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Sign Petition to tell Seattle City Council: Don't Fund Study to Lower Retirement Benefits

Yesterday morning, this agenda item was discussed during the Seattle City Council Budget meeting:

14. Seattle City Employees' Retirement System
* Retirement Benefits Study
Presenter: John McCoy, Council Central Staff
Tab 108-3-A-1
Green Sheet 108-3-A-1 (http://clerk.seattle.gov/~public/budgetdocs/2011/2011-108-3-A-1-145-desc.pdf)

If you go to the link, it says the council will authorize our Retirement System to spend $250,000 to fund a study that will:

"evaluate the future costs of the employee retirement benefit and to design alternative plans for new hires that may be more affordable to employees and the taxpayers."

What? A two-tier retirement system? No way.

So while the budget committee took a lunch break, a few of us from the Fight for Fairness committee drafted a petition during our lunch hour.

You can sign it here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/NoLowBen/petition.html

We'll send the first round of signatures to City Council on Friday morning and keep the petition up until they pass the budget on November 22.

Please share link with your friends! Thanks.

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Comment by Doreen McGrath on November 11, 2010 at 21:23: To clarify, Seattle City Employees have a defined benefit plan. We contribute 8% of our salaries into the plan (soon to go up to 10%--another story) and the city matches that. BUT if the fund dips too low, the city is on the hook to pony up the money needed to keep it solvent.

Now the city wants to solve its budget crisis off our backs one other way (we already gave up our minimum COLA): reduce retirement benefits. We're trying to nip the idea before it even gets started.