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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-07-19 MinutesBoard Members Mayor Coody Chairman Sondra E. Smith Treasurer Eldon Roberts Secretary/Retired Position 1 Jerry Friend Retired Position 2 Tim Helder Retired Position 3 Melvin Stanley Retired Position 4 Frank Johnson Retired Position 5 17a*ye evl e ARKANSAS Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 1 of 12 A meeting of the Fayetteville Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund was held at 1:30 PM on July 19, 2007 in Room 326 of the City Administration Building Mayor Coody called the meeting to order. Present: Mayor Coody, Frank Johnson, Jerry Friend, Tim Helder, Eldon Roberts, Sondra Smith, Kit Williams, Amber Wood, Trish Leach, Wendy Moore, Elaine Longer and Kim Cooper of Longer Investments. Absent: Melvin Stanley. Approval of the Minutes: Approval of the April 26, 2007 Meeting Minutes Kit Williams: I read them and I thought they looked okay. Eldon Roberts moved to approve the minutes. Jerry Friend seconded the motion. Upon roll call the motion carried 4-0 Tim Helder and Frank Johnson were absent during the vote. Melvin Stanley was absent. Approval of the Pension List: Approval of the June, July and August 2007 Pension List Mayor Coody: Any changes? Sondra Smith: No changes. Jerry Friend moved to approve the Pension Lists. Eldon Roberts seconded the motion. Upon roll call the motion carried 4-0 Tem Helder and Frank Johnson were absent during the vote. Melvin Stanley was absent. Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 2 of 12 Old Business: 2007 Election Results: Eldon Roberts, Jerry Friend and Tim Helder were re-elected. Kit Williams: Congratulations. New Business: Election of Board Secretary Sondra Smith: Yes sir, we need to elect a secretary every two years. Mayor Coody: Who is the secretary now? Sondra Smith: Eldon. Jerry Friend moved to re-elect Eldon Roberts as the Board secretary. Tim Helder seconded the motion. Upon roll call the motion carried 6-0. Melvin Stanley was absent. Mailine of Minutes: Jerry Friend Jerry Friend: I brought up one time that we should mail minutes to the members. I didn't realize that it was going to take a chunk out of Sondra's budget. I guess we need to address if we are going to pay for mailing them or do we want to quit doing it. Is there a way to put it on the web and invite the members to go and look at it? Kit Williams: We could put it on the web, couldn't we? Sondra Smith: We could put it on the web. That's no problem at all. Jerry Friend: Would that be cheaper and easier? Sondra Smith: Yes. Jerry Friend: I think almost ever member has a computer. Sondra Smith: The main cost is the postage because postage has gone up. The minutes are not one page they are several pages so it costs quite a bit mail them. We are mailing them to all the members. Jerry Friend: You have the amounts don't you? Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 3 of 12 Sondra Smith: About $75.00 ever quarter just in supply costs that does not include the staff time to do it. If we are going to continue to mail them I need to put more money in my budget or your budget to cover the cost. Mayor Coody: If there is someone that doesn't have a computer that wants the minutes we can get them printed. Jerry Friend: Maybe mail them by request. Mayor Coody: Yes. Sondra Smith: That would be great. I have two groups that I email for the Firemen's Pension. I have the pension board group and the ones that request the minutes. The one's that request the minutes I send the minutes and agenda's. It works well that way. Jerry Friend: As long as they have access to the minutes I would be happy however we do it. Sondra Smith: Doesn't matter to me. Eldon Roberts: Go ahead and mail everybody the minutes one more time and tell them what is going to happen. I had a lot of people contact me and they are keeping up better than they ever had before because of the minutes being mailed to them but I don't have a problem changing it. Kit Williams: Put that in the minutes that this will be the last one mailed unless you specifically request it. You can give them the website. Sondra Smith: Because the website is being revised, we can continue mailing them through this year. What I'm concerned about is I have to start working on the budget now for 2008. So I will need to add the cost to someone's budget if we are going to keep mailing them. Eldon Roberts: I have no problem with stopping the mailing, but the last time that we are going to stop for good I would like to let them know. Sondra Smith: We will go ahead and do it for the remainder of 2007 and then let them know beginning in 2008 they will be available through the website. Jerry Friend: And they can request to get them mailed. We should probably put a little bit in someone's budget to get them mailed. I don't know how much. Sondra Smith: I would say an additional $100.00 in the budget for postage, letterhead and envelopes. Eldon Roberts: Is that per meeting? Sondra Smith: No, for the whole year because I don't think there's that many that will be mailed out in 2008. Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 4 of 12 Jerry Friend moved to add $100.00 to the 2008 Policemen's Pension budget for requested mail out of minutes and place the minutes on the website in 2008. Eldon Roberts seconded the motion. Upon roll call the motion carried 6-0. Melvin Stanley was absent. 2007 Legislative Session Summary: Sondra Smith: PRB sent this informational letter that specifically deals with the pension plan. There is one or two new Acts that I want to call to your attention. One is Act 611, House Bill 1172, the state law changed and now allows surviving spouses to vote during the election of local board members. It allows the board to fill a vacancy for the remainder of a term. So if someone decides to resign then we can fill the vacancy without doing elections. I wanted to make you aware of this Bill because in the past we have not allowed surviving spouses to vote. Now I take that to mean that if it is someone that is divorced they still will not be able to vote. Kit Williams: If they don't qualify as a surviving spouse then they cannot vote. Sondra Smith: We will have to know the status of that person when we send out for the elections. There are some other things that we are already doing; one is paying a death benefit to the police officers estate. We already do that. Eldon Roberts: If there is no surviving spouse, we can't continue to pay that? Kit Williams: No, I think the death benefit can be paid but before I think it said it was to be paid to a surviving spouse and so there was a problem if there was no surviving spouse. Eldon Roberts: This is going to his estate. Sondra Smith: Yes and we already do that. We issue the check to the estate if there is no surviving spouse. The other one is the QDRO order which is a divorce order and it talks about that. Eldon Roberts: While we are on that, this has been running through my mind. We have a couple situations here in the pension plan at the moment where police officers have divorced and through a court order we are mailing checks whatever the amount may be to their divorced spouse. If the police officer dies where are we at with that? Kit Williams: In the past that has always ended all the payments because she was only drawing through him, she was not a surviving spouse, and in fact we've even had a court case to that. One of the divorced persons challenged us and Kim Smith ruled in our favor. My opinion was that we could not make anymore payments and Kim Smith agreed and that was the ruling of the court. I will have to look at this and see if this law has changed that. Sondra Smith: The only exception to that, Kit can correct me if I'm wrong, is if they have a surviving child. Eldon Roberts: Under a certain age? Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 5 of 12 Sondra Smith: Under a certain age, enrolled in a college of higher education. Eldon Roberts: That sounds correct to me that if a policeman dies the pension stops. Kit Williams: Unless he has a surviving spouse or a surviving child. Eldon Roberts: The divorced spouse would not qualify to continue to draw benefits. Kit Williams: That's correct. Sondra Smith: Act 1571 allows us to pay a death benefit, we already do that. They say we should pay at least $100, I think we pay $200. You are allowed to pay more than $200 if you so choose. The other one that you probably need to read is Act 849 that talks about the future supplement fund. Kit Williams: I don't quite understand this. Eldon Roberts: You remember ever September our check would be a little bit higher and it had to do with the money that was left over out of the insurance turn back money and it was divided equally among the retired people all across the state. Am I right? Kit Williams: I think that's probably right but I don't really understand this synopsis. I will have to look at this. Sondra Smith: You get two supplements. You get a future supplement and a monthly supplement. The monthly supplement is usually $50 per month. We never receive that on time. We did not receive it in time for the July checks. Your checks will be short $50 and you may get calls from people wanting to know why their checks were short $50. When we finally get those funds we back pay. Then you get another supplement, a future supplement, which is a lot larger and it is a lump sum distribution that you get every year. Those checks are usually issued around August or September. Kit Williams: Basically we just pass that along. Sondra Smith: We pass that along and they tell us how to pay that out. We don't have a choice. What I'm reading from this is they were holding 10% of those funds and now they're not going to hold that 10%. So your future supplements should be a little bit more this year, it varies from year to year. We never know how much we are going to get from the state. Frank Johnson: Where did this originate from? I'm curious about the statement on the goal of developing a permanent cost of living fund. Kit Williams: Evidentially they are abandoning that goal. Frank Johnson: What was the original intent for that 10%? Eldon Roberts: I don't know. Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 6 of 12 Jerry Friend: Sounds like they are giving up on the idea, they may have decided that it would not work. Sondra Smith: It may be because there are less closed plans. This is specifically for the closed plans so they may feel like they don't need that 10% held back anymore. More of the plans are with LOFFI and there are fewer people on the closed plans. Eldon Roberts: I think this originally came from the Arkansas Municipal Police Officers Association. They attempted some legislation to get money from the state to each retired police officer to help with medical insurance that they have to pay. They weren't successful in getting any kind of a bill passed that allowed for that. They came up with this that whatever was left after all the pension funds get their share of the insurance turn back money they would divide that amongst them. I don't know if the Fire Department is involved in that or not. Kit Williams: I don't think they are. I think their insurance turn back is from home insurance. Sondra Smith: These Bills are just the ones that PRB sent. I have not gone through the huge book of law changes in its entirety because it was bigger than any that I have ever seen. I have gone through half but it is 1,200 to 1,300 pages. There may be a few other things that I will come across that we will need to talk about in the future. Mayor Coody: What do you want to do on this one? Kit Williams: That's it, it's just a report. Sondra Smith: I'm just making them aware. Longer Investments: Monthly Investment Report Mayor Coody: Welcome guys, markets hitting all times records. I'm assuming you all are doing great things. Elaine Longer: We have an update for you. A lot has happened since the June 30th quarter ended. Page one shows your portfolio appraisal as of June 30th your stocks were 48.6%. On page two foreign stocks were 7.1%, you were right at the 55% or a little over, this keeps happening. We are at 55% and month to date through yesterday's close we are up 3.5% so now we are at 56.5%. We have to keep trying to trim and taper it back into the 55% limit. We did get a call last week that one of them was over a little bit but it's the market activity the fact that stocks have out performed bonds this year but also last year. That's why we keep bumping up against that 55% and exceeding it and then trimming back a little bit. Jerry Friend: Is that the thing that we vote on each month? Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 7 of 12 Elaine Longer: Yes, ever month that you're over. I would ask that we approve where it is now and recognize that in this kind of market activity there might be a point mid month or on a short term basis where the market moves us above that level and that we are trying to pull back as we see that we can. I don't know if that's too ambiguous or if you want to hold us to 55% and sell no matter what. Jerry Friend: We will approve where it is right now and if you see the need to go up we can approve it next meeting. Elaine Longer: The way it is approved now is 50% plus 5%. Kit Williams: The absolute limit is supposed to be 55%? Sondra Smith: What you are doing is approving it after the fact. What she is saying is if they need to go 56% or 57%. Mayor Coody: Before the next meeting. These guys are doing a good job I wouldn't mind letting them have the flexibility to do it and then we will fix it each quarterly meeting. Elaine Longer: When you are pulling away from stocks into bonds, which I think you still have more potential in stocks than you do in bonds, but we have to as long as we are at a maximum of 55% and now we are 56.6% today because of what has happened. Mayor Coody: If stocks are out performing what would be wrong with changing the policy to go up to 60% of your portfolio in stocks, if that is where the money is. Sondra Smith: We changed the policy to be 5% above or below the equity range. Elaine Longer: So we could go to 55%. Sondra Smith: We could change it even a little bit more. Mayor Coody: If you go to 55% that would get you up to 60% and if the stocks are really doing great you could ahead and capitalize on that. Elaine Longer: That would be okay with me. Kit Williams: On page 5 of the policy, I would suggest that you leave one, two, and three the same which is cash, fixed income, and equities 35% to 50%. If you want to change something within number 3, I would change the manager can operate outside equity guidelines by not more than 5% or if you want to say seven, eight or ten. What would you be comfortable with? Do you want a full 10%? Elaine Longer: I think 10% is better than 2% because we are at 56.5% as of yesterday and today the market up another one half percent. Kit Williams: It would be 10% so if you go all the way up to 60% of your fund. Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 8 of 12 Eldon Roberts: Inequities. Jerry Friend: Then we would still have to vote each time it is over 50%. Kit Williams: You would have to vote because your target is still 50%. It's only if she feels like it needs to go beyond the 50% that you would have to approve it every quarter. Eldon Roberts: If we have it where she can go 10% above than we can vote to approve it at the next quarterly meeting. Kit Williams: Right now you can't do it unless you change this. Eldon Roberts: She still has the authority to go ahead and do it if we go ahead and change that to 10%. With these people managing our money I feel very comfortable with 10%. Mayor Coody: Is that a motion. Sondra Smith: This states 5% plus or minus. Elaine Longer: What we are facing is that we have trimmed back even since the end of the quarter but here we are just quarter to date. The stock market is up 3.5% in your account and so we are at 56.5% as of last nights close. Market is up one half percent today, so by tomorrow I would have to liquidate around $200,000 of your stocks just to get to 55%. Kit Williams: The stock is just going up. Elaine Longer: This is just what has appreciated. Eldon Roberts moved change the Investment Policy to allow Longer Investments to go plus or minus 10% of the current Equity range of 35% to 50% with a report on the variance to the Board and approval of the overage by the Board. Jerry Friend seconded the motion. Upon roll call the motion carried 6-0. Melvin Stanley was absent. Sondra Smith: We also need to vote on the current equity overage. Eldon Roberts moved to approve the equity overage. Tim Helder seconded the motion. Upon roll call the motion passed 6-0. Melvin Stanley was absent. Elaine Longer: That helps. I will still be targeting that 55% but at least tomorrow I don't have to go sell $200,000 worth of stock. Page five shows you where it closed yesterday and you will notice that stocks are 49%. The international is 7.1% so you are at 56.1%. We already pulled back month to date and sold some to get back to 55%. That is what we are facing. Page eight has the total portfolio value which is $10.826 million. You are showing a cash balance of $114,000 and that is probably what I've already pulled out of equities to try and keep things tapered together. Your income which is dividends and interest is $357,000 which is a Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 9 of 12 3.6% current yield. On page nine the realized gains year to date are $218,000 and net income is $138,000. Page 10 is your composition of your fixed income portfolio. Interest rates were fairly stable. The Fed has not increased rates since June of last year but the ten year treasury yield has fluctuated quite a bit this year because of the sub prime problems. The foreign central banks have raised interest rates, we haven't raised interest rates, and so the dollar is under some weakness. In the ten year maturity, which the Fed cannot control, the interest rates in the ten year are controlled by market forces. We saw the ten year yield go up from a 4.6% in May to a 5.3% in June. That is a pretty dramatic increase because the thirty year mortgage keys off the ten year treasury. So to have 75 basis points or a point seventy five percent increase adds another layer of pressure to the housing market recovery. They have since backed off to about a 5%. We are fairly short of maturities. The weighted average maturity is 4.2 years and that is a little bit from where we were at year end, our yield to maturity with 4.2 year maturity is 5.4%. The five year treasury is yielding about 4.80%. You have a very high yield with a shorter maturity than the five year treasury. Our bonds have been fairly defensive with this increase in interest rates in that when you have an increase in rates bond prices go down. We haven't had as much of a negative impact on the bond portfolio from a falling in bond prices as a standard fixed income portfolio. We have a lot of flexibility to be able to tap onto higher yields because we still have 40% of the bond portfolio that matures within three years. When we get ready to buy and we want to extend maturities we will pull from the one year maturities and then the one and a half year maturities. We don't feel like we have to hold a bond to maturity. We will sell it ahead of time if we see a better buying opportunity. At this point in time giving what the dollar is doing we are on hold, we haven't made that move yet. Page 11 shows your major holdings. General Electric which just hit a new 5 