Laserfiche WebLink
From: - <br />To: GRP -City Council <br />Subject: Follow up to Feb 22 meeting <br />Date: Tuesday, February 23, 2021 7:07:25 AM <br />CAUTION: This email originated from outside your organization. Exercise caution when <br />opening attachments or clicking links, especially from unknown senders. <br />Dear City Manager, and Council members: <br />Thank you for your presentation on budget yesterday. <br />It is fair to summarize the retirement obligations in the following form? <br />These retirement obligations are competing with other services that our <br />residents need. <br />Breaking promises to current and future retirees, promises they built their lives <br />around, is not palatable. <br />Tax hikes, benefit cuts, or wage freezes present their own dimension of <br />challenges. <br />Are there other aspects we should be aware of? <br />After your presentation, I am even more convinced that we need to look at our city's <br />budget holistically and collaboratively with city residents. <br />Council member Michael Smith raised the idea of non -conservative framework. <br />Alternatives to paying off debt at an accelerated pace should be considered. You <br />mentioned saving $38M over 20 years and pulling in the timeline from 20 to 17 years. <br />It raises the question, what else we could be doing if we weren't accelerating the <br />retirement contribution. <br />I come back to rightsizing our departments and engaging in more partnerships with <br />the private sector where the private sector can offer competing services. Aside from <br />not hiring open headcounts in a single department, there may be alternates such as <br />offering early retirement initiatives to adjust the workforce, moving headcounts across <br />departments. <br />We are expecting some federal funds towards small businesses and potentially other <br />city services. What is our process of taking such funds into consideration? For <br />