Grand Island plans for Thursday vote on pension problem

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by Lauren Conley

Story Created: Jan 16, 2013 at 12:56 PM CDT

Story Updated: Jan 16, 2013 at 12:56 PM CDT

It's a problem that has been looming over Grand Island City Council for weeks. How to resolve the city's pension problems.

After nearly seven hours of discussion City Council members voted nine to zero to hold a special meeting on Thursday night at 7:00. Council is hoping to finally vote on a solution to a number of problems at that time.

The city has been over paying retired police officers since 2005.

That's when the city started paying officer pensions based on a joint fund annuity calculation - they had previously been paid using a straight line annuity formula.

It's led to a $1.4 million shortfall in the city's police pension fund.

It's all because of an unapproved change in the police pension payments back in 2005.

Several city council members expressed frustration during this afternoon's study session.

"In my four now 5 years of service, I don't know that I've ever seen anything about how these calculations work. This is all we see as a council and so it would be very difficult, if not impossible to determine our council responsibility if that's all we're going to see," said Chuck Haase.

As city officials look into the matter, more questions are being raised.
Council members are finding inconsistent practices with pension committee meetings.

"But, based on all the years I looked at with the 17 retirees, I couldn't identify 17 people that were identified in those minutes. They talked about what they were going to get and agreed to it, disagreed to it or anything else," Mitchell Nickerson said.

Again, Council members will vote on whether or not to seek reimbursement from the over payments as well as whether to continue making payments based on a single life or joint life annuity on Thursday.

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