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Grand Island city council reviews pension problems
Last November, council member Chuck Haase discovered the city had been overpaying retired police officers since 2005.
Tuesday night in a special city council meeting council moved forward with more decisions regarding the police pension payout problems. Before them, two big decisions. One was how much to pay out to retired GI Police Captain Pete Kortum. The second, how the city should move forward with the remaining pre-1984 retirees with the Grand Island Police Department. The pension committee had submitted a quote to city council for approval based on the average of three quotes they found, adding up to a lump sum payout of about $260,000. But council said no in a 7 to 1 vote. They want it recalculated based on their approval of a resolution they passed that would be 6-2 Tuesday night addressing the pension payouts in question. Here's the plan: The Police Pension Committee and the city will obtain 2 quotes of annuity to calculate a lump sum benefit-based on straight life annuity. It also must be age specific to the retiree and gender specific too. That's because a big part of the debate going into tonight had been about the 'gender' of the retiree. There was a lot of discussion about state statute and calculating annuity based on a gender neutral basis and how times change. "We can sit and say this is what the rules say, but it doesn't mean it's right for today. It's right for 20 years ago. That doesn't mean it's right for today's statutes. It doesn't keep up some times because there are so many rules to read," said Scott Dugan, Grand Island City Council. The pension committee will be meeting Friday to discuss new annuity calculations, and a new proposal for Kortum's payout will go before council on Feb. 12th. We should mention the Grand Island Independent did speak out in objection to Tuesday night's meeting saying there hadn't been adequate notice of the meeting for the public to be able to attend. And that a complaint would be filed with the Attorney General's Office. |
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