Pension vote imminent
At tonight’s meeting, the Boca Raton City Council probably will approve police and fire contracts that will bring pension savings, but reform shouldn’t stop there.
Last week, the Fraternal Order of Police Local 35 ratified its contract. A union representative wouldn’t tell me the vote total, just that “a majority” voted for ratification. Since the International Association of Firefighters Local 1560 already had ratified its contract, City Manager Leif Ahnell put council approval of the contracts on the agenda for tonight.
Council members Mike Mullaugh and Robert Weinroth told me that they will vote to approve. “The outline looks good,” Mullaugh said. “The trend line is down,” meaning that the city will realize savings from changes to the police and fire pension plan. A report for the city’s fire/police pension board projects the savings at $6.3 million over the three years of the contracts, which would be retroactive to Oct. 1—the start of the city’s budget year. The city declared impasse with the unions, which led to the delay in reaching the deals.
Weinroth said the deals amount to “very good progress” in stabilizing Boca Raton’s long-term finances. If public safety pension programs became unsustainable, the city might have to raise taxes or cut services to keep up with the city’s share. The last two reports on city pension programs from the LeRoy Collins Institute at Florida State University rated Boca’s police-fire program ‘D’ in terms of financial stability.
As I have written, however, the firefighters union touted $100 million in pension savings over 30 years when the deals were struck in late December. The projection from the pension board’s actuary is about $93 million in savings over those three decades. Weinroth acknowledged that the city isn’t getting “the magic number,” but said that neither $100 million nor $93 million “may be the number we see in 30 years.” The deals, he said, represent a move “toward sustainability.”
Any such deal involves compromise, but on some key points the city seems to have settled for less than it could have. Here are some notable parts of the deals:
— Current police officers still will be able to use as many 300 hours of overtime toward calculating their pension benefits. Ideally, there would be no use of overtime. That’s the rule now for firefighters.
— All public safety employees will continue to receive annual cost-of-living adjustments to their annual retirements benefits. For firefighters, the annual bump will be 3 percent. For police officers, it will be 2 percent. The city had sought to cut the police cost-of-living adjustment to 1.5 percent.
— Pensions benefits are calculated by using a “multiplier”’—a set percentage—with an employee’s average monthly earnings and years of service. The higher the multiplier, the higher the benefits, though no retiree can make more per month than what the city paid him or her while working. For firefighters, the multiplier will be 3.4 percent. For police officers, it will be 3.5 percent. The city had tried to cut the multiplier to 3 percent for police.
— All public safety employees would be eligible to retire after 20 years of continuous service at any age or at 55 after 10 years.
Jeremy Rodgers, who took his council seat just two weeks ago, is more skeptical of the contract terms. On Monday, Rodgers said he hadn’t decided how he would vote. The multipliers and cost-of-living adjustments, he said, looked high. He doesn’t like the use of overtime. He questions projections that the police-fire fund’s investments will produce an annual return of 8 percent.
And like Weinroth, Rodgers is “frustrated” by how little control the council ultimately has over such an important issue.
There are eight members of the Police & Firefighters Pension Board. The city council appoints four members. The police and fire unions get the other four appointments. The board makes all decisions about the fund’s investments, even though the city council—which has no input—would have to deal with any budget problems resulting from the board’s bad decisions. “They’re like the (Boca Raton) Airport Authority,” Weinroth said. “We appoint members, but they do what they want to do.”
The board hired the actuarial firm that prepared the 30-year projections on the pension program from the new contracts. Rodgers and Weinroth said city staff sought information from the firm—Foster & Foster, based in Fort Myers—to verify those projections. Weinroth and Rodgers said staff members were unable to obtain all the information they needed.
The pension board, Weinroth said, “hasn’t given full cooperation.” Bradley Heinrichs, who prepared the report for Foster & Foster, said Monday, “All of the parties have obtained the necessary information.” Heinrichs also said, though, that his firm had been working on the report since late last summer. Contract negotiations didn’t end until December, and Heinrichs said there have been changes since then. The longer it takes for the contracts to be final, he said, the more the numbers might change as more employees are “insulated” from pension changes that usually fall harder on new hires and those with less service, since with unions it’s all about seniority.
In fact, Mayor Susan Haynie and the city council will cast a major vote tonight that comes with too much uncertainty. They gave city staff direction about the police and fire contracts, which the staff gave to the city’s lawyers. The contracts are based in part on the actions of a board over which the council has no direct control. The financial estimates for the contracts come from a firm the council didn’t hire. Footnote: the unions may ask the council to reimburse their costs for the actuary. Weinroth called that “hard to justify.”
Similar frustration prompted Delray Beach to leave the state program that dictates who serves on pension boards. Delray will give up roughly $500,000 a year from an assessment on insurance policies that cities can use for their police and fire pension plans. In return, when the change takes effect this year after the city approves the next fire contract, Delray will have control over pension investments and financial projections.
Boca Raton would have to give up about $2 million annually to make such a change, and it couldn’t happen until the contacts come up again in 2017. But if pension reform is the priority that Haynie and the council members say it is, approval of the police and fire contracts should lead to a discussion about even bigger reform.
Chabad?
For years, La Vielle Maison was a Boca Raton dining fixture on Palmetto Park Road just east of the Intracoastal Waterway. Apparently, on the site of what was “The Old House” soon will be a house of worship. And that house wants to be higher than rules allow.
Before the Boca Raton City Council tonight is a recommendation from City Manager Leif Ahnell in favor of a conditional use approval for the Chabad of East Boca synagogue. If the council agrees, the structure could be 40 feet, 8 inches high, instead of 30 feet. The Planning and Zoning Board voted 4-2 for approval. The synagogue would have to minimize the impact from traffic. Among the conditions: No more than 222 people could attend High Holy Days services.
Red light full stop?
A Palm Beach County judge just ruled that Boynton Beach’s red-light camera program violates state traffic laws, even though the city thought that its program could stand up in court. Today, the Florida Senate considers legislation that would put further pressure on cities or counties seeking money from red-light runners.
In 2010, the Legislature passed statewide rules for traffic cameras. This year’s Senate bill would require local governments to show that they had tried other “countermeasures”—longer yellow lights, for example— before installing the cameras. The government would have to present a traffic study showing that the cameras were necessary. According to an analysis of SB 1184, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has been “unable to determine the effectiveness that red light cameras have in decreasing intersections crashes due to the inability to validate vehicle crash information provided by the various jurisdictions.”
In other words, no one knows if the cameras really improve safety, despite statements to that effect by the companies that install and operate the cameras. This isn’t just a Florida controversy. Cameras were an issue in Chicago’s recent mayoral election. The city has the nation’s most extensive program, and the city also holds traffic lights yellow for just three seconds—the shortest time allowed under federal transportation laws. A resident who has been fined more than $1,000 told USA Today that the program amounts to a city “slush fund.” If cities and counties in Florida really care about red-light running, they should use real police officers to solve the problem.
About the Author
Randy Schultz was born in Hartford, Conn., and graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1974. He has lived in South Florida since then, and in Boca Raton since 1985. Schultz spent nearly 40 years in daily journalism at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, most recently as editorial page editor at the Post. His wife, Shelley, is director of The Learning Network at Pine Crest School. His son, an attorney, and daughter-in-law and three grandchildren also live in Boca Raton. His daughter is a veterinarian who lives in Baltimore.
