Springfield City Council has resolved to hold up its end of the deal in a plan to save the city's Police and Fire pension fund.
Council Monday night approved a resolution spelling out the city's plan to bring the pension fund, currently underfunded by nearly $200 million, back to full funding levels.
The resolution is essentially a written version of the presentation City Manager Greg Burris has been making since shortly after he took office in August. The major points of the proposal:
• Council will ask voters to approve a 1-cent sales tax during the Feb. 4 election;
• If the tax passes, the city will increase its fund contribution to 29.88 percent of Police and Fire payroll, to be taken from the city's general revenue;
• Police and Fire Tier I employees - defined as those hired before June 30, 2006 - will increase their contributions as well, to an amount to be determined by the fund actuary;
• The city will contribute all net proceeds from the ongoing telecommunications lawsuit over back taxes into the pension fund;
• New Police and Fire hires will join the Local Government Employees Retirement System, or LAGERS, which also covers all other city employees;
• The city will not seek any new citywide tax proposals during the life of the proposed 1-cent sales tax, not including tax renewals or joint tax proposals with Greene County; and
• City staff will look for city-owned property that could be sold, with net proceeds to go into the pension fund.
The resolution passed unanimously, though Councilwoman Cindy Rushefsky expressed concern about promising not to ask for any other taxes with the uncertainty of the current market.
"I think this provision is coming from a request from people who aren't going to support any tax, to be blunt, regardless of what we promise," she said. "If, God forbid, we get to a point where the city's survival depends on a sales tax - don't you think we have a responsibility to seek a sales tax if it's necessary and trust the voters to make the right decision?"
Burris said he agreed, but he noted that the situation Rushefsky describes isn't coming down the road - it's here now.
"I have the same reservations, but I'll have to live with that uncertainty - and quite honestly, I'll have to live with whatever budget I've got if we reach that point, because this (issue) is one that will bring us down if we don't address it first," Burris said. "My first obligation to the city is to ... avert the disaster now."
See more council news in SBJ's Dec. 22 issue.[[In-content Ad]]
