San Benito Firemen Relief & Retirement Fund

San Benito Firemen Relief & Retirement Fund

The fund was established on January 1, 1990, under the Texas Local Fire Fighters’ Retirement Act (TLFFRA), formalizing a retirement promise to the career firefighters who replaced a 1936 volunteer department. Boris Esparza chairs the seven-member Board of Trustees — three active firefighters, the city’s Finance Director, the Mayor, and two citizen appointees. Both the City of San Benito and its 26 active firefighters and EMTs each contribute 12% of salary, with an assumed 7.5% investment return. With an asset pool too small to populate a direct-investment program, the fund outsources portfolio construction to CAPTRUST, an institutional advisory firm, while Charles Schwab Bank provides custodial services. Actuarial work flows through Definiti, LLC, and Cascos & Associates handles the audit — a full-service provider stack that makes the board a governance layer rather than a deal-by-deal allocator. The fund’s footprint is strictly local, tied to the City of San Benito and the regulatory frame of the Texas Pension Review Board. Total participants number 35 — 26 active, nine retired or beneficiaries — fielding about 2,500 emergency calls per year. The fund maintains no satellite vehicles or operating companies, though it sits inside two public-pension trade networks: TEXPERS, the Texas Association of Public Employee Retirement Systems, and the national NCPERS. Tinsley Administrative Solutions handles day-to-day pension administration, reinforcing an entirely third-party operational model. The most recent public training materials for trustees carry a 2024 date, signaling ongoing compliance with TLFFRA continuing-education requirements. What separates this fund from larger municipal plans is its fully outsourced structure: no internal investment staff, no direct portfolio management, and a board drawn from active-duty firefighters and local government. The TLFFRA statute determines contribution rates and board composition, while investment authority is delegated entirely to CAPTRUST. This layering of local governance over a remote institutional stack creates a model common across small Texas firefighter pensions — one that lets the board focus on fiduciary oversight rather than asset selection.