From Councilwoman Diane Mack:
Dear Rick,
In response to today’s blog post regarding Dr. Pratt’s pension proposal, I would ask that you give thoughtful attention to the following:
* If Dr. Pratt’s proposal passes, the actual savings to the FY 2010 budget would be, at maximum, $1,801,963. The portion of the savings related to the firefighters’ pension, $793,990, has to be approved by the Florida legislature; if approved, those savings would not be available until the FY 2011 budget.
*
If the Council makes the proposed change to the police pension, the current negotiations with the police union will go into impasse status. An impasse will automatically take negotiations out of the hands of city management and place them before City Council. Can you guess what will happen with the police pension fund change when the Council is eye-to-eye with 154 uniformed police officers? So that $920,974 in savings melts away.
*
That would leave us with $880,989 in savings to the pension fund, the amount related to all other City employees, who will then feel they got the short end of the stick and justifiably so. They will see that those employee groups who have a union have stronger protection from politically-motivated and unnecessarily rushed actions. You may infer what could happen next.
*
Of the $880,989 in General Pension Fund savings, only $290,726 will be saved from that portion of the City budget supported by ad valorem taxes; the remaining $590,263 will be saved from the budgets of the airport, ESP, port, sanitation, etc.
So, you will ask, what is going to be different when we have the results of the compensation-benefits study? The difference will be that the employee groups are willing to toss the dice and live with the actions that Council will take as a result of that study; that is their commitment in return for Council support of the study.
Finally, I am looking for more than $2.5 million in savings and believe it is worth waiting three months and paying $37,000 for the study in order to do so.
Best regards,
Diane