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Ladies and Gentlemen,

It’s that time of year again, we are planning our annual holiday party. It will be held Saturday December 15th from 1500-2300 This year will be at Fiesta Lanes bowling center. The Address is 501 W River Rd, Tucson, AZ 85704. Bowling shoes and lane charges will be covered for you and your families. We will be providing food and (non-alcoholic) beverages as well. There is a bar on site for those of us who wish to drink at our own cost. This year we will be adding a door prize. Every member that shows up will be given a ticket to win. You do not need to be present to win, but you do have to come celebrate with us to get your ticket. Last years party was a huge success! lets make this years party even better!

Recently there have been some revisions to our website (http://mypca.org/) make sure you stop by and take a look at the new site. While you are there take a look at all the benefits you qualify for through our affiliation with IUPA (https://iupa.org/) and (https://www.unionplus.org/). We are IUPA local 1690. A quick sign up process will let you take advantage of discounts on insurance, car rentals, amusement park tickets, cruises, and many many more.

Recently we have had a lot of questions about prop 125. attached are a few points about the legislation. The short story is that prop 125 is destructive for our retirement system. It caps annual raises for retired individuals to a maximum of 2% (depending of the actual Cost of Living increase annually). If cost of living only goes up 0.7%, then retired individuals will only receive a 0.7% raise that year. If cost of living increases 4%, retired individuals will only receive 2%.

Under the current plan retired individuals can receive up to 4% annually based off of investment returns.  The following is some information put together by one of our retired members (and former PCA Presidents) Scott Simmons. I’d like to thank Scott for his tireless attention to monitoring litigation that may affect our retirement system.

The chart below compares the P.B.I (Permanent Benefit Increase / the current system of post retirement raises), to the system Prop 125 would change us to, which is a COLA (cost of living adjustment).  Note: “0” will be entered for negative COLAs (2009 & 2010 were negative -1.4 & -0.4     

PBI        COLA

2008      4.0          3.8

2009      4.0          0.0      (-1.4)

2010      4.0          0.8

2011      4.0          3.0

2012      1.9          1.8

2013      1.2          1.0

2014      3.2          1.3

2015      0.0          0.0      (-0.4)

2016      0.0          1.4

2017      1.7          2.3

24.0        15.4   Percent of return for the last 10 years.

Ask yourself, would the Arizona State Legislature be doing this to help us; or help themselves?

The Legislature already cut spousal death benefits in half, from 80%, down to 40%

On July 1, 2018 CORP was officially closed to new Corrections Officers.

This is just one step after another to reduce our benefits and to reduce the employer’s liability.

All new Corrections Officers have no choice of a regular retirement. All they will be offered is a type of 401K. The new officers will be fully vested at 36 months of service. That means they get their half and the employers matching half and out the door they will go. Then the employer will continue to pay sky rocketing over time and shell out another $50,000 to replace the Corrections officer that just left with that 100% 401K vestment. Not bad, work 3 years and get both halves.

The short version is that our Association is against Prop 125. Just like the sign conveniently placed right across the street from the jail says “VOTE NO ON PROP 125”

We will be hosting a team for the Erik Hite Softball Tournament that will be help January 12, 2019. We will be providing jerseys for all the players (The jersey design has not been finalized yet). This is an awesome event that we participate in annually. Even if you do not want to play, I encourage you to come out and support our Corrections team!

The PCA is dedicated to representing the Corrections Bureau, and giving back to our members. We have a lot of great things in the works and I encourage all of you, who are interested, to reach out and take a more active roll in our membership. If you are interested in serving as a Steward, let me know! If you have friends that aren’t a part of the Association yet, encourage them to join! Thank you all for supporting us in everything we do!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have a lot of interesting stuff coming up in the next few months. First off, the next membership meeting will be Wednesday October 17th, 2018 at 1300. It will be at 3770 S Mission Rd, Tucson, AZ 85713 (Pima County Library Conference room). I hope to see you all there!

Unfortunately our Secretary (Conrad Simon) will be stepping down from his position for personal reasons. If you are interested in stepping up to this position please let me know.

We are planning the next Holiday party now! Last years was a huge success and we would like to build on that! If you have any ideas for things that you would like incorporated into this years party, please let me know!

We will be hosting a team for the Eric Hite Softball tournament that will be held Saturday January 12th, 2019. If you are interested in participating let us know! we will cover the registration fee, as well as provide a team jersey. All you have to do is play!

We have addressed compensation this year by working collaboratively with the Sheriff (Off probation pay has been raised to $19.50, and all staff received at least a 2.5% raise, a large portion will also be receiving an additional 5% in January). Additionally we were able to raise the starting wage for the Sergeant classification to $27.32. This should hopefully provide some more incentive for everyone to test. We have formed a committee to start working on our budget proposal for next fiscal year as well. If you would like to participate in this process (or have any ideas you would like considered) please let me know.

As I am sure you have all read, the Sheriff’s secretary has sent an email out looking for individuals to sit on the next Sheriff’s Advisory Council. I would encourage all of you to put your names in for this spot. It is a great opportunity to speak directly to the Sheriff in regard to front line issues and come up with solutions without all the red tape normally associated with affecting change within the department.

We have updated the website and website hosting. Please take a few moments to take a look at what is going on there. We have worked with IUPA (with whom we are affiliated) to make it a one stop shop to access any of your union related benefits and information. The web address has not changed but if you have trouble loading the site please clear the cache in your browser.

As always, the Verizon contract that we have is available to all members. For information on current phone deals and rate plans please see the website. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me.