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First you cannot just look at Police and Fire I pension plan. You have to look at all of the pension plans and the OPEB benefits and the entire city and school budget because they all effect one another.

Here is an analogy why. Let's say you have 5 credit cards. Four of the cards have a small balance on them but the last card has a huge balance many times that of the other cards. If you devise a plan to put more dollars toward paying down the last card it could cause you to short change the necessary payments to the other cards. Also how will diverting all these dollars effect other ongoing expenses in the home budget. For example expenses for kids, home repairs, cars, unforeseen emergencies. Do you just cut them or ignore the water pouring through the roof?

My point is you need to understand the total liabilities in the city and how much it will cost to fund all these plans in the short term and longer term 5, 10, 15 years from now. You also need to forecast future budgetary expenses for the things we need to operate the city and schools today and at least five years from now.

During the budget process I asked Mayor Avedisian and the school superintendent where is the five budget plan. They isn't any. We budget one year into the future and don't have a clue as to what effect decisions today will have tomorrow.

For example where is the plan to fund the capital expenses associated with purchasing the resource police, fire, municipal and school department will need so employees can do their jobs? The last thing we need is for police and firefighters to get hurt because they are using obsolete equipment or for our kids and school teachers to be at risk because we can't proper repair school buildings. Where are the long term funding plans to meet these obligations? Where is the long term plan to address the crumbling roads and building in the city? There is none.

Also how about the active employees? Don't you think they deserve raises in the next three years?

I don't agree with Avedisian linking pension saving for retired employees by not giving active employees raises. That needs to be broken. Police and Fire II retired members are getting 3 percent compounded COLA's over the next three years and active employees nothing. Is that fair? Many of these employees have young kids and there expenses are greater then the retired employees. Shouldn't they get a COLA? Pension reform policy should not be totally on the backs of active employees or the taxpayers. The retired employees will need to be part of the solution.

What effect will diverting large amounts of revenue on legacy benefits have on future employee compensation and employment levels? Across the country in city after city public service employees are taking a direct hit losing their jobs. Can we afford less public safety employees? I don't think so.

So to answer your question, we are not even close to the point of making specific suggestions on how to fix the Police and Fire I and all plans for that matter until we first all agree that there is a problem and sit down with experts and create a model that forecasts, based on reasonable assumptions, what the cost will be in the short term and the long term for retiree benefits, active employee costs and all other costs in the city and school budget and how much additional revenue we can raise without driving business and property owners away.

Or we could click our heels three times repeating there is not problem, there is no problem, there is no problem and wait for the current administration to leave and the bomb to explode. By that time someone, namely a judge will devise a plan to fix the problem.

From: City’s ‘critical’ pension plan to get outside review

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