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I guess I have to reengage and pluck a few more feathers off of the Raven.
So let me examine the Raven’s post, point by point.
Number 1: “He (Me) also wants people to ignore the city council's role in things like refusing to fund a study on OPEB that would address the issue”.
So here is an article on that issue so all the rest of you can keep up with this debate. Pay particular attention to the quote “… although a number of critics, and most especially former Councilman Robert Cushman, have been talking about ‘legacy costs’ for years”.
http://warwickonline.com/stories/the-opeb-elephant,103429?
A few years back the council did take up the Mayor’s proposal to put $50,000 into an OPEB trust fund administered by the mayor’s buddies on the Interlocal trust in which he was a director (conflict of interest).
http://warwickonline.com/stories/mayor-targets-unfunded-liability,112409?
The council rejected the proposal because in effect what the Mayor was proposing was a Bernie Madoff style Ponzi scheme. The TRUST officials testified to the city council that by placing a meager $50,000 in an OPEB account, the council could write off $150,000,000 of the near $300 million in OPEB liabilities. Steve Merolla (the current Council President) led the charge in getting the Trust officials to gleefully admit to this fact.
Listen to the testimony here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX7uImhkJgs&t=610s
(pay particular attention to the 6 minute mark)
Raven probably missed this meeting since he was too busy cashing his $100K Warwick pension retirement checks while working at his current $100+K job.
Number 2: “Bob wants to starve the existing pension system of revenue and cut benefits to retirees”.
10 year cumulative pension funding $257,852,070
10 year cumulative active & retiree healthcare funding $73,630,995
10 year cumulative active employee healthcare funding $191,112,110
Total 10 year active/ retiree pension & healthcare benefit funding $522,595,175
10 year cumulative Police funding = $179,844,299
10 year cumulative Fire funding = $218,560,480
10 year cumulative Social Service funding = $56,138,673
10 year cumulative Physical Resources (DPW) funding = $141,719,564
Raven, please explain how funding over a quarter of a billion dollars on pension benefit over 10 years equates to “starving the pension system of revenue” while just about every other department’s percent of the overall city budget has decreased and school funding is below 2010 levels?
Please explain why how almost 50 cents of every new tax dollar is now paying for retiree expenses?
Please explain how going from 19% of the budget to 28% of the city budget in retiree cost, meets your definition of starving the pension system?
Point Number 3: “To be fair, the council also approved contracts that provided individual health plans instead of family policies and reduced the pension liability by some $30 million”.
Nice to nit pick on the facts. If you do some additional research in the pension valuation reports you will find the pension liability actually increased by over $75 million during the same period of time as a result of a reduction in unrealistic assumption that I as well as many others have been questioning for years and was soundly attacked by the you and the rest of the administration.
If in reality the pension liability was reduced, wouldn’t the annual required contributions (tax dollars) also have been reduced? Fact is pension costs keep increasing to record levels each year.
Point Number 4: Those HSA plans. Just a few weeks ago and since those plans were put into effect, I have requested the administration provide the analysis that the plans have reduced costs. No analysis has ever been done. In fact when I first asked the Personnel Director how the administration came up with the $4,000 annual HAS figure, he said they copied what Cranston gave to their police officers. Brilliant negotiating move.
Point Number 5: “In other words, Bob has had many opportunities to encourage [and even participate in] coming up with realistic, practical plans to address the issues he's been talking about for years -- instead, he's been crying 'wolf.'”
Raven since you are so found of pasting links to past Beacon articles here are a few you should read and then come back to me with an argument that I have not been consistent for well over a decade in identifying the problems we are now facing and not proposing any “practical plan to address the issues” back in 2007 while on the council.
And just think if we tackled some of these issue back then where we would be today.
http://warwickonline.com/stories/cushman-crusade-for-show-or-for-real,33501?
http://warwickonline.com/stories/council-passes-ordinance-to-end-insurance-buybacks,3775?
http://warwickonline.com/stories/avedisian-vetoes-ordinance-to-end-city-health-care-buybacks,17119?
http://warwickonline.com/stories/council-empowers-mayor-to-hire-fire-chief-from-outside-department,32032?
http://warwickonline.com/stories/man-in-the-middle,21874?
Please explain the inappropriate content below.
