Currently, the city is facing a multi-million dollar unfunded liablity for its pension obligations.
The status quo can not stand.
Every option below will be on the table.
I pledge to take the lead in initiating solutions to the growing city pension liability problem. We must change all parts of the current pension system to make it financially viable in the future. These changes include the following:
- Increase the retirement age for all city employees.
- Reduce the percentage earned for each year worked. For instance, reduce the police and fire pension formula from 3% a year earned to 2% earned per year. Also, reduce the non-safety employees' formula from 2.0% a year down to 1.5% a year.
- Calculate pensions on base salary only. No more including overtime, accrued vacation time and/or accrued sick time as part of the calculation. This is known as spiking and it must stop.
- No longer use just the highest year as the basis for the pension calculation but use the average of the highest 5 years of pay.
- Increase employee pension contributions. Currently, non-safety employees contribute absolutely nothing while safety employees pay a meager 2.557%. Just as everyone else pays 50% of the total contribution to social security, so should the city employees contribute the same 50% to their pensions.
Some will call the above drastic, I call it realistic and financially necessary. A little pain now can and will avoid the potential for disaster later. Let us all work together to get the city, its taxpayers and its employees all back on the same page moving the city forward on a sound financial footing.
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