Glynn County pension committee orders actuarial pricing to study earlier public-safety retirement; portfolio posts positive returns

Glynn County pension committee members directed staff to obtain an actuarial cost estimate for possible earlier retirement options for public-safety employees and reviewed the fund's quarterly investment report during a committee meeting.

The committee heard the quarterly portfolio review from Bowen, Haynes and Company, delivered by David, a portfolio manager with the firm. David reported the plan's total market value at about $154,000,000 and said the plan's year-to-date return was roughly 9.7 percent. He told the committee the fund held about $4,500,000 in cash earning about 4.02 percent and that the portfolio is near its equity allocation target, with stocks making up the bulk of the plan's investments. "I got a little bit of cash — $4,500,000 in cash is earning 4%," David said during his report.

The financial review noted specific holdings discussed by the manager, including recent bond purchases with higher coupons (examples cited included Ford Motor at about 5.9 percent and Lowe's at about 4.5 percent) and concentration among a handful of large-cap tech names that have driven market performance, consistent with the manager's view that returns this year were influenced by a small group of stocks.

Separately, Tamara Munson, identified in the meeting as the county's CFO, said public-safety employees had renewed requests to study earlier retirement options for law enforcement and firefighters. Munson said the county previously ran several scenarios and that the committee had paused further action. She said she had reached out to the plan's actuary to price another option and that the cost for running updated calculations would be "somewhere in the $4,000 to $5,000 range." Munson said the actuary would update the prior scenarios (which had included options such as a 25-year retirement, age-55 eligibility, and a 30-year option) and return results to the full committee.

Committee members and staff discussed the potential fiscal effects. Munson said, based on prior modeling, moving to an earlier retirement schedule for public-safety employees could substantially lower the plan's funded ratio — she gave an example moving the plan's funded level from about 87 percent to roughly 62 percent under one public-safety scenario. She also noted the pension plan closed to new hires in 2020, meaning it is no longer a recruitment tool for new county employees and that approximately half of plan participants are retired while half remain active.

Other administrative items on the agenda included receipt of standard quarterly invoices paid from the trust fund and a summary of pension lump-sum payouts for the quarter; no formal votes or policy adoptions were taken on those items at the meeting. Committee members asked staff to return the actuary's updated costings and scenario comparisons to the full committee so the board could consider the budgetary implications before the end of the fiscal year.

The committee did not adopt changes to benefit structures at the meeting. Munson said any change would affect future liabilities and the county's annual contribution (which the committee discussed as about $4.5 million in the current year) and that retirees' benefits would remain locked in at the terms in place when they retired.