And then I have Candace Moss with me, one of our plan administrators. So in front of you, we submitted a formal proposal. It's really just a summary of that proposal that was submitted to you. I know you have a very full book today, so that's just hopefully to be mindful of time. If you have any questions as we move along, please feel free to stop us. We certainly understand that this is a big decision that you're making, so we don't want you to feel like you have to hold your questions to the end. In fact, we're hoping this isn't a monologue, so we'll get started and jump in where you need to. So the first slide that you go to is a little bit about our firm. I know that you are very familiar with Foster & Foster, right, with our reputation with you as your actuary, but I really want to go over our plane administration division. So we were established back in 2013. And if you are wondering how did an actual consulting firm get into the world of planner It was either our plans who were looking to outsource their plan administration or they had tried other firms in the state and questions weren't getting answered or weren't getting answered correctly or calls weren't being returned. It was a lot of frustration from our trustees. So they actually came to our CEO and said, hey, listen, guys, you know our plan. You know our plan provisions. You're calculating our benefits. Would you guys be interested in offering these services? And that's how we got started all the way back in 2013. So if you fast forward to today, we're providing those same services. In fact, we have over 115 plants in the state of Florida. So we are very familiar with chapter 175, 185. It's really what we live and breathe. And we have a dedicated division, which I think is really important as you think of foster and foster as a whole. You may think of people being pulled in a lot of different directions. OUR STAFF, WHICH IS CURRENTLY ACTUALLY 23 STAFF MEMBERS, ALL WE DO IS PLAN ADMINISTRATION. WE DO ANYTHING ON THE ACTUAL ROYAL SIDE. IT'S A DEDICATED FULL-TIME STAFF TO OUR TPA SERVICES. ONE OF THE THINGS THAT I LIKE TO POINT OUT Because everyone's going to come today and they're going to put their best foot forward. But as we know, once you hire somebody, that's when the real work is going to start. We have never been terminated as a plan administrator. And I think that speaks volumes to the team that is going to be assigned to the plan. And honestly, if I was a trustee, I'd be asking everybody that question because it really gives you kind of a peek under the hood of who you're hiring and what that track record is. You will see with our team, we're more than just here to kind of process paperwork. I think that's what people think of a plan administration. We're really a trusted advisor and a partner. And so what we're seeing in our other plans, we come to the table like, hey, you know what? I had a plan to go through that same thing. Here's what worked, here's what didn't work. We're more than a plan administrator. We really are a partner. And we help you navigate the landscape as things change. A little bit about the assigned team and that picks up on slide three. You will see that we intentionally operate again as a team because we feel like no client should really be dependent on just one or two people. We have a very deep resource. of bench that will be committed. And the first prong of that is the administrators. So our firm's policies, we always have two plan administrators assigned to every single plan. So if hired today would be myself and Candice. And just a little bit of background about myself. I have been with the firm for 16 years. I actually helped build our TPA practice. So I've been to every single finals presentation. I have done over 100 TPA transitions. So it's something very near and dear to my heart. But guess what? I'm also a plan administrator. I feel like sometimes when you manage a division and you're so far removed, you start to get lost in the processes. I have clients right down the road that I'm their plan administrator, and I think that's super important to keep my finger on the pulse as we grow and pour into our people. So I'll let Candice introduce herself as well.

Hi, I'm Candice Moss, and I have 26 years experience in public sector pension plan administration. And I also have all of that was in human resources where I oversaw the pension administration, benefits administration, and HRIS. So during some transitions that I have done over the last couple years with Foster, I've been able to really go in and understand what the city needs and work with them on helping them or being able to be able to talk to talk to be able to get that information back. Again, that's kind of my background.

One of the unique advantages Foster and Foster brings is that we recently welcomed Alicia to our team. So she will be assigned to your plan as an assistant plan administrator. And what that means is she only works with your members. That is her sole purpose is to work with all the members and making sure that she's not traveling so she won't be in tension board meetings. She's available Monday through Friday, 830 to 5. And obviously having that understanding of your plan and your processes and your members, it really helps preserve that institutional knowledge. So she will be on the plan as well. We have an analyst that also will support your plan. And she does not travel at all. She is also someone that is working behind the scenes. You may hear a retiree needs to update their banking information or an address or I can't find my 1099. She's helping with a lot of the meeting prep. So that's another person that will be dedicated to your plan. And then we have support staff. As you probably can see, plans are getting more and more complex. Either new laws are changing or there's new things that need to be happening. We have a report specialist. So we make sure that the plan is always compliant and filing things on time. So think about like ordinances need to to be filed in between first and second reading. Description and it needs to go out to the membership. She is working on all those compliance as well as public records requests, something that comes in often. We want to make sure that we acknowledge those and fulfill those in a timely manner, right? Nobody wants to be on the news. So we have someone that is filling that role. And then lastly, we have a billing coordinator. We have a lot of vendors, right? And they want to be paid. We don't just get an invoice and pay it. Our billing coordinator takes the agreement. She will audit the invoice against the current agreement, making sure that the retainer fee or the basis points, whatever is the contract that you agree to as a plan aligns with that invoice. She'll put it together. We will submit it for payment, and then it comes to you for ratification. But that message is really that we have a dedicated person that is making sure that we are paying what we contractually agreed to. And if there is a special project, that will come to you as a board to approve for payment. And then lastly, we have an administrative assistant. So we have a phone role system where she's that first person when someone calls our office. And then it automatically rolls to seven other people because you always will talk to a live person. There will never be any prompts. They will never ask you to explain what you need. We're not looking to introduce AI. When you retire, you want to talk to a person. There's a lot of questions that are surrounding our members when they're retiring. And a lot of times you only get to retire once. So we want to make sure that they are talking to a live person and that their questions are answered. And then 72 additional staff members, right? So you get the full foster and foster expertise. So think of like Doug Lozen, plan provisions. We're making sure that those plan provisions are being explained the same way that your actuary would explain it. The people who are reconciling your assets or working on your benefit calculations, we work hand in glove with them. So information is very seamless on that side. Does anybody have any questions on the team that is assigned to the plan? Moving along, the next page is really just to show you at a snapshot that our retainer fee is very transparent. Everything fits in there. Just think of anything to keep the plan compliant now or in the future as part of those services. And certainly if there was anything that did come up that would be a special project, we will let the board know well in advance and we'd have a not to exceed fee. I can tell you 14 years, I can count on one hand the amount of times that that happened. And again, we're very upfront about that. But we really do a good job of really fitting everything inside of our retainer for budget purposes. Our fee is $7,083. If there is another plan in the city that hires us, there will be a 10% discount to that retainer fee. Always paid in arrears. It is guaranteed for at least three years. And the only out-of-pocket expenses that would be associated with your quarterly meetings would be IRS mileage rates. I'd love to live in Wesley Chapel, and Candace is in the Orlando area, so pretty close to you guys. On slide six, why foster and foster? We know that you have a decision to make today, and we feel like we are uniquely positioned to be your plan administrator for numerous reasons. The first, we explain that comprehensive range of experts, right? not only the folks who are reconciling your assets, who are doing your calculations, your evaluations, your Douglows as your actuary, but also Alicia is bringing over that historical knowledge, that institutional knowledge of not only your plan, but how to coordinate with the city, how to make sure everything is still seamless, and then we're able to support Alicia with the team that surrounds her. We also have a couple hats that we wear as your plan administrator. One of the biggest things is accuracy. Accuracy is, I would say, our highest priority because people are expecting us to get it right. You're expecting us as trustees to get it right the first time and so are your members. And when that doesn't happen that's when things start to sneak in and you're like I'm not a hundred percent confident in my calculation or Action items are being done after the meeting that things are being taken care of fill in the blank So we have a couple things that we do we have a project management system that we've been doing this for a while, right? So when a task comes up, it is a checklist that's assigned to a person with a deadline. And then it's also accountability to making sure that those items are all been done. And then the key to all of that is peer review. So anything that leaves our office has to be peer reviewed by a colleague. So if I'm a plan administrator, another plan administrator has to sign off on what I'm doing. We're all humans, we all make mistakes. We're making sure that it's a pristine work product by not only documenting a checklist with accountability, but also having that peer review process. Document security is something else that is very near and dear to our hearts. Unfortunately, pension plans, as you hear in the news, are a target, and that landscape is changing all the time. So we actually made the commitment as a firm a few years ago to hire internal IT staff. So we have full-time IT staff. they know our processes they know specifically what we need to do so they have lots of layers of safeguards to making sure that we can send and receive information in a secure manner that we go through a stock audit so that's like a voluntary audit that we do as a firm to make sure that there are duties separation of duties that we have best practices as far as how we're securing data, housing data, sending data. And then we also get monthly cybersecurity training. So every single employee in our firm goes through monthly cybersecurity training that we not only watch, we log hours, but then we get those fake phishing emails that come from the IT department to see who's clicking on it and who's doing what. Because again, that's something that we want to make sure that your participant and your assets are safe And your plan administrator really is the glue to all of that, so we take that very seriously. Service delivery. That really goes back to retirement, right? Questions arise. My whole family is in law enforcement, so I've been hearing about pensions for a long time. I have heard great stories and I've heard complete stories that my retirement was the biggest headache of my life. We want the experience to be amazing for your members. They're putting their lives on the line and we have a policy that all emails and phone calls are returned within one business day. Even if it's I got your message and I'm talking to the board attorney or I'm checking with the actuarial team. or I'm checking with the city. Whatever that is, we're making sure those touch points are happening so that that person doesn't feel like they got lost in the shuffle. Really, really important to us. So we stand by that service delivery. And again, that is why we're taking market share. That's why we don't lose clients because we're not just a warm body. We really do care about what we're doing. And our people are our products. So we pour a lot into them. And that really goes back to the staff training section as well. We are making sure that we are getting training internally. So we actually have training sessions with our actuarial team and our legal team, how to read an ordinance, what goes into a buyback, how are the joint survivor options calculated. So again, when your members are coming with questions, we want to make sure that they're not only getting answers, but the correct answers. And unfortunately, in our world, there's no book to read. It's boots on the ground time. So we spend a lot of time internally to make sure that we're training up our staff. You'll never have someone that's assigned to your plan or talking to your members that hasn't gone through our program and knows plan provisions, knows answers to questions. And so that investment definitely translates into better service, and we really believe that. We also have established relationships, right? All of your core vendors, we know who they are. We know how to get in touch with them. We obviously have Alicia, which helps with that seamless transition. But more importantly, different than any firm you're here from today, is we already have all your plain documents, all your calculations, all your ordinances. All of that is already up in our secure files, so we're really ready to hit the ground running. And you guys have invested in your member portal. That's something that we designed, we used. But that's only as good as the information that you're putting in and keeping it updated. So part of our services is making sure that member portal is being updated with different status changes, that we're running a report. Tell us who doesn't have a beneficiary on file so we can proactively reach out to this officer and say, hey, we don't have this important document on file. All of the other firms, they're not familiar with the member portal. So I know that's something that is really used by the membership, right? It's a great planning tool. So, again, something that we are ready to hit the ground running with to make sure that that continues to stay available to the membership and help with any questions. Also, we will set up an information portal, and I know this is very small, but if you look over on slide 7, it gives you a little bit of an idea of what that information portal is. Again, there's no cost to this. Think of it as like the Google Docs of your plan. So we put all your ordinances out there, your meeting minutes, your agendas. We can even make a little trustee section if you have like a travel reimbursement form. it's really when you're looking for those documents instead of searching through attachments and emails it's one place where all of that information is we find it very valuable for you as trustees your athletes or even your retirees we're kind of wondering your investment reports are out there right so we put larry's quarterly report up there so they can kind of see how the plan is doing and they feel connected obviously counting on that pension check coming every single month The big message here is, you know, transitions are never about just moving files. I know it feels like that. But it's about continuity of services, right? It's making sure that you continue to experience good service. And then that institutional knowledge. And we feel like we are uniquely positioned to do all three. Does anybody have any questions about services?

