Welcome to our new REAM website. I’m Curt Hutchens,
President of REAM. I have extensive experience in the pension and retirement
field. Some of my pension and retirement experience includes the following:
1.
I have attended MN Legislative Commission on Pension and Retirement (LCPR) meetings
for over 40 years.
2.
I served on the MN Teachers Retirement Association (TRA) Board of Trustees for 20 years and I am the past
President of that group. group.
3.
I have served at the national level on committees of the National Retired
Teachers Association (NRTA) and National Council on Teachers Retirement (NCTR).
I am past chairperson of the NCTR Research and Development Committee.
As President of REAM, along with the REAM Board of
Directors, we hope to make this REAM website your one stop website for valuable
pension and retirement information here in MN as well as nationally. Your REAM
leadership has a vast level of knowledge in the field of Public Employee
pensions and we are connected to NCTR, NRTA, AARP, TRA, and the Public Employee
Retirement Association (PERA) to work for you.
Do
let our Web and Social Media Coordinator , Stan Feldman, know if you see areas
you would like added to this website. Let him know, too if there are areas you would like to work on to help make
our new REAM website to be the best it can be for all of us.
I
hope you enjoy your tour of this website and come back often. Finally, we want
to broaden our Social Media approach into other areas, such as Facebook,
Twitter, etc. Follow us on Twitter whenever possible at MNREAM. We need our
members as informed as possible, so that when inappropriate changes to our
pension program are discussed and/or proposed at the Legislature all of us
together can be ready to act on our behalf.
I’m Chuck Hellie, REAM’s
first Executive Director. I’m also
REAM’s immediate Past President having served as President from 2008-2010. Prior to becoming President I served on the
REAM Board of Directors as a Central Co-Director for several years.
REAM’s primary purpose for
its existence is to protect TRA and PERA members’ pensions. As President of REAM I testified three times
for REAM before the Legislative Commission on Pensions and Retirement (LCPR) in
2009-2010. The LCPR has five House
members and five Senate members with representatives from both the Republican
and DFL Parties. As Executive Director my main purpose will be to assist our
President with the growing number of tasks for our organization.
I retired in 1999 from
Sauk Centre Public Schools after 32 years of teaching. I taught music in Sauk Centre and Kenyon,
Minnesota. In 1962 I graduated from
Morton High School and in 1966 I graduated from St. Olaf College. I have a masters degree from the University
of Colorado. I spent two years in the
U.S. Army from 1969-1971.
Today, I live in Sauk
Centre with my wife, Anita, who retired from teaching in 2000 from the
Minnewaska School District. We have two
sons, Mark and Christian. Mark is a
lawyer and lives with his wife in Oakdale.
Christian works for Social Security in Baltimore, and he and his wife
have three boys.
As REAM’s Executive
Director I’m here to serve you. Feel
free to call me or e-mail me at (320) 352-2160 or hellie@mainstreetcom.com
