UVI CELL’s, Wendy Coram-Vialet, CSAP Director & Community Engagement Manager, led a virtual town hall in hopes of involving citizens to hear feedback from the community to help construct the next strategic plan of the Government Employees Retirement as UVI was engaged by GERS to create it. She asked the participants on the zoom call a series of questions to hear how the community feels about GERS which will help UVI formulate the upcoming plan.
The goal of the meeting was to engage the community to learn how the public feels about what the public feels are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of GERS in a participatory community driven approach . UVI also played a role in creating the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan for GERS.
The biggest concerns from participants came after they were asked what frightens you about the GERS in which the responded, insolvencancy, the possibility of it collapsing, members lack of understanding about basic investment strategies, the impact on the community if GERS no longer can pay its obligations, and it not having a succession plan in place for when Administrator, Austin Nibbs retires even after Mr. Nibbs notified the board over a year ago his plans to retire.
The audience was asked what does GERS do well and some of things participants said in the zoom chat were that it pays annuities on time, that it has excellent customer service, has pay stubs available online, has board meetings on Youtube, provides training in money management and is very informative about what is happening in the system.
Another question that was posed was what does GERS need to improve? The responses by participants included that it needs to be better at getting at posting the Youtube meetings live, it needs better money management of resources, it needs more active employment involvement, it needs Congressmen Stacey Plasket to lobby for federal money to bailout GERS, time from retirement to 1st annuity needs to be shorter and it needs more active members on the board.
If participants could talk to members of the board they said that they would tell the board to try to include active members in the decision making process, which was the goal of things like this town hall, after asked by the host what they would tell members of the board if they had the chance to speak with them.
Citizens were asked what success looks like for GERS to them and most of the responses surrounded the fact that the system must not go insolvent for it to be a success.
When asked what excites you about GERS and the participants on the call were excited about getting their annuity and Bi-monthly money on time, and that it's taking action to lessen the administrator's expenses.
They were 26 participants on the call which included UVI Staff, Media, and participants of the forum.
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