GCCCD Grapevine
Volume 4, Number 2 August, 1994
Keenan to Sponsor Retiree Breakfast
Charlene McMahon
Keenan & Associates is sponsoring the annual breakfast for district retirees this year. Because the GCCCD has been cutting costs wherever possible (see Editor’s Comments, ), Charleen McMahan (see photo), newly hired vice-chancellor of Human Resources, took the initiative and called Keenan and Associates to see if they’d be willing to cover the cost of the retiree breakfast and a new retiree directory this year. Vice-chancellor McMahan has assumed, among other responsibilities, many of the duties once performed by the now eliminated position of Director of Personnel (a position held until this July by Stan Flandi, our host at previous retiree breakfasts). Keenan graciously agreed to fund both the breakfast and the production of a new, revised directory of district retirees (see Notices, page 2), which should be available for distribution to retirees attending the breakfast.
Keenan & Associates is the largest insurance broker for educational institutions in California and a long-time insurance broker for GCCCD. They've been involved with numerous benefit packages for district employees and retirees. Cynthia Stribling from Keenan will emcee brief presentations at the retiree breakfast by Stephanie Ewing-Warner, also with Keenan, and by Patti Coulter, representing Health Net, on a new health care package, "Seniority Plus," for persons with Medicare. The health care package involves the government paying your Medicare directly to an HMO and the retiree paying a small additional monthly fee in order to obtain full health coverage (much like the Secure Horizons program some of you are familiar with). The Keenan plan costs $14.50/month for complete health coverage, or $16.00/month with dental coverage added. These particular plans are only available to retirees living in California (although similar plans are available in other states). There are plans to mail information on this health plan to eligible district retirees, but you can contact Keenan individually by calling 296-6159 (local) or 1-(800)-758-5624 and asking for Betty Pardue.
Other guests at the breakfast include GCCCD chancellor Jeanne Atherton, Grossmont College president Richard Sanchez, Cuyamaca College president Sherrill Amador and vice chancellor Charleen McMahan.
Eligible Retired Faculty Offered New Options
Faculty who retired before January 1, 1991 and had selected retirement option 2 may now change to option 6, and those who retired under option 3 may now change to option 7. Option 6 and 7 only became effective on January 1, 1991, but recently approved legislation allows faculty who retired before that date to change to these newer options if they do so by December 31, 1994 and meet certain criteria.
Retired faculty first learned of this opportunity from an article in the summer 94 issue of STRS Retired Educator. The article listed the criteria and added that eligible retirees would receive more specific information late in June. If you retired under either STRS options 2 or 3 and have not received further information, you should contact STRS directly. Their toll-free number is 1-800-228-5453.
Briefly, the advantage of changing from option 2 to 6 or from option 3 to 7 is that it provides the full unmodified retirement allowance to the retiree if their beneficiary predeceases them. The disadvantage is that choosing this option will reduce the current monthly retirement allowance by a small amount, typically about one-percent. The following examples, based on STRS option tables, illustrates the effect of changing options for a typical retiree who retired at age 60 with 30 years of service at a final three-years’ average salary of $40,000 with a beneficiary whose age is 55. All amounts are figured pre-tax.
Board Approves Two Emeriti
Marie E. James Robert C. Steinbach
At its May 3 meeting, the GCCCD Board members approved the honorary rank of Professor Emeritus for Robert C. Steinbach and Professor Emerita for Marie E. James "for outstanding service, dedication and leadership" during their tenure at Grossmont College.
Marie James retired in 1993 from the Foreign Languages department, where she had taught Spanish and German since 1964. During her tenure there she instituted the majors programs in Spanish, French and German and initiated the Japanese language program. She served as department chair from 1975 to 1987. Especially notable, she was a member of the Faculty Senate from 1965 to 1993, a record unmatched by any other faculty member.
Bob Steinbach retired in 1992 from the position of Acting vice-president of Academic Affairs at Grossmont College. Prior to that, he was Dean of the Division of Mathematics, Physical and Behavioral Sciences from 1988-1990. Before becoming an administrator, he taught mathematics and chaired for several years in the Department of Mathematics, which he had joined in 1962. While in the math department, Bob authored several texts, including a textbook of trigonometry, a computer lab experiment manual and audio-tutorial materials in mathematics, and he helped produce computer-assisted-learning modules for mathematics students.
