AgdaPkt 2019-10-14 Joint SA PFA - Laserfiche WebLink

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6.A. - Page 8 of 114 ISSUE One year after the Grand Jury's 2017-2018 report on soaring pension costs, what are San Mateo County's cities doing to manage them and to make better information available to the public about the impact of pension costs on long-term financial plans? SUMMARY The 2017-18 San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury issued a report in June 2018 entitled "Soaring City Pension Costs — Time for Hard Choices." It can be viewed at: www.sa=ateocourt.org/documents/gTand jLiM/20l7/ci!y pension.pdf. . In the current report, the 2018-19 Grand Jury updates financial data on pensions for each city in San Mateo County, including the data in Appendix A relating to their pension costs during the four-year period from FY 2014-15 through FY 2017-18. The Grand Jury also reports on the steps, if any, currently being taken by each city to reduce, otherwise better manage, and/or plan for their long-term pension costs. It identifies whether the cities have implemented the Grand Jury's recommendation in the prior report that they develop long-term financial plans to address their pension liabilities and publish readily -accessible information on their websites about future pension costs and their long-term financial plans. The 2018-19 Grand Jury finds that while projected pension cost information can now be found on the websites of almost all of the 20 cities, only a few include that information in their annual budgets. As a result, members of the public who may be interested in these data are forced to hunt for them through manual searches of those cities' numerous online city council meeting agenda packages looking for references to pensions. While the Grand Jury finds it commendable that almost half of the 20 cities now publish ten-year instead of five-year financial forecasts (and some of these cities only started generating ten-year forecasts this year), a minority of these cities still choose not to include these forecasts in their annual budgets. As a result, persons wishing to understand those cities' long-term pension situations must search through online city council agenda packages to find forecasts. Some cities with five-year forecasts also do not include them in their annual budgets. (For specifics on city financial forecasts, see Appendix B.) The Grand Jury is persuaded that, in the interests of transparency, all of the cities should make it easy for their residents to see what their city's projected pension costs are over at least a ten year period, together with a ten-year general fund financial forecast so that the public can compare these rising pension costs against their city's overall financial situation. In order to make that information readily -accessible to the public, the Grand Jury recommends that this information be set forth in the cities' annual budgets, making it unnecessary for the public to search through council meeting agendas looking for it. 2018-2019 San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury 12