V2 year high after reporting good earnings last Friday, Citigroup, American International Group, Texas Instruments and American Express. None of which exceed the 5% limit in your portfolio. Page 12 shows the summary of the industry weightings. We continue to be overweight in capital goods, cyclical, healthcare and we have a pretty healthy overweight in technology. This has been a good place to be because the consumer is still weak and the retail numbers are showing continued weakness. We are underweight consumer, consumer non-cyclical and we are some what underweight the financials which has been good because the banks and the brokers are really getting hit hard because of the sub prime. Just the risk of mortgages going into default is really weighing on the financial sector and utilities. We are evenweight on energy. Page 13 is a summary of contributions and distributions year to date with $710 coming in through litigation settlements and withdrawals of $587,000. Page 14 is your summary of performance year to date through June 30th Stocks were up 7.8% and that compares to the S&P on a cash basis of 6% and S&P with compounding of dividends of 7.0%. Mutual funds, which are foreign, are 6.7% year to date, fixed income of 1.6% and that compares to the Solomon Brothers Treasury Index of 1.0%. That out performance is really because we are defensibly postured and we have not been hit by the decline in price. The total is up 4.8%. To bring you up to date through yesterday, you will find this pretty amazing, equity Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 10 of 12 performance is now 11.5% year to date instead of 7.8% and the funds are up 8.8% instead of 6.7%. The total is 6.6% instead of 4.8%. A lot has happened just in a two week time period. The bottom of the page shows the asset reconciliation, all the funds that come in through beginning value, additional deposits and transfers of securities. The withdrawals from inception to date have run $4.675 million and that verses a total investment return of $6.795 million. The fund performance has still run ahead of distributions and the 7.1% compound annual return has run ahead of the actuary assumption of 6%. Mayor Coody: On the $10,000,000 each that the bonds were short awhile back. Are we creeping up on that to where we are getting a little bit closer to a balanced equity? Kit Williams: It will take a considerable period of time to turn the corner. This is certainly in the right direction. It will take a number of years to be able to catch back up. A lot of it is that we are still going to be getting millage. As a result of the TIF suit, the TIF doesn't affect the millage; you are still going to get the full value of the millage. Hiring the attorney to represent you was a good investment in that and we were happy with the way the TIF suit ended up. The pension funds and library were not hit and the schools were basically left as if the TIF isn't there either but they don't get the extra money they thought they were going to get. They thought they were going to get some of the city money transferred to the school. I did not think that was right. The TIF district has about twice as much money as what we had so we will pay off our debt faster and the pension plans are not going to be affected at all and neither is the library. The millage is going to help us as well as investments. The stock market doesn't always go up but the millage hopefully will always be coming in and will help you turn the corner eventually. It will be a number of years. Mayor Coody: I just want to make sure we are going the right direction. Kit Williams: As long as we don't increase benefits then I think we will be going the right direction. Was this the last year for the cost of living? Eldon Roberts: In January, 2008 there is a 3% COLA and that is the last one. Kit Williams: We probably won't really turn much around until that 3% is not increasing. This has been a nice market so I don't think we are losing ground at this point. Mayor Coody: Good. Kit Williams: Why is the market going up so much? Elaine Longer: I love that. Kit Williams: We've got problems with banks, the consumers are spent out, we have all this debt and we have a war that is costing tons of money so why is the market going up? Elaine Longer: This is the question I get in every meeting right now. I was waiting to see who would pop the question. The thing is the earnings are continuing to come through very strongly. In particular on the companies that are positioned and tapped into the growth internationally. For Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 11 of 12 instance IBM reported this morning stocks are up $5 a share and their revenues are up 11%, earnings are up 16%, and about 4% of that growth comes from the US. Asia was about 15% and Europe was 11%. Last quarter when Avon products reported their top line revenue growth rate was 9%. It