The GCCCD Board has, to date, awarded the emeritus rank to a total of only twenty-nine retirees, four of whom are now deceased. The total includes one Trustee Emeritus, four Chancellor or Superintendent level Emeriti, three President or vice-president level Emeriti, two Dean or Director level emeriti, and nineteen Professor Emeriti, counting Marie James and Bob Steinbach.
Editor’s Comments
by Tom Scanlan
California’s problems continue. Our bond rating in the state has just been downgraded, putting us near the bottom of all states with respect to credit-risk. Now the state has to pay higher interest to sell these riskier bonds, which puts the state even deeper in debt. The state’s slow economic recovery has affected funding to the district, so the 94-95 budget is being pared back by a million dollars. Positions have been eliminated and others have been combined in an effort to reduce expenses. There hasn’t been a pay raise in nearly five years. I’ve talked to more than a few district retirees who feel lucky to have retired before things got so bad, including myself (yes, I talk to myself sometimes). It’s not all that certain that we’d even be having our annual retiree breakfast if Keenan and Associates hadn’t offered to pick up the tab.
Economic gloom may have spread into your life, as well. Many of you, even those living out of state, probably have an insurance policy which was earning a variable rate and you’ve discovered that the projected benefit has dropped far below what the company had forecast when earning rates were 8% or higher (somehow the agent never directed your attention to that obscure table based on a minimum rate of 4%). So now interest earnings may not even cover premium costs, in which case the value of your policy is actually declining. Adding to the gloom, a number of you probably pulled some, maybe even most of your savings out of CD’s and bought into mutual funds, which were doing fine a year or two ago but have slipped an average of nearly 10% since the first of the year. Even nice, safe short-term bond funds dropped enough to cancel out the dividend earnings which are a major part of their total return. Diversifying into stock and bond funds didn’t work the way it’s supposed to.
So what’s a retiree to do? Well, inflation has stayed low, which is a plus if your pension COLA is as small as ours. If you’re not comfortable with the market, you can earn 5% now on one-year CD’s (e.g., at the San Diego Teacher’s Credit Union). That gives you two points earnings above the current inflation rate (before taxes, of course). Or you can park some money in a mutual fund money market and earn 3 to 4%. Or, as most market gurus advise, ride out the correction (which most analysts feel has not yet bottomed) and keep reminding yourself that, over time, the vast majority of mutual funds make more money for the investor than CD’s or treasury notes. In the same breath, however, these gurus (as well as your mutual fund prospectus) caution that past performance is no indicator of future performance. Suppose the market decides to drop another 10%? Some analysts say it will, others are still very bullish. I’d feel a lot more comfortable if investment analysts could agree on something as seemingly simple as where the market’s headed in the next twelve months. It’s not a science, that’s for sure!
Personally, I have a hard time ignoring a 10% correction because I wonder if that’s the end of it. I’ll sleep better with part of my money earning just 5% in a plain vanilla CD, no questions asked, no fine print, no unforeseen interest rate increases, no worry about a weak dollar or what’s happening in the Tokyo market or what effect a corporate takeover or anti-trust hearing might have, or how much my fund manager has put in "residuals" (which I’ve yet to hear explained clearly). Who needs to get rich, anyway? Then you’d have to start supporting politicians you don’t like so that they’ll look after special interests that you can’t stand so that they can keep doing the sort of things you object to in order to keep you rich!
So, given the financial state of the state, the district, people who work (worked) for Convair, and the low rate of inflation, it’s not all that bad being retired. If your mutual funds are down, so are nearly everybody else’s. Hold them until they get back up (they will go back up, won’t they?). Then move some of that money back into a CD and promise yourself that you’re not going to think about the economy or the stock market or the strength of the dollar. There are more pressing problems, like where are your six grandchildren going to sleep when your daughter and her husband visit you this weekend.
Notices
Submissions to Cowles Mountain Journal: The last issue of Grapevine mentioned that retirees may submit poems, short stories, or art photos to the district staff’s literary and arts magazine, The Cowles Mountain Journal. Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. A member of the publication’s editorial board informed me recently that they are not accepting submissions until further notice due to lack of funding for production.
