Trina Kay Prufer's take on Bill Neville at his 9/27/2023 Town Meeting in Beachwood, OH: He is absolutely NOT interested in listening to the issues of membership; these meetings are all about tightly controlling the discourse.

By Trina Kay Prufer

September 28, 2023

The first 30 minutes was a power point of the usual dog and pony show of cherry- picked statistics. I was able to ask two questions. The first was about why STRS does not address the calculation of the monetary loss to membership and the second was about why STRS produces the videos, when they they are insulting and present a false story to membership. I actually called them stupid.

His answers were not satisfactory and just evasive. His technique is not to answer the heart of the question, but to only address the part that he has a canned response for. Initially we were told we could only ask one question, so there was no way to follow up on a deceptive or off-topic response. When he wants to change the topic, he then calls on another person in the room, with a different question. There were only 53 people there, which was a shame as many were turned away by STRS during the registration process. I was told the room can hold 100.

I talked with Neville separately at the end of the meeting, which I will discuss in another post. I left feeling very discouraged as STRS controls all the levers of communication… selecting for audience and location, the limiting of time, no way to press back on his false and prepared responses and his ability to quickly pivot to a different individual who might be less direct or confrontational. He is absolutely NOT interested in listening to the issues of membership; these meetings are all about tightly controlling the discourse.