18 - Firefighters Relief & Retirement Fund -Pursue a Pension Bond - Freeze Fire Pension - Transfer Employees to TMRS

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requirements and areas that need to be ironed out in an agreement between the City of Paris and Board of Trustees. Please see the Budget section below for additional commentary Next Steo Assuming the City Council is favorable to addressing this issue, we are still working with the Attorney General, Bond Legal Counsel, Pension Legal Counsel, Actuary, Financial Advisor, Third Party Legal Counsel regarding Social Security, and the Fire Pension Board to address several final details. But, the next step is to determine whether the City Council is willing to entertain this project. If so, then we intend to bring back to you a Pension Bond as well as an agreement with the Pension Board by the July 25, 2022 City Council meeting (or thereabouts). I feel very good that we have found a solution that will work long term for the Fire Department, City of Paris, and Paris taxpayers; one that our descendants will look back and be grateful for. We will happily do our best to answer questions. There is a large team of individuals working together on this, so I feel confident we can find an answer when a question arises. BUDGET: Assuming it moves along as planned, the city happens to have an existing bond retiring in FY21 /22, which means in FY22/23 there will be available property tax rate that could be moved to this bond. The goal is to find a way to minimize the impact to the taxpayers while increasing retirement benefits for fire department personnel. Given the taxpayers are already acclimated to the existing property tax rate, instead of dropping the rate and asking that it be raised again later, my recommendation to the City Council will be to keep the rate and replace the retiring bond with the new bond. In conjunction with that recommendation, I will ask that the City Council consider adding an additional 1 cent in property tax. According to our calculations, assuming the numbers we have to date, this should save the taxpayers an additional $3 — 5 million over the life of the bond. This is a significant financial investment that the city and taxpayers would be taking on to solve this problem, but I believe it is mutually beneficial to all parties. With a drop from 14% contribution to approximately 8% with TMRS, and assuming the City does not have to enter the employees in to Social Security, the City will realize a significant increase in available funds within the General Fund. It is recommended that this be repurposed to help offset other costs the City has and/or must take on. Along with this, we have been working with our financial advisor to address our property tax caps under state law. We have developed a means, under state law, to issue this pension bond without impacting our Senate Bill 2 property tax caps from 2020. If the City Council agrees to pursue this, more will be explained at a later date.