Not about services, but I hate to take you back, but this will just be minor. I was writing and I missed when you were talking about the fees or when you were speaking about them earlier, I think you said 10% discount. I believe what you said was 10% discount if another plan signs on. On the slide here, it says if general and fire plans slide on.

So it's either. If either one of them, I will honor that.

So it doesn't have to be both.

It does not.

Thank you. I was writing. I looked up and you had moved on. I hate to make you go in reverse.

And then there were, you had mentioned that the total fees were $85,000, but then there's also the quarterly financial statements and the state report. Those are separate fees outside of the...

Yes, if you were needing those services. Okay.

If we're needing this. Yes.

We didn't want to just put it in there. Some people need it. Some planes don't. So if you need it, it's 100% available. I will tell you what the annual reports. We have a team that does that. We file about 95 reports. And as you know, there's a deadline to do that, right? And it's a lot of information. So we have a team that makes sure that those are filed on time. So we're getting our state monies on time. I know it's a hot topic right now with the ad valorem taxes, but again, like you will see with our firm, we're not just, yes, yes, we can do that. We're making sure that we have the support to do it, to do it well, and to do it on a timely basis. So those are things that are available to you if you need it.

I know the city's looking to get completely out of the retirement business. any dealing with it. The one thing I don't see in the list of services, payroll.

We do not make benefit checks, and I will tell you why. It's not a we can't do it. It's a SOC issue. So they are very, like, if you're calculating the benefits, you're meeting with the members, you're doing the payment, and then you're cutting the checks, they have a problem with the separation of duties. So I know that you use principal. We have principal on a handful of other plans, and they do have a platform because they hold the assets that they can actually make benefit payments. So how would that work for wondering they still meet with us? They still fill in all the paperwork with us or if they want to meet with someone that's on-site We can prepare all the paperwork Mike can sit with them send it back to us. We input all the information on their portal It's just that entity principal as your custodian is cutting the checks and doing the 1099 So we can still handle all the back-end. It's just they're physically doing the checks Is it typical of all Internal controls

And so just for me to understand, Mike, I know the city's trying to get out of it. So if we did have this principal, is that another fee we're going to be picking up having to pay principal?

It is, according to the emails back and forth with Alicia and Carl Hutchinson with principal back a couple of months ago when it was inquired about. It appears to be... Roughly $2 a check. Okay.

But no matter, it sounds likely no matter who we go with as a plan administrator, we're going to be likely going to be. I understand. But based on what you're saying, that it would be highly unusual for a plan administrator to be cutting checks.

For our firm, it's.

I mean, certainly we can ask those questions as we go forward. Yes, 100%. But I'm just saying.

Is this for us, separation of duties?

No, I understand. But it's likely we may be paying that fee to principal no matter what. I. Yeah. I guess so.

Or to anybody else who cuts your checks outside of the city.

You'll be paying a fee to get the checks cut.

Right, that's right. I know, and Bonnie, I know this was a big deal for Arnie at the joint meeting. Was any of that discussed with them this morning? Because he was wanting the city to...

Yeah, so we did, that's why that email wasn't shared. And so I called Carl during the meeting or at the end in the discussion and got that information on the checks. So it's $2 if the member gets information, what's called an advice to tell them that their check, what their check is, $1.50 if they don't. um it depends on the price of postage and um it's it's for each check so as as different people retire it goes up that additional fee i'm sorry i'll take away that time from your time i'll add it back no problem that's all you have

Thank you, ma'am.

Okay. And then Kenneth is going to go over a couple of sample documents. We do obviously have two people that are actually local that live in Ocala. Alicia is one of them. And Nancy Rivera, one of our other APAs, is also on site. So, again, depending on what you want, if you have someone that wants to meet in person, if you have someone great, we can help with the paperwork. If not, we're happy to help facilitate that, you know, obviously we would be here for every single one of your meetings, right? So if you want to meet with someone before after meetings, we're happy to do that and there's no additional fee to do that And then I think you're picking up Candace Slide 8

I just wanted to go and show you a little bit about, show you what we prepare for the board, for the meetings. So if you go to page nine, that's going to be a sample agenda. And again, we do everything from start to finish for your meetings. We are working with your consultants to make sure that we're putting things on the agenda that need to go on. So we're proactively looking at things that require your approval, things that need to be reviewed from you. Again, working with all of the other consultants you have to make sure that things that need to be on the agenda are on there. We also have the routine administrative, which is the consent agenda. I'll show you a little bit about that in a moment. But we make sure that things are on there so it comes before the board each quarter for you to review and approve. And again, we just manage the full process from start to finish. We would send out a whole agenda packet a week in advance so you have time to review it. It will have all the information. We do bring the tablets to every meeting, so you don't have to print a lot of paper or do anything like that. And if you turn to the next page, I'll show you, this would be your summary of payments. Again, these will be all those invoices that we pay throughout the quarter that are contractually paid. that we have contracts for. And so you will not see anything on here that you have not already approved. So if there's some other invoice that comes up to us and it's not through the agreement, we're going to bring that to you first to review before we make payment. So you're going to see all the payments that are made including the invoices. And then if you go to page 11, we're also going to provide you a list of all the activity that occurred through your members. Anything that's being paid out of the plan, you're going to see, whether summary of payments or through the fund activity report. And that is reported to you every quarter to ratify what we've done.

That's for transparency purposes. transparent of what's happening. And in that packet, you will have copies of all the invoices. So if you see something on there and you have a question, you absolutely will have all the backup. And then like Candice said, tablets will be in front of you. Everything is bookmarked. That follows the agenda. And then we'll bring a paper agenda so that when you're going through your tablets, you can still have that paper agenda that you can see what's coming up next.

Okay. And then slide 12, we talk a little bit about the transition within the first 30 days after being, if we are selected, we would execute the contract. We'd start setting up our internal files for your plan. We would work closely then with the city to transfer any information that we need over to us. Like, for example, I have, we're working with two people who are going to retire in three months we have someone in the drop who's come we will start working with those immediately to have that transition be seamless also we'll be working with setting up any authorizations for us to be able to get the data from any of the vendors that you work with and we will also then work with the board we'll establish a letter we'll get it approved and we send that out to all your members all the vendors and all the retirees so they know who to contact if if they have an issue and again they're always gonna we have the one number we have one number for all of our plans and they call in, we ask them what city they're with, what do they need, and then they get transferred to someone immediately who can help them. So if I'm not available or our APA's not available, they're going to get to the analyst. So either they're going to be able to assist them immediately or they're going to get that information and give them a deadline of when we can be able to give them that information. After that first 30 days, we'll look at setting up the information portal, We'll be putting documents and getting those member files set up, and then also setting up those authorizations with your investment managers. And then lastly, beyond, we will look at best practices, look at procedures to see if there's anything that needs to be streamlined, but we will also go through a records retention audit based on Florida Sunshine Malls.

Any questions That means we did a really good job explaining it.

It's certainly not like a venture stuff here, I'll tell you that.

You get it. This is a big change. we've had in-house for a long time. We completely understand that. Which again, that's one of the reasons when Alicia came over and our team, our people are our product. And we recognize good people. We want to keep good people. We have pensions for our people. That's the other big thing, something different for us. Because we want you guys to have to go through this one time and that's it. And so that's why we have the retention we do on the staff side and that we continue to grow.

And I understand that we're probably unusual in that we have had in-house administration for some time. I'm probably not as robust as what you're used to doing, but I've learned through this process.

We actually have done three that have historically always had in-house within the last two years.

I mean, I have a huge plan in South Florida that was always in-house. And the boards made the decision to go out. And of course, a little bumpy, you know, but we're able to, we know the process. We know what the in-house is going through. I've been there. And so it's been a very easy transition with that. Because we still have to communicate with the plan sponsor. And so we're going to make sure that we have a good relationship with them so we can continue and make everything streamlined.

We've even set up meetings if it helps, like HR, internal, where we get the medical deductions, introducing ourselves, let's talk about the flow. We find that some of those meetings help to make sure that we're all on the same page. And again, like, hey, we're here to help and support and make sure that we're not making your job any harder. So we're happy to set all of that up as well. And that's where that 100 planes of transitions, we've seen everything, everything from in between. And we want to partner with you and make sure that you never have to go through this again.

I have nothing for Austin. You got anything?