Avoid Parking Violations: For those of you who still visit the college campuses, parking stickers and magnetic gate cards expire in July but are still valid through mid-August. New stickers and cards will be available at no cost to retirees at the Bookstore by the second week in August. Parking citations are $24.
Retiree Directory: The new directory should be ready in time for distribution to those retirees attending the breakfast on August 16 (see "Keenan Sponsors Retiree Breakfast" on page 1). The new directory will be mailed shortly thereafter to those unable to attend.
Your Family Images on Video
Many of you have probably reached that stage in life when you’ve thought about what sort of family visual records you should leave to your children. There’s your photo album of course (assuming you ever get around to updating it with that shoe box full of photographs dating back to who remembers when). And those old albums you got from your parents are in pretty sad shape, with pages falling out and picture mounts coming loose. And then there’s the home movies and color slides which no one has seen in decades because the projector is busted and the camera repairmen only laugh at you when you inquire about repairing it. And how will you divide all these visual goodies between more than one child without going to the considerable expense and effort of having more copies made?
If you have a video camera or can borrow one, you can produce an inexpensive visual record of the best of these family images, and you don’t need any special equipment or expertise. I purchased my first video camera less than a year ago, and completed the project described herein which more than saved the entire price of the camera. You will need to invest some time (and more than just a few hours), but you’ll be delighted with the results and the convenience of having all these visual media on video. The time-consuming part is going through your photos, movies and slides and deciding which are worth preserving, but you’d have to do that anyway if you were going to have them copied professionally.
Next make your title and any credits or dedications you wish to include. These can be typed or hand printed on small cards or copied directly off a computer screen with your video camera. Now you’re ready to begin video-taping. Use a room that is quiet (you’ll be narrating), has good lighting, and can remain messed up for at least a few weeks (if all goes well). You will need a tripod for your video camera.
In order to copy your photos, devise a way of supporting pictures (or picture albums) vertically so that they are well lighted (use angled lighting to avoid glare) and allow you to bring the camera lens to within an inch or so of the picture. If the photos are loose, you can use small loops of masking tape folded over against itself, sticky side out. Place these on back of the photo and press the photo against a flat smooth surface (e.g., sheet of cardboard, glass or finished wood). Or just leave them in the album and prop the album up with pages open (you can keep the pages from fanning open with a couple of clothespins). Focus carefully on the best part of the photo, taking care to avoid including frames or borders. Auto-focus features work well at close distances if your zoom is set at extreme wide-angle. Videotape each photo for 3-5 seconds, however long it takes for you to say a few words describing the image to prospective viewers.
Copying movies is best done at night. Set up your video camera and projector five to ten feet from a flat, smooth sheet of white cardboard (this works better than a beaded screen or one of those copying machines), so that each is pointed toward the screen at a small angle (5 degrees or so), with the camera and projector on opposite sides of the center line. Turn off all lights, start the projector, and focus the video camera manually on just the inner part of the picture, excluding the outer ten-percent or so ( which is usually not as sharp as the rest of the picture). Projector noise might present a problem if you want to include narration, but this can be minimized by using a separate microphone instead of the video camera’s built-in microphone. If you don't want to narrate the movies, use brief titles (names, place, date) to identify different segments. You can eliminate projector noise by inserting a "dummy" plug (not wired) into your camera's microphone jack.
Slides can be copied in a fashion similar to movies, although the room needn’t be as dark. I’d recommend changing the slides manually and including a brief vocal description like you did when you copied your photographs. If you only have a few slides to copy, you might be able to mount the slide on a smooth, white, translucent lampshade and copy it directly (not by projection) as you did with your photographs.
Finally, when making video cassette copies from your master (original) video tape, make each of the copies directly from the original, and use the slowest copy speed on your VCR. I think you’ll be surprised at how good these images look on television, and the convenience of viewing is a real plus. Patience and good luck!
Tom Scanlan
Marilyn Filley Retires
Marilyn Filley
Marilyn Filley has joined the ranks of district retirees, effective this July. Marilyn has been with Grossmont College Music Department since 1981 as a music technician.
Her retirement raises the total number of retirees to 229. Of these, 113 (49%) are certificated, 96 (42%) are classified, 17 (7%) are administrators and 3 (1%) are trustees (percentages are rounded). The majority, 52%, are female.