was only 3% in the US but it was 44% in China and 16% to 17% in Europe and Asia. So we are seeing this across the board on these big corporations that are tapped into the growth overseas. General Electric is another great example and American Express. The first quarter of the year the market was flat actually the DOW was down a couple percents and then we came into the earning season and street estimates were for earnings to be up 3% and it came in about 8%. As we started to get the earnings in April the market started taking off. If you look at last years performance you were up 17.4% and the S&P was up about 13.5% and earnings were up 18%. So we actually ended last year even after a big year in the market where we were cheaper on evaluation than when we started the year. The first quarter of the year the market was fairly flat, earnings were up another 8% and so we are still playing catch up. I was looking at IBM today and with the increase in street estimates for 2008 which have come about because of the higher than expected numbers today. The stock is selling at 14.5 times 08 earnings. So that is not an expensive stock when you have a 5% ten year treasury and so even though it's up $5 today, if someone did not own IBM I would probably feel comfortable buying it. That is what you are seeing and plus there is a lack of alternatives even though the ten year is at 5% that's not providing a strong alternative to stocks at these valuations. At this point in time you have a Fed that's basically locked in place because they don't want to raise rates with all the sub prime problems. Bemanke testified yesterday that the Fed is incorporating this into their testimonies at ever opportunity, so you know the Fed is concerned about the sub prime, the lenders and the housing recover and what that's going to mean for economic growth. So, they are not going to raise rates here and the question is can they cut rates especially if the economy cools in the second half and they are kind of locked in place there too because the US dollar has been weak this year relative to foreign currency. The Fed is kind of checked so that relieves some of the anxiety and the question about Fed policy. Everyone feels pretty confident that we don't have to anticipate any big changes in the Fed policy. That takes one big issue off the table so the whole focus is on earnings and earnings are coming through very well. Miscellaneous: Eldon Roberts: Kit, I'm so glad you brought that up about the TIF because I wanted to bring it up at the last meeting and I forgot it. I read a lot of articles in the newspaper a few months ago where this was finally wrangled out in court and I read everything I could that came out in the papers. I read about the schools and Rudy Moore representing the schools and I read about the library but I never saw anything about the Fire and Police Pension plans. I thought where are we at in all of this? We are still okay and everything is great. Kit Williams: The final order has been signed by the judge. The final order to effectuate the Supreme Court's decision was as I described to you, where the pension plans and the library are treated the same. The Supreme Court specifically ruled on the library saying because it was adopted through this constitutional amendment by the people that it, like the twenty five mills for the school, would not be touched by Amendment 78 in the TIF. So the pensions the library and Policemen's Pension and Relief Fund Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes July 19, 2007 Page 12 of 12 the 25 mills for the school are all untouchable by Amendment 78's attempt to take the increments, the amount of increase in value of the property, and use it for financing. The biggest argument I had in this case was the debt service definition that had been very inexpertly drafted by the legislature and led to an actual unconstitutional interruption. The Supreme Court agreed that it could not be in interrupted that way, it violated their previous decisions in the Lake View case and other cases, as well as their other holdings in Article 16 Section 11 of the constitution which is the typical illegal exaction section that everybody uses. When I read that earlier that is what concerned me and that is why I filed this case. I was afraid if we did nothing they would make that ruling somewhere down the line, two or three years from now, but the person that would bring it forward wouldn't be me and they would say I get one third of all the money that I just saved all the tax payers. Quarterly Report: A copy of Longer Investments Quarterly report was given to the Board. Longer View: A copy of the Longer View was given to the Board. Informational: Supplemental Benefit: The Board was told that the monthly supplemental benefit was removed from the July checks because the funds have not been received from the state. Meeting Adjourned at 2:15 PM