No.

I don't believe we've got any questions. No, thank you very much, ma'am. Thank you. We appreciate it.

Unfortunately, you don't get to keep the tablets. I was looking around. I was like, she might forget.

Doug never let us keep them either. Smart.

Can't trust cops.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

I had an attorney walk away.

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN ME. NOBODY REALLY TAKE YOUR IPADS.

like a pro-rata share. All right. Thank you all very much.

So, General Byer, we were just discussing that. So, yes, ma'am. Thank you.

Thank you all.

It was pro-rata based on the number of members in the plan.

There wasn't anything consistent with what we're looking at here for a third party.

I don't know what Alicia's total salary was.

Total salary of benefits was $124,000.

Yeah, something like that.

You're going to make me do math in public here.

Wow.

Significantly less.

Significantly less, but we were paying, that's for one, but I'm saying that's paying one person as opposed to the whole firm. And a firm who will, whoever it is, will solely be working for our plan as opposed to, I don't.

And not that we paid Dale a ton either, but that we paid him as well as Alicia. Yeah.

Oh, and we're paying Mike.

I mean, so I don't like the way it's being foisted upon us, but I think there's to be expected that we're probably going to get more service for it. We're going to be paying more, but we're going to be getting more.

And that's not a knock on Alicia, but she was one person trying to do three plans. Did I hear that Alicia's going to be an employee then? She already is. She left and now is working. Now it's with Foster and Foster. Yes, sir.

Okay. Does anybody need to take a five-minute break or anything before we bring the next folk in and we're stuck here? I'm ready to just double-check and make sure nobody needed a break. Bonnie, we're going to move on to HYN unless there's anything else you need us to do previously.

Nope. Fucking wrong.

Did we approve or did we go back? Is there a standard scoring system or is this just we're going to vote at the end? That's a good question. Are there a number of us discussing? I never saw anything after that.

I never saw anything after that. And I think maybe, I think if you're right, that kind of. I didn't see anything else. I just wondered if I missed anything.

You didn't miss anything. I miss a lot of things. You and I both.

Afternoon.

Afternoon, sir. The floor is yours. Thank you for being here.

Round two, right? One more to go, and this is it, the exciting part here, huh? SO, A LITTLE BIT ABOUT US. OBVIOUSLY, HYAN CONSULTING. WE ARE A THIRD PARTY ADMINISTRATIVE FIRM. TWO THIRD PARTY. GOT MEMBERS AND EXPERIENCE OF OVER 35 PLUS YEARS. POLICE AND FIRE IS OUR SPECIALTY. WE DO HAVE SEVERAL GENERAL PLANS. WE HAVE 30 ACTIVE PLANS IN FLORIDA. SO THAT'S CURRENTLY WHAT WE DO. WE'RE INDEPENDENT AND CONFLICT FREE. WE'LL TOUCH ON THAT AS WE GO. I HIT TOO HARD ON MY THING. Okay, who we are. We talked about that a little bit. We are very independent, right? We strictly operate as third-party administrators. We are administrators only. We're not going to be your actuary. We're not going to be your consultant. We're not going to be your custodian, okay? You're not going to see us coming in here selling any products. We're not partnering with any financial firms. We're not doing any of that stuff. We're here to kind of operate your plan, work with the trustees, work with the members specifically.

And we're going to get in all that fun stuff that we do.

If you're looking for a big corporation, Tell me now, and we'll save you guys about the next 30 minutes of speaking. That's not, you are? He's like, I am. I'm just kidding. Don't move. He's like, all right, we'll save you guys. We are a boutique firm. We are a very specialized individual. We want to deal with the member one-on-one. We want to have that intimate conversation with them about retirement. We know how much time is invested in it. You're spending a quarter of a century at a job. We think it's important. We don't want to send you here. We want you talking to the horse's mouth, and that's who we are there. We're going to get into our actuarial compliance plans, all of our other things that we do, but let's introduce myself. I'm Caleb Henson. I started the firm. I'm a retired firefighter. Dodge a little bit. Retired firefighter. Was on the SWAT team for many years as well, so I was a SWAT paramedic. Got on the board just like you guys. Got very involved in the pension plan. Decided to branch out and get into finance, right? I was like, oh, this is such a new language, so foreign. Went and worked for Voya Financial for a little while. decided, had an opportunity to get back into space, right? This space was here, great, perfect, started a company doing third-party administration. Really was an opportunity for me to go back and help the guys and gals online to understand and communicate and better overall have these conversations of what can be, you know, this is a different language. When you talk finance and retirement... You know, we can talk police work. We can talk all of these things. Talking finance and retirement, we think it's simple, but there's a lot more aspects to it. So it was an opportunity for me to do that. Partnered early on with someone with 30-plus years' experience, and we've been going at it ever since.

Yeah, so my name's Frank Magana. I've got about 25 years of consulting at government levels, national, state, and local. Probably the last seven years I've been really focused on enhancing things for that aspect. So I've been able to kind of incorporate that into HYN and build the business as it is today. We also have some back-end personnel. So Robin Sexton handles some a little more in front of our clients. And then we use, so we just kind of refer to as Chemri AI. AI is kind of a real bloated term. Just think really streamlined automation and flows, workflows to help keep costs down, help us get out in front, right? So we're really big technology side of things. manage trustee terms. Everybody's got a term. We've got workflows built to understand automatic emails go out to the trustee, including us. Are you interested in renewing? Things like that. All that automation and contact happens. Also, maybe some data. We're going to do some data compliance, data integrity. We'll use some of our workflows through our And then really one of the big ones we have is our system, the CRM system, Customer Relationship Management System, of how we keep all your data. But it's summarized. So we really kick into phone calls that come in, phone calls we make, e-mails we get from members, e-mails we make. It all gets tracked. So again, we want this to be responsive to you. If you guys have any questions, stop us along the way, talk, ask, complaints, let us know.

This is just an overall view of what we do. Protecting the retirement of those who protect us. What do we mean when we say that? Yes, we focus on the pension. We're a third party. That's our big thing. We want you to understand we do big pre-retirement counseling. We don't want you necessarily calling us three months out. Hey, I'm going to the drop. Hey, I'm doing this, whatever. We want to have that conversation ahead of time. We want you to get an overall holistic view, a whole picture of, hey, are you guys investing in your 457? What about Social Security? How will some of these things impact us? Again, we don't give advice. We're not financial advisors. But we want to show you other alternatives or options that are available potentially to you and have you get a greater picture, you know, that 10,000-foot view of just I don't want you thinking just pension only and this. We're going, okay, what are some of your plans post-retirement? So we actually have a setup. You know, we really want you to call us on vesting. I think there's a conversation that needs to be had there. Start getting things prepared. What are your long-term goals? And then when you get to that final point, you know, a year out, we're sitting down with you, your spouse, your significant other, having these conversations. What are your goals? What are you looking to do? So, again, our primary role is the pension, but we want to give you an overall view of everything that pertains to your retirement.

So I think in the packet in our response, there's two, three pages of all the services we provide, right? When you talk about meeting administration, that's kind of the board, right? Scheduling the meetings for you, making sure you're getting your agendas, making sure you're smooth, right? So this is just a sample. I think I pulled one of my recent meetings for our police and fire plan. Just to show you agenda, minutes, we provided an accounting report. I think that accounting report also goes back to the budget that is published every year. And then a member activity report, right? We're showing you everything that happens in the fiscal year, terminations, who's entering drop, who's exiting drop, who's retiring, and unfortunately, who's deceased. So arming you with that information just to make sure you're there. We do everything in the back end. We really, our goal is to take you out of the loop on things. We have some plans that really want to be a part of it. We have some plans that just trust us and understand and report back.

And this is our way to kind of show that as well. It's going, hey, here's all the day-to-day action that you're not seeing, right? Here's the retirements. Here's the drops. Here's the invoices that went in and out. So you guys are constantly aware every quarter where we're at. And we do it in real time. If you guys have any questions, we can sit back and analyze that or whatever. But this is a good, we've found from our experiences, a good way to go, hey, the board's up to date. They may not know, oh, I didn't know so-and-so went in the drop. I didn't know so-and-so passed away. We want to make sure you guys are aware constantly of what's going on.

And then from a member administration perspective, those are the backseat members, making sure we're working with them. We're really big on counseling. There's a lot of spouses we work with. Zoom, we may be eight to five hours, but we understand how police and fire work as well, and sometimes those happen at night, and we do that very commonly. And then the retirement process, we're making sure members are getting paid on time, any type of tax forms, the custodian is coming checks, direct deposits when they happen, and we're managing that process. And then finally, plan financially. Working with bookkeepers if you have one. Really, the backbone of us, we use a suite of Microsoft services and tools. There's a lot of software that we use. By that, we have the up-to-date greatest threat protection. How do we store our data? It's cloud-based, but it's protected. There's access controls. There's multi-authentications that happen. Even at our level, who can access what type of data? When you talk about PII... private identifiable information, right? Maybe our secretary behind the scenes can't see social security numbers and date of birth, but we can, right? So the controls are there and we use that and we really do protect the integrity of that data. When you talk about communication, We encrypt all of our data that goes out. We use the Microsoft tools to do that. That ensures that you are getting that email and that document and if it happens to go to you, you can access that information. The encryption comes with all the tools and the processes that we use. When you think about everything that Microsoft offers, they're continuing to update. This is one of the reasons we didn't build a system. We're getting the latest and greatest updates that happen. We know we open the newspaper or the internet and you see somebody was hacked. We're getting those, and those are passed down to you through all of our systems and tools. Additionally, the plans that we handle, sometimes the board needs something specifically programmed in how we do it. We bring that to you as well. That continuation is offered to you at no additional cost. So we're continually enhancing security and processing with this tool set behind us.

Well, and as far as even the individual member data, the tracking that it does is what impresses me the most. So John Doe calls up. It pops up on our screen. It's John Doe's file, right? We can look there. Every email correspondence, every phone call correspondence is stored with that individual member, right? So we got John Doe. Then what AI does now is our system, it actually summarizes it, right? So the past year of conversations, all the files, all the talk that went back and forth, we can sit there and we can review, okay, yes, we recall this conversation. We went through this process together. Hey, this is where we're at. So, you know, again, I'm a proponent of the technology. I'll be admitted it's also a little scary at some of the things that it can do. But what we're doing as far as the pension goes, it's pretty fascinating to be able to keep those records and to keep that information and to be able to have that kind of detail on each individual member.

