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Patientman that is exactly what is happening not only for the city employees but funding for Warwick’s education system.

The last time the pension and OPEB actuarial experts testified before the city council they stated that it is going to be more difficult to give active employee annual raises while maintaining Annual Required Contributions (ARC) to the 4 pension plans and OPEB retiree healthcare.

Look at those numbers I posted above over the last ten years. Not only is practically all the new tax dollars being allocated to retiree costs but the non-personnel related dollars in the police, fire and municipal budgets has been drastically reduced as a percentage of the overall budget ten years ago. These dollars have been re-directed to help pay for retiree costs that are going to continue to increase at an even faster rate very soon.

It's a triple whammy for the current employees, fewer employees asked to do the same amount of work or services reduced to account for fewer employees, less compensation for active employees and fewer dollars to purchases materials the employees need to do an adequate job.

Do you think the DPW would love to have an additional $800,000 budgeted each year to pave the pot holed filled road around the city? At some point are police, fire and DPW vehicles going to be dilapidated because there are no funds to purchase new ones in a timely manner?

Look at the last contract where employee base pay was frozen for 3 years. What I expect is going to happen in the next round of negotiations is that all three unions are going to demand a significant increase in wages, which this mayor and the council will most likely agree too. And the city may be able in the short term to fund the raises by continuing to squeeze the non-personal parts of the department budgets and squeezing the school department , who btw should have consolidated schools to save millions. The city also may get lucky with a small increase in tax revenue with the slight improvement in the economy.

But the city is going to required tens of millions of dollars that I don't believe the Warwick economy can sustain to pay for all these new expenses. The pension and OPEB cost are going to get much worse and I fear that Mayor Avedisian and Councilwoman Donna Travis and Finance Chairwoman Carmile Vella-Wilkingson plan is to just ignore it.

At some point when Avedisian finally moves on or is defeated (hopefully soon) I predict the next mayor will have to declare a financial crisis and Warwick taxpayers will experience massive property tax increases.

The kind of structural changes necessary to create a revenue stream that can sustain the cost of current city and school service and retiree costs will never take place with the current elected leadership in this city. That will require a no nonsense leader in the mayor's office and an equally committed City Council who are not afraid to address the union contractual language regarding retiree benefits whose expenses cannot be sustained without major reforms.

From: Avedisian lists pluses of ’13, cites ’14 challenges

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