RETIRED EMPLOYEES OF KERN COUNTY

MINUTES OF GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING

February 14, 2006

The meeting was called to order at 12:02 p.m. The Pledge of Allegiance was led by David Merritt and a moment of silence was held. President, Norman Briggs, announced that handicapped members and the head table would pick up their lunch first. After that he announced that he would reverse the order of tables, starting with table #5 first and going backwards with table #1 being last.

There were two new retirees in attendance. Everett Julkowski introduced Ted and Dorothy Lueking. Dorothy is the Secretary of CRCEA and does a fantastic job. Ted and Dorothy are from San Bernardino County. Doris Carey had her daughter as her guest today.

President, Norman Briggs, introduced Jeanne Berkshire, 1^st Vice President who in turn introduced our speaker today. The speaker for today was Marylee Shrider a columnist for The Bakersfield Californian. Marylee spoke on the media and gave a little insight of her working for the Californian. Marylee has worked for The Bakersfield Californian for nine (9) years. She was hired as an intern at 40 years of age. Marylee writes two columns a week which is published on Saturday and Tuesday and she also works from her home. There are times that an article is not exactly what the columnist has written. The copy editor sometimes will leave a sentence or two out to be able to fit the column in the paper. Marylee was requesting that members of REOKC write letters to the editor.

BUSINESS MEETING:

TREASURER, Mary Lou Bennett gave the Treasurer’s Report for January 2006 which showed that REOKC membership as of January 31, 2006 was 3,474.

CRCEA – David Merritt reported that the Spring CRCEA Conference will be held March 20 – 22 in Newport Beach. Kern County will be hosting the Conference in the Spring of 2008. David stated that we have two years to put a conference committee together out of this organization. David announced that he received an e-mail requesting

our members to contact Senator Soto regarding the desire of the Firefighters State lobbyist to pull a part of the SB777 that is backed by CRCEA.

EYE GLASS – Helen Heath reported that she has collected 3 pair of glasses and 4 cases since the January meeting.

SUNSHINE – Belva Jared commended the membership for contacting her to send cards to members who are sick or have passed on. Belva sent get-well cards to six of our members and sympathy cards to 3 members or their families.

HOST/HOSTESS PROGRAM - Mary Lou Bennett reported that for the month of January there were 30 volunteers who worked 91 hours and assisted 997 visitors to the County Administration Building. Since the beginning of the program in 1992 through January 2006 we have assisted 230,795 visitors to the County Administration Building.

NEWSLETTER – The deadline for the upcoming TREND will be February 15^th.

President, Norman Briggs, introduced Michelle Watson, Kern Federal Credit Union. Norman also thanked Michelle for the 2 throws and 5 candy jars which will be given in the raffle. Michelle brought Dixie Mathews, a co-worker from Kern Federal Credit Union. Dixie will be our guest speaker at our March meeting but she took about 5 minutes today to inform our members of a scam that is causing a real problem at this time. The scam is a telephone scam and the person identifies himself as an employee of the VISA Department and he needs to verify your charges because your account has been flagged for fraudulent transactions. The bottom line is that this person wants information from you. He wants the three digit number on the back of your card. If he has this three digit number he can post transactions to your account. Make sure that you NEVER give out this three digit number.

OLD BUSINESS:

COMPUTER GIVE AWAY – John DeMario announced that he has 2 computers to give away today. The winners of the computers this month were Harold Yingst and Doris Carey.

NEW BUSINESS: No new business

Some of the Board members have been hearing complaints that the meeting has been taking too long. One suggestion was to have each amount of money in the raffle be increased to $10.00. A vote was taken with a show of hands of the members who were present. This vote showed that the members were very much in support of leaving the amount at $5.00. The attendance prize was won by Frank Stramler. There were 44 - $5.00 prizes and 5 candy dishes and 2 throws donated by Kern Federal Credit Union. After the distribution of prizes, the meeting was adjourned at 1:40 p.m.

Respectfully submitted this 21^st day of February, 2006.

Ginger Mello, Secretary