So we attend conferences. We do these presentations here and there. We're out in the public. We are working with other plans. We get asked a lot of questions. These are just kind of some of the similar questions we always get asked. I just thought maybe it would come to mind here. So do we offer educational seminars to employees? So the short answer is yes. There's a number of ways to do that. Some plans we come before a quarterly meeting for an hour or two. It's open to the members. They come and we can talk and educate them on that. Some we have plans that have their annual health and wellness, right? Open enrollment time. We go and attend and sit at a booth, talk to those employees. But we do offer that and, you know, it's services for the membership to make sure they understand their plan, right? Next is, do we have a 1-800 number? The answer is no. So you have two administrators. I will be the primary on that. You'll get my direct line. You'll also get Caleb's direct line. And what Caleb was mentioning earlier in the event, I can't answer the phone and he does, right? There's no who are you, what are we working on, right? I know where you are.

I have the documents. I can pick up exactly where you left off.

Is my plan administrator partial and independent? So Caleb hit on that earlier. Yes, we are a third-party administrator. We do solely plan administration business. So we're good at what we do. We help quarterback and coordinate all the things that need to be executed from a board perspective.

Well, I think we kind of view it as, you know, we're the COO of this business, and that's what we're essentially running as a business. We're doing all the back end, all the operations. There's a lot of things that come into play when you guys show up at your board meeting, and we're spearheading that, and we're doing that conflict-free. Again, like I said, we're not going to try and sell you any additional services. We're not. If you guys are interested, we'll find them for you, okay? We're not going to partner with any of these firms or whatever. You know, we don't do that. We're strictly working for you, the board, and for the members. That way it's conflict free. There's no conflict of interest. The lines don't get blurred. We work very well with all the actuaries, all the consultants, all the custodians. We know them all. We work with them well. We don't want to partner with them though. We want to make sure that we can offer that true third party honest outlook of going, hey, This is what we see going on with the plan. The actuary is struggling a little bit with the turnaround times. The consultant may be doing this, blah, blah, blah. It's a complete checks and balance that way in our opinion.

Do we provide cost savings? It is yes. So we're always shopping your insurance, shopping anything that we see that, you know, costs that may be going out the door that shouldn't be happening. We always bring that to your attention. You know, you can choose to go with it or not. I think Caleb had...

Just an email. We came in, a recent plan of ours, took over. Hey, we were able to cut the fiduciary insurance in half, able to basically cut the cyber insurance in half. So I just literally canceled the current provider. And they said, great, good to know. However, they actually never even completed the application for the fiduciary insurance, so they never even had it. So I don't know who was getting invoiced. That's still kind of discoverable. But that's the first thing we do is we're going to come in and go, hey, where are all these steps? What can we do? Is there savings? This same plan, they were paying $1,200 or $1,300 a month in storage for files. Okay? That's a quick, easy one, right? So we're running this and operating this like it's our business. Like we said, we kind of joke about it. We're the sixth man on the board. We really feel like we're a part of your team. We want to contribute to the conversation. We want to keep you up to date of what's going on that we see in the pension world and the pension space. So we take a lot of pride and ownership in that when we take on a plan.

And then from a business continuity perspective, right? So emergency backup, right? That's why you have two administrators, right? If I can't make it or answer a phone call or whatever, maybe I get hit by a bus, Caleb's here, right? And we're not having to pick up from scratch. So he's well aware of the business, the plan, and how it operates. And then last, do we have the proper education and certificates? So I think it's unique what we have is we are ASPA certified, so American Society of Pensioners. I'm not going to beat this up.

of our plans here we operate currently 30 plans across the state of Florida okay again mainly police and fire because partly mainly police and fire are the ones still you know a lot of the GE plans got either ruled out but we've even had some of our GE plans which we considered a dead plan or an active plan Restart again as some of the cities have recognized some of the challenges that come when you don't have a pension plan So we've been through a lot of these different processes Again, we talked about the client retention Expertise conflict free we kind of beat that up to death We talked about the cost savings ongoing fiduciary support and again, we've never been terminated from a plan ever So we've never been terminated. We've never let go not even for any reason, you know the plant so we take pride in all of those areas and Okay, costs, right? This is the fun part. We get to talk money in the room, right? So we wish you could do lots of things for free. Obviously, there's a cost associated with everything. So this is an all-inclusive guaranteed fee for two years. We have the discount tier plan. Obviously, you guys operate and function independently of each board. However, you know, we're able to reduce that down. 10% discount if all three plans decided to choose, and we recognize you guys have no say in what they choose. 5% if the two. But again, we want to show that as a courtesy. And also, we're already heading this direction. We're doing these things. We're coordinating stuff together. It just makes sense. That's guaranteeing you four board meetings a year. That's also guaranteeing, like we said, the two dedicated admins. You have a primary and a secondary. So we're going to have that consistently throughout. if you need a member portal all of these things they can look up find some of that information anything that you need provided for that we can work towards that curtail that to you guys we do build a four percent increase why Partly it's the cost of living adjustment. The second thing is you as a board and us as administrators, we don't want to have this conversation every two years, right? Coming back, talking money. And again, that still may be the case. I don't know what the world holds. If you told me a year ago gas prices were going to go up 40%, Okay, well, then there's a different conversation. But we're building that in to be straightforward and transparent so we don't have to come back every two years and go, hey, this is where we're at. We feel that that's the effective cost of inflation from our perspective. We do do special projects. You can see there's special projects in there, all board approved. That's going, hey, we want you guys to come. For example, Frank did, I think you're on the news there. A few weeks back, the commission, you know, the board wanted him to come in and speak to the commission. okay that's frank coming up here you know to that particular city six o'clock at night doing a presentation explaining to the pension kind of some of the ordinance changes that were taking place so the board requests that we're willing to do that for you guys but again all board in advance you're saying hey we would like this extra additional thing from you guys we'll say certainly if we can make it work we will And again, full line of insurances. We have all the lovely insurances that come with the business, right? Errors and emissions, cyber, liability, all of that great stuff that come with that. So that's what the price includes.

We've done maybe 10 to 12 special projects over the last couple years. It's not something that happens all the time. It's about board requests and board approval before anything happens.

Would a special meeting like this be considered a special project? What's that? Would a special meeting like this be considered?

So, yeah, this would be a special project, especially if we had to show up in person. Yeah. So sometimes there are different things where we don't have to drive in or do whatever. But, yeah, this would be considered a special project.

Would employee seminars, like you said, be something like that?

So we're really – I don't want to say negotiable, but we're open to that. Like, hey, we got a meeting for the 10th. all right, we're coming here anyways the 10th. Let's meet two hours early. If they're going, hey, you have a meeting on the 10th. We need you to come back on the 11th. It's like, OK, now it falls into that, shoot, we're really getting into our time. We're pulling out of pocket. We're doing whatever. So yes, we can try and coordinate those. That's our easiest thing, going, hey, meeting's at noon. We're coming in at 1030. Bring all the guys and gals in that have questions. We'll do a brief overview of the plan. hit up any questions. It's a good opportunity and we love doing that stuff. So yeah, we wouldn't really consider that a special project as much because we're kind of heading over this direction. So the credentials and compliance, like I said, we've talked about this, all the good fiduciary stuff. A lot of this stuff we've talked about. We're compliant. We're here for a reason. Your attorneys vetted us. They're familiar. We worked with Bonnie on several plans. This is just more informational only, but everything that we've talked about already kind of exists here. So I know you guys are here for several interviews. There's no point in covering this stuff again.

Last is just the onboarding, right? What does that take place? So from a board perspective, there's nothing you would need to do except sign two letters that we would draft. One letter would be to the vendors. So that would be acknowledging us as the third party administrators and ability to do that. I'm sorry, vendors and the city. And then the second letter would be to the retirees, right? So it'd be a letter we would mail out, you know, notifying them that we are the new plan administrators. Here's our contact information. And then everything else would happen. We would set up meetings with the vendors and the city introduce ourselves, go over the process, change the process, enhance it if they want or need, or overcome any challenges that they're seeing, we would then build that in. And then secondarily, we work with the actuary, just collect the information, and the custodian, collect all payment information. And from there, we would then just load that data into our system, program it accordingly with all of our forms, and we are off and running. So that's really our, I mean, it's pretty standard. I glossed over it, but there's no additional work that we're

Well, and we recognize this board is wanting to have a liaison as well, potentially. So we're certainly open to that. We're great with that. I think, again, if I tell people, if we're being completely transparent, I'm going, hey, the best thing you could do is have a knowledgeable expert in-house administrator, right? That's the perfect world. Typically, it costs more money, but it's great. Like, I would tell you, hey, if you've got someone, you could have an office here that can meet with clients on a regular basis, that is the way to go. Not the world we live in, unfortunately. But yeah, we think it's great that you are considering that or planning on doing that, having that liaison. That certainly offers a lot of the members that personal contact. Again, we're always open for Zoom, any conversations, working jointly with that person as well. So we just want to say that we recognize that and we think that's great. This is kind of a perfect scenario for us. It's almost like boots on the ground in person that can help kind of, you know, resource and get things done.

Questions? Yeah. I saw that there was a portal that you guys have. Yep. Could you elaborate on what?

