Midland Firemen's Relief and Retirement Fund

Midland Firemen's Relief and Retirement Fund

The Midland Firemen's Relief and Retirement Fund was established in 1941 to administer service retirement, death, disability, and withdrawal benefits for employees of the City of Midland Fire Department. Day-to-day operations and investment decisions are overseen by a Board of Trustees chaired by Justin Graham, with the City of Midland acting as the plan's municipal sponsor and the Texas Pension Review Board providing state-level regulatory oversight. The mailing address in Naperville, Illinois suggests an administrative support structure provided by Lauterbach & Amen, LLP, a firm specializing in public safety pension administration. The fund's investment strategy stands out for its appetite for venture capital and fund-of-funds exposure, which is rare for a single-city firefighter pension of its scale. The portfolio is built through a multi-manager approach that spans early-stage seed, startup, and expansion-stage private transactions, alongside secondaries. The fund supplements these with more conventional holdings, including a commercial office building at its headquarters on North G Street, a mixed-use real estate portfolio managed by CDK Realty Advisors, and a master limited partnership (MLP) portfolio that provides energy-infrastructure income, a natural fit for a Midland-based institution. With an estimated $90 million in assets, the fund operates with a lean governance structure that includes active-duty and retired firefighter trustees. Notable current and former trustees include Mayor of Midland Lori Blong and former Chairman Matt Marshall, an active firefighter. The fund is a member of the Texas Local Fire Fighters Retirement Act (TLFFRA), which provides a statutory framework and best-practice network for fire fighter pension systems across the state. No recent closed fund commitments or direct deal announcements were publicly available. The structural differentiator for an institutional allocator evaluating Midland FRRF is its demonstrated institutional appetite for illiquid, early-stage venture strategies within a highly constrained, single-employer public pension framework. Where most plans of this size and type rely entirely on external consultants and liquid pooled funds, Midland's board has shown a willingness to operate as a multi-manager fund-of-funds engaging across secondaries and direct co-investments — a posture that blends the return-seeking behavior of an endowment with the fiduciary wiring of a municipal safety-net fund.