President Sandy Holcombe welcomed everyone, especially our speaker/guest Linda Beaver and Darlene Rezicka. Invocation was led by Karen Butt; buffet lunch followed.
Program:
Following lunch Sandy thanked the cooks for another great lunch, and also introduced our officers and committee chairs to everyone before calling up our speakers for the day.
*Darlene spoke first, thanking Eileen for all she does for the organization as Public Relations Chair, web-master, etc! She reminded us that Lifetime Membership to ORTA is $500, which can be done in payments over a year. ORTA can help us to have the “bigger voice” we need to have with the legislation in Ohio. She shared that she has visited 45 out of her 48 designated counties! It has been a major goal to provide information for the future generation of retirees to be knowledgeable of up-coming changes. The organized Technology committee is so important to help all chapters develop websites and be an organization that is “current” for our future retirees.
*Linda Beaver spoke next. She is representative to over 30,000 retired teachers! She thanked us for being a chapter that does a lot to keep up with what needs to be done to keep members informed. Even with all the changes of benefits, Ohio STRS is one of the best retirement systems across our nation, with a guaranteed % of our earned salary going in to a more secure system. Established and doing well before our nation’s Social Security System was in place, we did not then, and do not now want STRS to become a part of the SS system, even though the topic continually comes up…and we must continue to voice our opposition to this. One significant subject concerns our COLA benefits-left out this year and continuing next year at 2% instead of 3%, there is a lot of discussion on how this will be handled in the future-hoping that it could possibly go back to 3% at some time. She advises to pay attention and ask questions about all that is going on with the legislature & STRS.