Writer shares comments to Antioch council on city’s $150 million in unfunded liabilities
Wednesday, April 19th, 2017Dear Editor:
Following are the comments I made to the Antioch City Council during the budget session on Tuesday, April 11, 2017.
As to the Budget Staff Report to the City Council from Director Merchant dated 11 April 2017: City Unfunded Employee Retirement at PERS
- Agenda Item 1 page 1 / The actual unfunded CalPERS amount is somewhere between $150,000,000.00 and $160,000,000.00. One hundred and forty million is a low-end number.
- Page 2 / Measure C will sunset and will not be renewed by the voters. The mismanagement and lack of performance will cause it to fail. I would not vote for a renewal and would work to defeat a renewal.
- Page 3 / Transfers from Water and Sewer, if as stated the City is doing a new study please know that if the City of Antioch attempts to transfer funds for Police Services I will immediately file suit to stop the transfer. The City of Antioch must stop the shell game with transfers.
- Page 3 / Memorandum concerning salary increases. This never should have been approved and needs to immediately be addressed by opening renegotiation with Police and other employees.
- Page 4 / Contract Code Enforcement / Fines should be equal to have this break even. There should not be a $175,000.00 deficit.
- Page 4 / Golf Course / The entire golf course and facility is most likely not worth more than 5 million dollars in the open market. In fact, the value may be as low as 3 million. But the total amount owed to the City is not in any way sufficient to affect the budget shortfalls that we are looking at in 2018 to 2021.
- Page 6 / Measure C /See information in item 2 above.
- Page 7 / Measure O/ The City still fails to collect all the money due. We just took in three new management accounts and none of the properties were registered with the City. From the consumer side view this is a near failure on the part of the City.
- Page 8 / June 30 2019 Proposed Budget. Director Merchant states correctly that nearly 3.5Million Dollars of expenditure increase is due to Salary and CalPERS. Looking at anything else will not correct, fix or effect the road to Municipal Bankruptcy.
- Page 9 / Employees need to pay 50% or more of any fees paid to CalPERS. Additionally, the City must terminate “Defined Retirement Benefit” and move to “Defined Retirement Contribution”.
The City of Antioch has 24 months until massive negative spending begins. Bankruptcy is no more than 24 months from that time. You can no longer kick the can down the road.
Mark Jordan
Antioch