Cape Coral resident, Joseph Curran, wrote a letter to the editor of the Cape Coral Daily Breeze touching on the pension travesty:
Now that Election Day has passed and we have in Cape Coral a newly elected council whomever that might be, I would hope that they realize they are representative of only a 150,000 or 160,000 persons. Act accordingly and do away with any system that can give any retiree half a million dollars in his pocket and near a $100,000 yearly pension in his or her kick regardless of the amount of years of service.
Such a system is a travesty upon this tax-paying electorate and should be damned in every way by all of us.
What is fair is fair and a system which allows for such a condition to prevail most certainly has to go. It is by no means fair.
Going to upset the status quo or the unions? Let them be damned and as representatives of all of "the people" do the right thing, and full speed ahead.
As stated in a previous blog, one of the biggest sources of our problems is the DROP plan (where employees retire but continue to work). Why didn't Stanton negotiate it out of the IBEW contract? As one interested party said, "That in itself is over the top." In addition we still have the pensions being defined benefits rather than defined contributions and we put in 10% of an employees' salary into a retirement account. Bill Thrasher of the Finance Advisory Board spoke to the issue of defined benefits vs. defined contributions on more than one occasion. It is no wonder that the IBEW endorsed the former incumbents, Waterman and Golden. They love the gravy and there are always politicians willing to give it to them. What will this new majority commission do?
Also, there are always those who continue to play politics and back the Unions no matter what. We saw what happened this year when the city manager was short on cash--a special assessment for fire pensions was imposed that we have been told will go up year after year over the next 5 years to $1.822 million with the Financial Advisory board agreeing to the newly revised 5 year Financial Projection.
Starting next year, it is estimated that general employees pension costs will rise from $348,257 to $942,374 by year 2015-16. All pension costs are predicted to rise at a similar percentage. However, states and cities are vastly understating what they owe. Read about the problem here. It is specifically the Union pension costs that are killing this city.
An opinion piece written by the UnionLeader.com tells the horrible truth.
Something had better be done or just changing elected officials every year will only be a pipe dream to improving our state of affairs. It will not change it. The special assessment will continue to grow. Union pension costs will rapidly grow as we slowly try to dig ourselves out of our sluggish economy trying desperately to see the light of day.
And we were promised change. Can this new commission deliver without directing the city manager to take a tougher approach with the Union Retirement costs and insist that we have defined contribution plans? Susan Stanton has been thrown up against a brick wall with the Unions that have all the clout and all the money. Credit is due her for outsourcing some of our labor thus alleviating some of our problems, negotiating other costs such as the PBSO and the Fire Supplement, but we have some rocky roads ahead.
3 comments:
If our new Commission does not IMMEDIATELY vote to do away with these stealth taxes(Stanton calls them Assessments)I'm going to throw our commissioners UNDER THE DAMN GRAVY TRAIN!!!!! Any Lake Worth citizen receiving these tax notices need to Mark them "RETURN TO SENDER"!
You make some excellent points in your article, the question of why it has be allowed to continue is the most relevant. Like most issues in the public sector it is a lack of true leadership and secondly a void in competency which all adds up to where you find the situation today. Another interesting perspective is that the decision makers also are the recipients of the inflated pensions if not better than the general employees, so what incentive is there to take on the pension issue. It will be a huge battle to address the pensions, it will require hiring some competent people who are in tune with what is taking place in the private sector to implement the needed changes. It is the culture of entitlements that is so pervasive that will require very strong leadership to resolve.
Pensions are a complicated problem and issue and many towns, cities, counties and states are facing problems.
For many years, public sector workers earned less than private sector workers so benefits were better to make up for less pay. Many studies have shown that such pay disparity is long gone and in fact most public workers, for the same job, earn more.
Politicians want the union vote, the police endorsement, the fire fighters and teachers standing behind them in their campaign add, hence they make certain promises in return for endorsement.
After 9/11, police and fire fighters became sacred cows and they had to receive golden benefits and pensions.
More and more of tax payor dollars are going to fund retirement benefits while less is going to actual services.
Private workers do not generally receive pensions and instead fund a 401k, some private workers, my husband does, get a match from the employer up to a certain amount, I have never received a match. So when we fund our IRAs our 401ks, 90% of that money comes from our pockets.
And, most importantly, we have no guarantee as to what benefit we will receive. If we are good at investing and the market cooperates we may do well, if not we won't do well. Public workers often receive a certain % of their best earning years, which under certain scams, which are legal, are jacked up using over time. Many times those pensions are adjusted for inflation. Public workers can often retire at a much lower age, i.e. after 20 years for fire/police. My FIL retired from public sector work at 45 and has drawn a city pension (not LW city up north) the last 20 years while also working in the private sector.
The fact is the public pensions are unsustainable and the tax payors, those of us like me, who scrimp and save to fund our 401k and IRAs are becoming more and more resenful of this system.
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