Special Board of Aldermen 06-21-2021 Page 16
(audio feedback). | won’t mention the name as you asked, Mr. Chairman. There’s an Alderman, as an
example, just an example, this particular Alderman retired in the year 2015.
Chairman Dowd
30 seconds.
Mr. Teeboom — |’ll come back if | can’t finish this. He got a severance of $65,000.00 and annual retirement
of $94,000.00. His final salary was $93,000.00 his annual pay the first year he retired was lower than his
annual salary, $94,000.00 an guess what? The following year 2016 he got $121,000.00.
Chairman Dowd
Time has expired.
Mr. Teeboom I'll be back.
Mayor Donchess
Let me just say | agree with you definitely that the pensions don’t need to go to 100% that things have been
mismanaged and | think our analysis of the pension situation is similar or the same. But our delegation did
work hard to change those things. There is whole another facet to this we haven't gotten into. The State
agreed always to pay 35% of our cost and they broke that promise a few years ago that’s who they got us
into this whole system. There were Bills to restore part of the 35%, Bills to push off the deadline by which
100% had to be reached. Bills to address the so-called assumed rate of return. All those Bills were
defeated but our delegation supported all of them and we’ve got 27 members out of 400 but that’s it. Those
were party line votes actually. They did their best but there was a solid majority in the Legislature that just
said “absolutely not we are not going to help the cities and towns — period”. And discipline was enforced
and the cities and towns lost out.
Chairman Dowd
Next? Name and address?
Christina McKinney 6 Southgate Drive. My overarching question really is this, what exactly does we are all
in this together mean to our City employees? And my comments are to follow, all of this in together kind of
implies | think that we are sort of sharing the suffering. But to the best of my knowledge there’s not a single
City employee that lost any money over the last 2 years. There was no salary reduction, people weren't let
go. None of those things happened to anyone in the City. So exactly what was the shared suffering? And if
we are now looking at what is now no longer a State Funded Pension what percentage of the people who
have been for decades paying for City Employee’s pensions, what percentage of those people have
pensions themselves? So we are continuing to ask City residents to make sacrifices beyond what they
have for their own coverage, be it health care or pensions and | again ask where is the shared suffering?
Where is this we are in this together? It would seem reasonable to me at this juncture given that we are
now responsible for those pensions, that City employees to cover their pensions, it’s not my pension, their
own pensions that they take salary cuts over the next decade in order to cover their long-term benefits.
This should not be left up to citizens who don’t have those pensions, it should be covered by the people
who are going to benefit and that is certainly not most of the citizens in our City.
| spoke with John Griffin on March 25" had a wonderful conversation, quite a lengthy one and it is my
understanding ...
Chairman Dowd
30 seconds.
