Quote Originally Posted by Wesley Mouch View Post
First and of course -- thanks for your service. I was a resident most of my life -- and I appreciate your efforts.

Like a couple of writers, I don't think anyone -- or at least very few -- wish to take anyone's pension away. But there are serious issues with how we actually pay for the pension.

And let's not forget that this pension [[and many others) appear to have not been run so well. Many city retirees in the past received lump sum payments -- because the pension funds were OVERFUNDED! Earlier retirees got some of your money.

But back to the main issue... we want our public servants to get a pension -- but we haven't addressed how to actually pay for these pensions. Until we do that, these problems are going to surface over and over.

If serious reform to pensions occurred, I would strongly support moving all pensions to be state funded. But before that can happen, we taxpayers need to be sure that the local units are acting responsibly. I don't think they are.

Nobody wants to reduce your pension. But nobody wants to accept responsibility for every pension promise made by often corrupt and irresponsible local officials.
Wesley, when you refer to Many city retirees in the past received lump sum payments -- because the pension funds were OVERFUNDED! are you referring to the 13th check that we received at the end of the year in the past?

If so, I can tell you that the pensions were receiving a very good return on the investments that the pension boards and trustees made during that period of time. When the market crashed, those checks stopped. In my own opinion, I think the City would have been prudent to have just kept that money in the pension funds and maybe they wouldn't be in the spot they are in today.

I can't help but wonder if the pensions are $5-6 billion strong, they MUST be getting a fairly decent return, even in today's market. I'm not an analyst in this field by any means, but I know that the little bit of annunities I have are coming back to where they were before the market tanked...and so should the pension funds.