So the portal is, what we're doing is we're going to put all of your standard information on there. You're going to put your SPD, whether you guys need minutes, whether, you know, all of that stuff. We have steered away from the portal of updating member information. And I know some of the bigger organizations do that. We don't like that. So we'll just, that's exactly where we stand. We want you to make the phone call. You know, and I kind of use, the last one, I literally was in the lobby waiting for the last interview, and it was the same thing. We had a member call me, like, hey, I need to change my address. And that's what he would have done. Okay, great, let's change your address. Well, my address for my taxes. Okay, well, that changes. It's not your address. You need a W-4P, right? We need to get you a W-4P. Okay, great. So I email him the W-4P. Hey, this is, I don't know what to do with this. Well, I'll help you complete. Well, I just need to change my address. Okay, can I come by the office? I go, well, you can come by the office. We have someone in the office, obviously, but I don't think it's necessary to just change your address. I know who this, I spoke to this gentleman before. Goes out of hand, well, okay, well, here, I was like, well, just let me write your address down. Okay, my bank address is this. Oh, so you don't need to change your home address. You need to change your bank. Are you switching banks? Yes, we're switching banks. Long, drawn-out story, but I'm able to guide this member. Okay, you're looking for an updated direct deposit because you're changing banking accounts. You start getting on there. Some people get confused. We want to have that conversation. Okay, what happened? Why did you change it? Okay, great. Let's go. I'm going to get that out. If you need me to walk you through that, you know, we will. And that's what we do. So we don't have that information there because we felt that it led to – Not everyone. I mean, some of us look at that and think, oh, this is standard. This is easy. You just fill out your W4P. And, again, we get back to we're not tax consultants. We don't tell them what to do. We don't tell them how to do it. But we certainly want to walk you through some of that because it is challenging for many of our members. So the portal doesn't focus on that end as much as it does is overall educational, state-compliant information for the member, the actuary report, all of that stuff for people who want to dive in and see that.

And part of the talking to us, because, you know, retirees retire. They may change their phone number, their email address, right? We don't necessarily know that. It gives us an opportunity to talk to them, update our system, so for better, accurate communication moving forward. So that's why we say we could do it. It just doesn't make the most sense to put a direct deposit form on the portal and say, here, go do it.

It's easy. Trust me. Sometimes we're like, man, we should just put it on a portal. It's pretty good. Trust me. But again, that's one of our differentiators. We really want that personalization. We really want that hands-on touch with our members.

No payroll. What's that? Don't do payroll. We do not do payroll. No. So no payroll. You say payroll as far as paying the employees or the retirees? Yes.

Yeah, so that's typically all going to be done through your custodian. So during the retirement process, we're going to walk them through that process a complete process, fill out the application, do this, work with the actuary, let them know their benefit, walk them through the steps of choosing the benefit that they understand what they're choosing, and then we're going to authorize payment to the bank. So we're not actually physically paying the checks. We're doing everything but physically sending the payment out. You have a custodian that you guys utilize, and that's what they do. So we're giving them the final draft of – We've spoken to this member. Here's a completed information. This is what you need to pay this person starting on the first of the month. So that's what the process is that we do.

Any other questions?

I don't believe so. Thank you, gentlemen. Great. Thank you for your time. We appreciate it. Yes, sir. Thanks so much.

Take care.

Thank you for ramping up the payroll, Mike. Bonnie, do I need to read in a recess?

Yeah, just five minutes if you're going to hold it.

All right, we're just going to take a five-minute recess in between now and the next presenter. Walk around or not. Or I could just go prop the door open for them. Being the nice guy that I am.

People can't just get in the room? Well, what if somebody from the public wants to come?

They come in the main door.

Oh, I see. Okay. I see. It's a secret door. I get it. Okay.

It's a huge difference in pricing. Yes.

All right. It's 210 in the afternoon. I'll call this meeting back to order so we can have the resource centers in.

Thanks, sir. We appreciate you being here. I'll give you the floor.

Thank you.

My name is Scott Bauer and the firm is the Resource Centers. We do plan administration and it's all that we have done for more than 30 years. I would like to begin and I'll go through this somewhat in order, but I'm not really good at staying on track on my own slides. So if I skip around a little bit, I'll lead you through where I am. But as I start, I'd first of all like to acknowledge and thank you for the job that you do. on the police side very simply because it's a job that I don't think I would be equipped to do and I'm thankful that somebody else does do that. As we go into it, certainly the quality of the services that you provide determine the quality of life in the city of Acala. And I just want to acknowledge it because when we're providing the level of support that we are for the administration of the pension plans, then that directly relates ultimately back to the city and to the quality of life for people who live here. In terms of plan administration, This is all that we do. We have been doing planned administration for more than 30 years. By the way, I don't know if I introduced myself even as we started. My name is Scott Bauer. You would see me coming to your meetings and being very hands-on on the board or the event that the board selects us. So that's very important if I do not do a job Or if you think that we're not or I'm not the right person to work with your board Then that perhaps would be something that you would take into account and making an important decision regarding the continued administration of the plan and to make this very simple We would be here to do anything and fill the shoes of the job that Alicia used to do in the city of Ocala. We're not here to fill Mike's shoes for the job that we think he would continue to do for the board. But that's not to say that we wouldn't be able to function together. In fact, if you engaged us to provide services to the board and to the members of this plan, we would prefer to wrap Mike into our system so that he could fluidly calculate benefits for members. so that he could process benefits even through those systems if he chose and have additional secure ways of communicating with the members of the plan. In the meantime, then he could or we would provide the services that Alicia previously provided from within the city. But certainly there would be a level of cooperation and engagement there. God forbid that Mike decides that he's retired at some point and goes on vacation and you had a meeting, we would be there seamlessly anyway and able to function really as a continuous and single team and able to continue to provide the services that the board needs to make this plan operate seamlessly. So that is what we are proposing to do for the administration. Now you've heard from two people prior to me and you've heard a lot of the aspects of the normal day-to-day operations that are required to run one of these plans from both the people side and the administration of the board down to the services to the members. and the information side that's needed to support those activities from the plan administration side. Now from our standpoint, Alicia probably did and managed more of that information side of the operations and function of this particular plan while Michael really managed more of the people side on the administration from the board and the members. So we are able to work in those kinds of parameters and in fact we do that and we work with other administrators and other cities where they have in-house administrators and can function and provide that kind of support in a very integrated kind of fashion. So in terms of, you know, I'm not sticking to the script at this point, but in terms of what we could do, having done this for 30 years, we're certainly familiar with the other people that work for the plan. We know principal is the custodian. We pay benefits through truest accounts and we have the ability and the teams within our office to provide continuity of operations and service in the event that you would select us. We have managed very fast transitions even on truest accounts for things like payments of pensions. Not because it's not important but because the circumstances warranted it and it was necessary for us to do so. I will tell you that Truist may not be our favorite bank, but we pay pensions through about half of the plans that we work for. And you guys probably inherited a Truist through a prior relationship with SunTrust. And so we have about six different boards with local accounts with Truist through which we pay pension benefits. Your plan is from that standpoint maybe a little bit unique in terms of the operation and how we would work with Michael, but it's certainly not unique on the side of the plan in terms of other people that we work for. And we have then the experience needed to integrate with the people that you're providing. Now one of the challenges that you have is if you shift those payments over to principal, and you decide you don't like principal paying the pension benefits and then you replaced principal, it will leave you with a shorter and more rapid transition for the retired members of this plan in terms of how they see the continuity of service and information to them. So I think it's preferable and that's only because of our own experience with principals mixed. I like them better as a pure custodian and have not had that much problem with them just from a custodian standpoint. I like them a little bit less through our office paying pension benefits. And we have, you know, again, half a dozen situations where truest than, you know, leaving the custody business shifted those responsibilities over to principal. So we have other situations that are similar, situations where boards then have gone out to bid for custody services and boards where they have stayed put. So those are some of the kinds of circumstances and background that I understand that you're dealing with in making these kinds of decisions. Going back to the presentation a little bit because, again, I don't stick to my own script very well, if we go back to page two, I have been, we have a team. We have 24 people in our office. We have two separate offices. We do have people who are permanently detached and remote because of the nature of our operations. But there are just like two or three people out of our total team. Our primary office is in Palm Beach Gardens but personally I'm not as far away because I spend time in Osceola County and that leaves me about two hours away in the case that I'm needed. So we believe that we could be very accessible to the board and to Michael for the things that we would be charged to do in the event that we were the best fit for the continuing operations of the plan. We do administration for about 70 different plans. We pay benefits for about half of those. So some of them are paid by the custodian. We do have plans where principal pays the benefits and plans where we pay the benefits, more of those, and principal just does the pure custody. So that's why I have the opinion that I like them a little less when it comes to things like paying the benefits just because it's a little bit more cumbersome type process. We are very technology focused. If I go over to the next page and page three and four, but very people focused at the same time. We use technology. We have grown our systems over time. We have written our own systems because we find that they are better and more targeted towards the kinds of tasks that we do. than other administration systems that we could acquire or use. So in fact we have in many cases started to sell our systems to other plan administrators for the kind of work that we do. But really when it comes down to it, at the root of it, plan administration is what we do and all that we do. We're a little bit unique and different from the other planned administrators out there where we do have and have provided back office type operations for front office administrators. Either as one single person or even offices that are managed by teams of people. Because typically when you get up into the range say of a billion dollars of assets or more, You tend to have an in-house office and staff rather than a single person providing services locally. In terms of the plan administration itself, on page four I told you that we typically characterize it as both a people and an information type job. In this case you've got Mike Summers on part of that and that doesn't mean that we're not capable in those areas but we respect the tasks that he does and we don't have to fill his shoes other than if he decides to take a vacation or if the board decided on some other kind of change. We're pretty functional and seamless in terms of the things that we can do. So we're proposing to do exactly that with this particular proposal. On the next page, on page five, it really just talks about how we would function with Mike and I think I've touched on that enough. In terms of board operations, We really do understand the requirements of the job from the management and reporting requirements to filing annual reports to doing all of the other kinds of things that are required. We, again, depending on the place, sometimes we split these responsibilities a little bit differently. And sometimes the actuary files an annual report, sometimes we do. Usually we're a little bit less in cost, but we file about two dozen annual reports a year. They're on time. And our first batch of annual reports have all been approved at this point in time. So they are starting to go ahead and prove them. I think that the Division of Management Services though from what I've seen is a little bit more scattered this year than maybe they have in the past. They've had a person retire and I think that has impacted them a little bit. Not necessarily the timing but we get funky emails from them. That's a technical term on the filing of the annual reports. If we go over and skip a little bit to page 10, we have benefit systems and again, we use technology and leverage technology to enhance the people interaction between our office and the members. And this is where then you have Mike in the middle. But certainly if he uses our systems for tracking the benefits, it will do everything for him in terms of tracking the benefits, managing the communication and adding in another level of communication to the members not to replace his communication with the members but to add to it. So if somebody is retiring, think of it as like your pizza delivery system or Amazon package delivery. If in fact your package is delayed or we receive an application and it's entered in, there's an immediate confirmation to the member in addition to the other communication. We have your application. The process is started. The calculation has gone to the actuary. We have it back from the actuary. It's available for you to review. The benefit is actually ready to be paid. The benefit has been paid. And some of these things are in addition to just regular recurring benefits, good for other kinds of benefits too. You have member share accounts. You have drop accounts. From what I've seen and I suspect that pretty much all of them are subject to lump sum distributions when somebody retires but it's not your recurring benefit payments sometimes that are more subject to fraud at this point in day and age as it is the non-recurring benefits like lump sum distributions and even things like shared distributions because we have seen it in other places. If, you know, in addition to active calculation systems that we could back up and provide to Mike, members could access and even if the board allowed, make application for distribution of benefits online securely. And the reason for that, it may sound like a less secure kind of thing, But if we have an MFA type managed account for members to access where we can securely transfer information to the member or them back to us, then we're actually managing the identity of that account and for us that is more secure than something like getting an application attached to an email. That is easier to forge, easier to subject to fraud and in addition to that we do an annual SOC 1 audit with our office. For those who don't know it's a very process oriented audit where they test all of our controls and procedures. So we do things like additional callbacks to members and other kinds of things at vulnerable points when they change and update member information. when they change deposit account information and ultimately when they take distributions. But, you know, those systems provide an additional level of verification because if you take a distribution from your account and we go ahead and process it, then there's even the back end confirmation. We process the distribution and if you didn't ask for this, you really should get in touch with us right away. But those are the kinds of necessary interaction to mitigate and manage even things like fraud attempts. We have not had any through our office, but we have another local administrator in another situation like Mike where they don't have the same controls and procedures, which they've updated by the way, where they actually did have somebody with a fraud situation. And they actually had a recovery. It was the first time that I ever saw a situation like that where they recovered like 99% of the money, which was a positive outcome. But we are seeing an increase in attempts. It's not always the... vulnerability type attacks and attacks on your online systems as it is even the social engineering or other kinds of things that we are seeing out there or just even low-level check washing and checking account fraud which is really rampant at this point We have a client service team in our office with real people because we kind of believe in a personal interaction that can back up Mike. So if a member calls our office during ordinary business hours and they just wanted to do something simple and the same team processes benefits for other plans, we have a dedicated team in our office that does nothing but that. that are accessible to members during ordinary business hours in addition to the other forms of communication. And we've developed that team over about the last six years. We get very high marks from it from some of the members who have been through those processes with our office. So you'll see that over on about page 11 or so. Some of my page numbers are hard to read because of the slide backgrounds. So we do provide a continuity. We value the person and the members of the plan. They're very important to us. And finally, if we go over to about page 15. One more. There we go. We are completely independent. I had started the resource centers more than 30 years ago. We're employee owned and 100% employee owned in a partnership. We have no affiliation with any other service providers. There's nothing else that we do for anybody. other than the administration and the related tasks associated with the operation of these plans. We don't work exclusively for Florida plans but we do work predominantly for Florida plans because this is where we started and this is where we grow up. We're not a huge office. We have 24 people in total among about five different teams in our office. So it is small enough that each plan and each board is very important to us in terms of the tasks that we do. But we also have a level of staffing in our office. I think that's very important. Planned administration is a very labor intensive and detail intensive type task and requires a lot of management of details. So most of our overhead, for instance, is invested in our personnel and we have about a three to one ratio between our office and the plans that we work for. So we have about nine people on what I would call an administration team. that are actually front facing and typically interact with boards and for each of those people there are two people on the operations side in our office that back up those teams. In terms of managing financial statements, data, systems, we have a dedicated payment group for payments of pensions for instance. So that total office is 24 people and we maintain it at about a three to one ratio between the staffing in our teams and the people that we work for. which I think is very important. When we get over to the fees, the fees are really designed for what we would do with Mike. We're not, like I said to start with, filling Mike's shoes. This is on page 16. We wouldn't be filling Mike's shoes. We'd be filling Alicia's shoes in this case. and had proposed the fees accordingly understanding exactly I think what we would need to do here in the event that the board selected us to provide these services. But I will also say that I am here and I know that I'm here alone even though we have teams and an office backing us up. We have a conference going on at the same time which I stepped out of today because I have to go do that stuff too sometimes. But regardless, you would see me at your meetings and I would be answering to you directly. So most of my other loads other than running our office and teams and operations, I've divested myself from, but I am very hands on. and have done this for a long time and I would be very hands on here, particularly on the front end and the transition side as everything goes forward and goes forward smoothly.

