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The OPEB benefits for future firefighter are in fact well over a million dollars in benefits.

For those in attendance at the meeting the other night, I presented the total cost of a firefighter benefits using the parameters provided by the administration in the OPEB fiscal note.

Shockingly no one from the administration, not Solomon’s Chief of Staff, DePasquale, not the hired consultant D'Amico, not the finance director, Mr. Silva and none of the hired attorney's for the union or the administration could provide any proof to back up the numbers claiming a 30% savings by setting up the fund or all the other alleged savings.

DePasquale went so far in his opening statement to claim the OPEB saving was 33% or 3 basis points over what was written in the fiscal note. Where did he pull that out of?

D’Amico and the other hired guns admitted that the contract language specific to the firefighter pension ordinances governing the OPEB trust fund were insufficient. I detailed ordinance by ordinance how the pension ordinances did not address specif policies on how the OPEB fund wold be governed. No one seemed to care today. But in the future who knows what might happen. Grievance????

D'Amico admitted that new ordinances would need to be passed by the council specific to policies, for example, as to when payroll deductions should be made. Did Solomon and his crack crew and the firefighter union president and lawyers know this? Did they intentionally withheld it from the council or worse not even think about it? Did they only have to admit the language was missing by me prying it out of them?

Something is wrong with this picture. What other issues are being hidden from the council and the public intentionally or by mistake?

This is precisely what got the city in trouble with the Tier II pension language in 2012 not being negotiated into the contract.

You can't have it both ways. Stating in the contract that contract language supersedes ordinances, except if something is missing then the ordinances take president is nonsense. Then when Solomon and the union are caught, the powers to be state that missing language needs to be contained in new ordinances that the council needs to pass after the contract is signed? Come on.

But, I get it. There are not many people on the council or in the public willing to actually understand the terms of this agreement. Instead we have 5 spineless council members with Tim Howell leading the charge and the 4 others who sat on there hands not asking 1 question, willing to go to extreme means like serving other council members to appear at a rushed Christmas Eve meeting on a Friday at 5 Pm, to ram through a defective contract.

I thought the game playing was over when Lloyd was remove and full transparency would be followed. Boy was I wrong. It's as bad as ever.

It's really simple, prove what is being claimed regarding coat saving is true! That way you shut up the critics and stop people like me from even making a presentation exposing issues. By having solid documentation backed by the math and examples that prove your claims, there would be little for anyone to argue.

Ramming this contract through in this manner is only going to continue the narrative that the administration and the firefighters are playing games and the so called savings can't be proven.

So here are the assumptions used to calculate the cost of a single firefighter from the OPEB fiscal note provided by the administration:

1) Hired at age 25.

2) 3% annual salary increase

3) 6.9% investment return

4) Current est. single premium $800/month

5) Healthcare inflation 6% per year, projected premium: $4,595 a month

6) Becomes a Lieutenant at age 35

7) Becomes a captain at age 45

8) Retiree at 55

9) Starting pay levels for contributions

Firefighter = $72,800

Lieutenant = $89,000

Captain = $98,000

10) 2% of salary contribution to OPEB fund

11) Mortality rate of 25 years

Total healthcare cost = $1,835,704

Taxpayer percent of healthcare cost $1,622,710 or 88.4% of cost

Firefighter career contributions = $81,697 or 4.6% of cost

OPEB Trust Fund investment returns = $128,297 or 7% of cost

According to the contract: “If a retired firefighter should die prior to the funds in ‘his account’ being fully utilized to pay for his share of the healthcare benefits under this agreement, then those funds shall be payable to the retiree’s estate”.

$561,456 will be paid to the firefighter estate.

Conclusion:

1) the OPEB benefit is valued at $1.8 million. If the firefighter lives longer then 25 years the benefit increase to over $2 million.

2) The overall cost to the firefighter based on career contribution is 4.6%

3) The overall cost to the OPEB Trust with combined contribution and investment returns (11.6%) doesn't come close to the 30% claim by the administration

4) Shockingly over $560,000 will be withdrawn from the fund upon the firefighters death

If someone can show me the math to prove the 30% cost saving from this program, please do. If not, then what is being presented is fraudulent.

BTW to achieve the 30% cost savings promised, the firefighter would have to contribute 5.15% to the fund, more than double the 2% contribution proposed in the contract.