By: Diane Benjamin
The Town of Normal is pretending pension expenses are mandated by the State and they can’t afford them without raising Property Taxes.
Somehow the Police and Fire pensions have been seriously underfunded for years. IMRF retirements have been funded above the 80% level since 2013, think Mark Peterson’s retirement, while in 2016 Police pensions were at 62.4% and Fire as at 55%.
Does that tell you which employees the Council cares about the most?
If pension funding is going to work at all (which is highly questionable), funds must consistently be paid in so the funds can benefit from investment income.
At the end of FY 2016, the Town reported a total net Police pension liability of $29,793,059
For Fire it was $22,605,786
Now add the Other Post Employment Benefits for Fire: $17,307,385
They reported ZERO OPEB for Police.
That’s a total of almost $70,000,000 the citizens will be forced to pay over time.
Instead of funding pensions from money they already steal, the Town will raise property taxes making it even less affordable to stay in Normal.
See all the data reported to the Comptroller HERE
Besides the pension debt, Normal also has bond debt of $99,974,191 See that number HERE
Maybe the Trustees and Mayor who accused Marc Tiritilli of lying or trying to scare the citizens can explain this.
Looks to me like Marc was more than correct!
He will be proved correct when your property taxes are raised again because the Normal Town Council can’t live within their means.
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The Town of Normal is a mess. As my friend Donna said, they must be using the Madigan plan.
I read that nauseating article yesterday. These bumbling idiots create the problem (under-funding), and then act like is a mystery how it happened.
Are Pantagraph subscribers really so stupid as to believe any of that nonsense?
One thing I would like to point out is how this under-funding has deprived the pensioners of incredible rates of return over these last few years. $70,000,000 invested in the stock market over these last few years is not ‘chump change’. They should actually file class action lawsuits against anyone required to fund these things. Maybe by getting this into a courtroom we can see a restructuring of these liabilities into something more realistic for taxpayers and pensioners alike.
Lord know this solution won’t come from elected politicians.
The pensions will still be paid as due to the retirees per State mandate but the taxpayers will have to make up for missing out on the current investment gain. Stock markets don’t go up forever. And, I think there is a deadline for having the pensions fully funded. As time goes by, the payments into the pension fund will exponentially increase to an unaffordable level.
Why does that sound like a recipe for failure?
The only people who don’t know this work or govern in the Town of Normal!
Abnormal has NO government-just a bunch of sillies who think they have things under control, but wait until the train jumps the track-speaking of trains, they have much more SERIOUS matters to deal with in UPTOWN, they want the freight trains to quit blowing their whistles @ night and disturbing the hotel guests. I see a LOT of potential for a future bike path.