Can I ask you a question before you? Absolutely. Apart from that on the fee schedule. I understand the 1975 is a monthly retainer. When we talk about the additional services, are those, the 625 and the 750, are those additional annually or additional monthly?

Those are additional monthly. For the benefit payments, we have, done it based on the volume of payments. You've got about 120 recurring payments. You've got non-recurring payments for your share and drop distributions, for instance, as well as payments of invoices. So all of that is built into there. On the financial statements, we don't have everybody that we work for where they ask us to produce interim financial statements. But on that one, the task is largely the same and we maintain a detailed general ledger. and work very well with the various auditors that are out there. So we actually have an accountant on staff who's qualified to manage that from our side of the fence. And we don't provide for instance legal advice or accounting advice but our teams include for instance an attorney and an accountant because we're charged with providing these tasks and services and it keeps us in line with the level of expertise that we need for what we're doing for you. Not to step into or replace any other service provider role that you have. And including that we had proposed to do the annual report now It would be a board decision But our fee also includes for instance if we were doing your drop statements Potentially even an annual share allocation and statements that members could access online if they wanted to so our systems will manage and make those accounts available to members online if the board chooses and

One other clarification, you mentioned bringing Mike on board and giving him access to some of your systems. Is that he would be an actual employee or he would maintain his current position?

So Mike is your employee. And maybe employee is the wrong word, but he contracts with the board and provides services to the members. So we didn't actually contemplate making him an employee. But we do contemplate being able to function seamlessly with him and giving him selected access to our systems, particularly as they relate to the operation of your plan. And just so that you know, we talked to Mike, we suggested or proposed that Mike could be an additional point of access if we're engaged. for the other two plans as well because having that local point and local continuity for us is very important and we think that he's already in a place and a role where he could do that. Now, I don't know if the other boards would choose to do that. The general employees board is maybe down to, you know, 80-ish active members who are left. And I don't know necessarily how much point of contact for the retired members. But what we had proposed to the boards is if they wanted to use them, he would just extend what he does to those two boards and do the same kinds of terms and similar terms that he does those things for you. So we talked to Mike and hopefully took advantage of what he's already doing without looking to change it or replace it but possibly maybe expand it just a little bit.

Scott, the fee on the payment of the benefits and invoices, is that set and is that proposed to increase with the CPI or the... After the end of the three years?

It is set for three years. After three years, it's set to increase because we were asked for a three-year flat fee guarantee. At least that's the way that I read it. Okay. So it is proposed as the flat three-year fee guarantee. There's a CPI, but the CPI isn't really on the annual report, interim financial statements, or payment of benefits and invoices. The CPI is really on the 1975 base fee. Okay. And that's how we construe it in our agreement. It's not that material, it makes a difference to us. But in terms of what it costs this board, it's a nominal amount. The reason why we need that is if 70% or 71% of our own overhead is really in our team and payroll and staffing, we have to have some measure and increase to be able to keep up with benefits and compensation for those people who work for us. FROM OUR EXISTING CLIENTS. OTHERWISE WE WILL FALL BEHIND IN TERMS OF HOW WE CAN COMPENSATE OUR OWN TEAM.

SO WILL THAT AMOUNT INCREASE THEN BASED ON THE NUMBER OF BENEFIT PAYMENTS?

It is not contemplated to increase on the number of benefit payments. And I understand that was proposed as a flat. It wasn't based on the number of benefit payments. And I don't foresee the need for changing it. You guys would need to radically retire a greater number of people because for us running recurring payments on 140 people as opposed to 120 people is not going to move the needle that much. But, you know, we could have that conversation in five or ten years.

Okay. I'm asking just because the information we received from principal, it's based on a per check calculation.

Okay. And I actually don't know what principal charges separately in this case. I suspect on the front end I'm probably a little bit more expensive maybe than principal doing it. But I think that it would be a little bit smoother as well in terms of continuity and potentially if the board didn't like the way principal did it, continuity to the retired members because then you'd be going to principal and then you'd be going from there to somewhere else.

And I don't know if you can answer this question. What's been expressed to me through this whole process from the retiree side is keeping the payment dates and payments consistent.

So you're on the 15th of the month.

Yes.

Which is pretty unique and I told the general employees board if they wanted us to pay pensions on July 15th and you can get us data within a week, we will do it and we will do it seamlessly. And that would include a letter going out to the members saying, look, your payment doesn't look any different other than we will give them a deposit advice for instance or things like that that they may not be getting. And eventually they could opt to get that electronically So they could do that. But this is who we are. We're processing your payment. But if it's coming from the same account, it's not going to look radically different from them. But, you know, we need a, you know, we need to be able to do that. good data transition file and we've done this in the past even with Truist on a very tight timetable. So I'm confident if we get the data it is doable.

You keep saying Truist. I'm assuming we use Truist city?

That's what I had understood.

Okay. I was just wondering where that came from. For most it's a very important operational detail.

It was Wells Fargo. What's that? It was Wells Fargo. They were originally Wells Fargo, and Wells went in-house with Principal.

But Wells is not making the benefit payments. The benefit payments are being made through a local account at Truist. But if it is Wells Fargo, we can do that too. We already have payments through Wells Fargo and other plans.

You touched on cybersecurity and fraud. What kind of systems and checks do you have?

So we are doing an annual SOC 1 type 2 audit and I understand that there has been some conversation on cyber security and even cyber reviews as security. We believe that those reviews are probably important and there's been conversation about, the Department of Labor guidelines or recommendations recently as guidelines to the board for cyber protection, particularly with service providers like us who are holding your member data. So from our standpoint, we're doing a SOC 1 type 2 audit, which we believe is probably more complete in some of those areas. It is less. specific on some of the cyber details though it certainly is because about half of the audit is on systems and security. But it is also covering processes which are equally as important because if you just focus on the cyber side and even look at the Department of Labor or some of the reviews that have been proposed for the various boards to review cyber type, guidelines or controls and governance that are in place. They're more focused on the system side than maybe the other side where the vulnerabilities are really at the people level, not just the systems level. So we protect your systems in a lot of different ways and the data in a lot of different ways. including keeping it encrypted and when it's resident even on our servers. And we have the backups and air gap backups and other things that we need to have from our side of the fence. We are and have started a process with what we will call an independent auditor who does SOC 2 and other type audits to provide security reviews with an opinion letter as opposed to just a security firm providing an opinion with a review for cyber type guidelines and compliance or governance within the recommendations that have been made by the Department of Labor. So, they're very, you know, it's a very important question. It's a very detailed question.

I had a question in the audience. Of course.

So operationally, the question was do we leave the account to Achuas? The simplest thing is to leave it exactly where it is right now. And if we were making your payments on July 15th, we would need to be added as a signer on that account because we would need the online access, especially to upload ACH files into their system. So it is not required, but it is good. So if this board is doing a standalone audit, I believe it is material that this board has its own interim financial statement in detailed GL for their own audit. In the sense that the city is doing an ACFER and their audit is incorporated, there's not the same level of materiality. BUT I WILL TELL YOU THAT WE HAVE FUNCTIONED VERY WELL WITH THE CITY AUDITORS AND ACFER PROCESSES ON THE CITY SIDE OF THE FENCE AND STILL WOULD PROVIDE THE SAME DETAILED GL WHETHER IT'S A STAND-ALONE AUDIT OR WE'RE PROVIDING IT SO THAT IT CAN BE INCORPORATED INTO THE ACFER. YES. SOMEBODY'S GOT TO DO IT. IT'S JUST A QUESTION OF WHO. So I'm guessing that you might be the one who might be doing that.

If we don't do it, that would be normal.

Yes, sir. Would you mind touching on whatever incident with Cape Coral that led to the termination?

Yes, I would. Well, no, actually, I don't mind. I'd be glad to talk about it. In Cape Coral, we had a young lady who was not responsive to the members and she's no longer with us. And that is the significant probably factor in my mind. And they were so done with her that they were also done with us. We tried to remediate the situation and we didn't successfully. I will tell you that we replaced her in our office with Toby Ribello who's a retired captain from Miami Beach and previously a board chair. He's very detail oriented and excellent in that respect. So he's a little bit more of an opposite personality. He's more like a bulldog. He gets a hold of something and doesn't let it go. You might know that from some of your counterparts, not saying that any of you would ever be like that. But he actually, within Miami Beach Police Department when he was captain he was actually over their personnel. So he was not, he was really their HR and in charge of training as well at various points in his career until the end he decided to step back into special events. That was his drop job. But we're actually glad to have him. And he's at our Fort Myers office, local to Cape Coral. I don't think we'll ever remediate that situation with Cape Coral. It was a very tough one.

Anybody else have any questions? No?

No? Good. Thank you, sir. We appreciate the time very much. It's a pleasure. And, you know, just in closing, again, regardless of what you do, I'd like to thank you. Regardless of the decision you make, I'd like to thank you for what you do. That's a better way of coming out with it. You know, over many years and having a family, we have needed you. And it is so much appreciated and never taken for granted.

Thanks, sir. We appreciate it. Thanks, Scott.

So now you need to discuss and make a decision.

So you have had three presenters. I work with all of them in various places. So know that all of them are capable of providing services. So, you know, you all just need to decide who you want to work with going forward.

You make it sound so easy. So going back to the previous meeting, I wrote down the things that we talked about in there. Yes, sir. So you can consider for each one. Experience-wise... I'd say Resource Center, Foster, HYN, if you're going to rank in order, something like that. I'm not going to rank them for you. I'm just saying because I wrote down a lot of this stuff as they were talking. But you had experience, fees, legal background and litigation history. And, Bonnie, is this what General did this morning?

They just kind of talked. I think they had a general thought process. And frankly, as most boards do, focused on fees. So they looked at how much it was going to cost.

You had comparable plan sizes, local contact, person's call center, liability insurance. I think everybody's got liability insurance. Scope of services, they pretty much, everybody explained that. It's soup to nuts on the administration side. They all have references. Looking through all the ones, I mean, I see comparable size plans amongst all of them. It's just Foster's got the greatest amount followed by Resource Center.

So is Anthony still there?

Yes.

Anthony, would you also be able to make the July 15th payments for this fund?

Absolutely.

Not a problem. Okay. So you don't have to feel like that's a pressure point? You know, he can make those payments for July?

No, because honestly, if you look through it, I mean, that would be a big stretch. If you look through all the proposals and see their timelines in there, this is a couple, three-month process.

Yeah, it generally takes even, you know, even if we contacted the bank tomorrow, right, it takes at least two months to do the work that it takes to make sure that everything's going to flow through to the members correctly.

All right, so did anybody do math? On which? I've got math for you if you want math. Two questions.

Okay, go. So what is our current budget for the plan and for your position, Mike? Like we budget what day we paid Dale last year and what we have budgeted going for. What's the current budget we have for? I have absolutely no idea.

What did we say just ballpark we talked about? What was the most we ever paid, Dale?

I think the biggest one I ever signed was for about $6,000 for a quarter, maybe $6,500. So we'll call it $27,000 annually?

Okay. Rough numbers. Yeah. Okay.

And then I guess this might be a separate discussion, but are we committed – This is for the officers to answer because I'm not an officer, so I don't know. But is it a priority to keep Mike in place regardless of what plan we choose?

I believe we spoke about keeping him as a liaison no matter what.

No matter what.

And I don't think that's an option with Foster and Foster, correct?

I don't think it was an option with two of the three the way I heard it.

Well, so so I don't I guess, you know, just to throw this out, I don't I don't think they can control what the board does. Right. They would have have you could they could have you and you would be the liaison with the administrator. You know, would they then be paying double for your attendance at meetings? Potentially. And so, I mean, that would be the question for the Board of Trustees. I think that you could be involved if the trustees want that to be the situation in each of the situations.

I told you all from the get-go, you make the best decision you need to make.

I don't want me to be the consideration in what – Well, that was my question is have we made the consensus with – I mean, and this is really more for the officers. Is this something that we want?

My personal feeling on that is I – I feel like there was kind of a consensus that we wanted to keep Mike's services, and we're very comfortable with that. Now, I agree that Foster and Foster's presentation, they seemed like if we were to go with them, they were pretty robust, and there might be a big duplication of services there. But I would be more of an opinion – let's let that – if we were to go that direction, I'm just saying, but let's let that ride for six months or a year. If we really do find out, like, okay, now we've gotten in this for a while and maybe Mike's services are superfluous, that's something we can revisit, I would more look at it going in that timeline as opposed to let's make a decision right now with a manager we haven't dealt with before and we're going to decide ahead of time that we're going to cut off Mike's services and then go with this unknown. Thank you. Honestly, Boston, you don't need me. You've got Alicia. But I just feel like we could leave that option open to be revisited later rather than jumping off and doing everything all at once and then realizing, for whatever reason, maybe we're not happy with what that relationship is and, gee, I wish we could get Mike or somebody like Mike back on board. That's just my take on it. It doesn't mean that that's got to be the board's decision. I do understand your point because I think especially in Foster's presentation, it sounded pretty clear that they would be doing most of the things that Mike's currently tasked with doing.

What calculations were you going to give us?

Well, I mean, you saw in each one, I was just going to basically, Foster's about, 92 ish with the all carts the state report and the financials HYN is 34 35 Plus the $260 an hour for the extra stuff, which I'm assuming the state report would be $260 an hour. It sounds like that was a base fee for everything extra. Um, and then resource centers was with them doing the payroll. It's $34,500. If we need the quarterly interim financial statements, it makes it $40,000.

I got like $43,500 if we did everything. If he did everything. If we did everything. We did payroll and all of that. Yeah.

Mike, do you have any experience with any of the other police forces in the state of Florida that use these kinds of third-party administrators?

No. This is the first time I've ever – I mean, this is – and I think Bonnie will back me up. Basically, in Florida, this is the big three, what was in here today. Right, Bonnie? Yeah.

Yes. Yes. I think they're the three main people who provide administrative services on a statewide basis.

And to be honest with you, I got thrown into this just like you all got thrown into it because Alicia was there for 20-something, 25 years, you know, so we didn't have to worry about it.

So Alicia is now going to be with Foster & Foster?

Yes. Okay.

I almost feel like- And she would be assigned to your group in the background.

I almost feel like we're at the car dealership and we're shopping between varying models of cars and we're trying to figure out how much we want to pay for how happy we want to be with the car that's in our garage. I think if I were to have my druthers and I wanted the nice shiny Corvette, to me I think it's Foster and Foster. Simply because of all the continuity we have with having Doug for years, having Alicia who's on board with them. Basically, it seems like they are the most turnkey in-house, everything gets done under them. But just like going and pick your car and your favorite trim model, but buying the Denali Ultimate, it comes with the Denali Ultimate price tag. And then I think each of the others are just varying levels of price. maybe not as robust services, and I'm not speaking ill of their actual abilities, but smaller operations and providing less service to the board. And, of course, there's a savings that we realize for that. So that's a long-winded way of saying it's just how fast do you want to go and how much money do you want to spend to go that fast.

Bonnie, would it be too much to ask to be independent and objective if you have an opinion? Obviously you work with many of these.

I do. And, you know, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. And I mean, I can't really tell you who to go with. And I wouldn't, right? Because you have to independently work with them separate from me. I can work with all of them, enjoy working with all of them. I think all of them do a good job.

I mean, they're all doing the same thing. Yeah. It's just.

I think I'm in agreement where if, I think if I was ranking them totally independent, like taking the fees out of it, I would pick Foster and Foster pretty quickly. If I had to choose a second, I probably would go with HYN.

I'm with you, Brian. That's kind of where I'm at.

I agree also. The things that we currently pay foster and foster for, trying to find it.

You know, I do think, and one of the other reasons why I think I can't tell you much too, is that it is a relationship kind of business, right? Because this is your face, right? This is your office. So you need that person to reflect you, right? I mean, I think Scott said in the beginning of his presentation, like, if you don't like me, then maybe you shouldn't pick me. Do you know what I'm saying? Like he said, I'm going to be the face. And so, you know, you have to think about that relationship. And I think that's very true.

Boston, you were... The things that we currently pay Foster & Foster for, so like all of Doug's stuff, is that... I'm trying to find it in their services, but is that in what we would pay them... Or is that additional to the 92?

No, it's two separate divisions. It's my understanding this is a completely separate service.

This is a completely separate contract.

No, Alicia did the annual report. Oh, Alicia did?

Mm-hmm.

So we have no one here among us who has ever done the annual report for us?

No, Dale did it years and years and years ago. And when it got so computer automated and everything... He was actually typing it out at one point on a typewriter. I'm saying there's nobody here. So he gave it to her because Alicia is much more technologically savvy. There's no one here who knows.

And honestly, that's what happened across the state, right? They did not used to charge those kinds of fees for the annual report until it went electronic. And when it went electronic, it was really – at least the initial opening application was very difficult and and hard to upload and it took hours to get it completed so so that's when the fees started to get kind of what they are right now can this board compare

What the annual cost look like with Alicia versus a foster and foster?

Alicia's contract salary and benefits was $1.25-ish, I believe.

I think the GE said they were paying $78,000.

No, that was her pay, but the three boards were paying salary and benefits and everything, so insurance and everything. I want to say it was around $125,000. Yeah, somewhere in that neighborhood.

And we were absorbing about 30% of that, correct? We were absorbing about 30% of that number?

Yeah, it was on a pro rata, and I don't remember what it was the last time I saw it, but it was based on number of people.

So that expense to us is going away, correct? And we're absorbing this new one that we're picking up.

So we've essentially saved $35,000, $40,000.

I say saved, but I'm not saying we're – No, for police, it's going to go up.

For general – I spoke badly. I didn't mean that we're saving money, but I'm saying we're realizing by not –

Ultimately, depending on the choices of the three boards, it could be significantly more than what Alicia was getting paid.

I know that we are paying more. I completely misspoke. I'm saying that we have to factor in that we are not paying, no longer paying this bill $35,000 or $40,000.

So we're not paying that regardless.

Correct. Correct. So that has gone away. So now right off the bat, $35,000 or $40,000 is going into paying for this new service.

There's also the discount that is applied. I don't know if they made a decision already.

Oh, yeah. Did the other board make a decision?

They did.

Can we ask? It does change the price. Yeah, I feel like that's important information.

Because there was all of this, the presentations that were going forward, I didn't want to prejudice any of the decisions that any of the boards made and be prejudiced against any of the other presenters. So I did not say that it was who was picked.

Okay. I'm not trying to ask anything that would be, you know, Not unethical. We're kind of taking a shot in the dark.

It's not unethical. I just would prefer not to prejudice any of the decisions. That's fine. For you or for the firefighters, right? So they all can hear and make their own decision about what to do. But I'll tell you if you ask me directly.

But I trust your judgment, Bonnie. And that's quite frank. That's what we pay you for.

And none of the presenters know either.

Okay. If you're not comfortable, then I'm not going to push you because I pay you for your good judgment.

All right.

Did we go anywhere? I am personally torn between Foster and Foster and HYN. I was not a fan of the last one.

So, look, yeah, so I just want to say the preparation of the annual report, right, is something that's going to have to be done regardless, right? You could have Foster and Foster do it because Alicia's not doing it. So somebody has to do it. And when I say Foster and Foster, I mean the actuaries. You could have the actuaries do that.

You got time for that because it's done already for this year.

Well, then, just in interest of moving forward, are we comfortable with saying that our decision is down to the two, between Foster and Foster and HYN? I'm comfortable with that. Yeah. And at least remove one complication for us?

Yeah.

Okay. So now we really only have the two to compare.

So I mean, I think that, so what I'm trying to do is just, you know, make it kind of an apples to apples comparison. So you've got the preparation of the annual state report is going to have to be done. You're going to have to pay, given the two that you have, you're going to have to pay the custodian to pay the checks.

Correct.

So those two things are, you know, are no longer part of your consideration.

Correct.

um but they already prepare the drop statements so that's not necessarily something that you have to take into account either the foster and foster the actuaries so um it's just the services that you would get now um both of them are are remote-ish right um so And both of them have to explain to you how they would communicate with your members. And, you know, you have already kept Mike in the process.

I'm painfully cognizant that I'm always, when we're making decisions here, that I'm always talking about spending other individuals money. It's like government. And I also know that I've got a fiduciary responsibility to the board and the plan. But despite the difference in fees, I very much like Foster and Foster. I like a lot of what they bring to the table in having Alicia and having the relationship with Doug and the fact that they built our portal for us already. It seems like they've practically got their hands half into doing our administration already. And despite the difference in cost, I think there's a lot of value to be had. I feel like we would be getting the best services for our members. That's just me voicing an opinion. But if you were to ask me where I sit right now, those are my feelings. And I'm more than willing to be swayed if I'm completely off base.

I'm not a plan participant. But we've got several on the board that are. From my perspective, I think my opinion is Foster & Foster would be the best resource for the police pension fund.

You can call my baby ugly. It will not hurt my feelings. I know I should know this. What is our annual budget as far as what we're spending? It's like our expenses as a plan.

I will try to find your budget. $2 million.

No, your budget? I don't know that answer. Administrative budget, no. Not that high.

Administrative budget, no. The total for everything.

Not including our payments to members. No.

Budget. Yeah, with the consultants and everything, I thought it was round two.

Yeah, with all the consultants. With all the consultants and everything. People are looking for that.

Bonnie's looking.

He's just looking at a spreadsheet.

When was that? November that you guys did it? The meeting I wasn't at? I'm looking at the February.

Let me see.

So I see professional legal services for 2627 at 28,000 and then accounting and auditing at 55.

Go down to the bottom.

What's the total? Well, that includes pension benefits and drop and all that.

Take the pension benefits out of it.

The man's sideways. He's trying. Okay, that's fine.

He's working. He won't let me turn it right side out.

And he's got to go to night shift.

Yeah.

The total is 7.7. But, yeah, 10.5 million.

55.5 out of it. That's 2.2 for everything else.

2.2? I mean, so if you look at what we're talking about spending additionally with foster and foster, I mean, I'm doing my math roughly is like an additional $51,000 a year. But as a percentage of our overall expenses, it's about two and a half percent, which makes it a little bit more.

Digestible? Digestible for me.

I mean, that's a big number. But I do think at the end of the day we're going to be happiest with their services. And Mike.

And I think also to look at it as a fraction of our total. I mean, we're what, $112 million total? You know, we're administering a very large account with a lot of, I don't know that necessarily worrying about $30,000. And again, I am cognizant, I'm talking about other people's money here, but... jumping over that, you know, that dime. Oster does not include me.

Oster, that was pretty clear.

Yeah, no, no. I know, yeah, you're, that's off the... Yeah. That's another decision for another time.

Yeah, it's a separate position.

Yeah. Yeah. So it looks like... We're seeing that, yeah. They can't tell me what to do. Yeah. That we can make a position.

It looks like in 2025 to 20... This is 2024 to 2025. It was $25,465 for Alicia and $16,314 for Dale. Yes, ma'am. Sorry. We were just trying to keep that noise out from the lobby, sir. And then... Let me see if I can look at the next page. I don't see a specific line item for accounting and auditing, but I don't see administration. So that was 2020. 2024 through 2025 revenue and expenses. That was from your February meeting of this year. So that was what, 40? 41, 42,000.

I'm willing to put my vote on Foster and Foster.

I will entertain any motions that are put forward. You know my standard line.

So just a clarification on that motion that we're going to say that we're going to move forward with Foster and Foster, but with the understanding that we are committed to keeping our own administrative agent, being Mike Summer, in place.

I am fine with that. with what is he going to do if they're not going to let him in their systems?

You'd have to negotiate a contract, I think.

Could that be part of our negotiation, Bonnie?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

I just see officers getting into orientation, having somebody... I'm all for it. Yeah, no, I think it's great.

And I think we will obviously make a contract pay him to be there and do this. And, I mean, I don't know what their thought process is, but I would be shocked as much work as we've done with Foster and Foster over the years, and everything that we've talked about, why we feel so comfortable, I'd be shocked for them to try and see them put their foot down and go, no, we're not going to do that with him. And I think that would be a huge sticking point for us, Bonnie. But I just, I'd be flabbergasted if they did. But is that something, Bonnie, that we can kind of make a non-negotiable for us?

You tell me.

Yes. I mean, I don't want to put words in the other board. Yeah, that if it would be a motion, it sounds like to select them, but the selection would be contingent upon them accepting Mike as our liaison and agent and having whatever access he needs to perform in that capacity. Yes.

Which, I mean, I already have the portal.

Yeah, really, I don't see that something that would be an issue with them. But, yeah, I think just for the sake of doing it that it would be – that that be spelled out for them.

Okay.

Do we have to bring them back in and ask? I think we just tell them that those are our terms.

So who made the motion? No one's made a motion yet.

We were clarifying the language of the motion. So I will make a motion that we move to, I guess, retain Foster and Foster as our plan administrator with the caveat that we also retain Mike Summer as our local liaison for our pension plan.

Second. I have a motion and I have a second. Is there any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries.

Now that we have made our decision.

Do we get a 10% discount or not? Now can you tell us, Bonnie?

Well, I'm not going to tell about yours either, so. Nope. Bonnie, you're making this tougher. It's a bang to gavel and everything. Hang on.

Don't everybody get up and run. Yeah, we got more stuff.