About 2018, I'm thinking.

Yeah, that sounds about something like that.

So we've gone through a lot of changes in that amount of time.

But I thought it might be helpful just to do a kind of a high level look at how the pension fund works.

When I report a couple times a year, I bring the actual numbers and we'll do that again shortly because we're right in the middle of our valuation for last year.

But I thought it might be helpful just to give you a quick overview if it's not familiar to you.

The Chattanooga Pension Fund was founded in 1949, so it goes back quite a long ways.

In addition to myself as city council appointee, and and Weston Porter as the mayor's appointee with a staff of about two and a half employees.

Myself and the other members is basically oversight of the fund.

You know, there are certain regulations and laws we have to comply with, in addition to setting uh direction for the investments of the fund.

Uh it's part of our job to hire and supervise the actuary who does the work on the fund.

And we do that.

We also have an outside investment consulting firm that actually does most of the research and recommendations, and then we approve and move forward from there.

So I don't think this is going to be real news for anybody, but the difference between a pension fund and uh say a 401k, uh, those are called defined contribution plans.

You put money into your 401k, you invest it.

It's entirely up to you to do it during your lifetime and to save up enough to retire on, as opposed to a traditional pension or defined benefit plan, which is what the city has and what I know the city also has a 403B and 457, I think.

But with a defined pension, a defined benefit plan, the the retiree's salary is based on some percentage formula of their last however many working years.

And it's up to the fund and the employer to fund it and invest it such that that obligation is met in their retirement.

So you can see over the years that dotted line is the progression of people who have pension funds.

This is the left-hand scale is the percentage of workers who have a plan at all.

Once upon a time, there were more pensions than 401ks.

Uh that's certainly not true today.

As you can see, that the light blue line at the top is 80% of people who have a plan at all have a defined contribution plan, a 401k type plan.

The retirement plans that are pension funds, only about 20%.

As you can see from this graph, that top dotted line is public administration.

That would be municipality, state, local governments, and police and fire.

So that's predominantly where we still see pension funds.

And the primary reason for that is first responders on average have lower life expectancies, as you can imagine, because they're exposed to more hazards.

They have typically a shorter working lifetime within their uh professions.

A lot of times they'll go get a second job after retirement, but the theory here was they have less time to save up.

401ks are more difficult for them to amass enough assets.

I can work 40 or 45 years, but uh typical uh firefighter police 25 to 30.

And of course, because of the physical demands, especially in the fire, they're less likely to be able to work the same duration of employment.

Now, you know, over time that's changing as we get better equipment, safety improves, and so forth.

So I was I was gonna ask, I think I think that is changing.

Is there any data that shows what the difference between life expectancy now?

Let's say for someone who's actively employed now, right, versus even like 20 years ago.

Because I know one of the things that we've done, I think that should make a difference anyway, is we've we've started furnishing second set of turnout gear.

Yep, exactly.

And there's a lot of I guess uh I'm not trying to say preventative medicines now.

You know, we've got the we've got the health clinic down here, yeah.

Right, that they go through the physical every year.

Absolutely.

And they look for certain things, early detection, things like that.

So we're much more aware of it, more heightened and more response to in terms of equipment, so forth.

So, you know, one of my thoughts is one of the challenges to this defined benefit is the fact that I think the data would probably show that firefighters are now living longer.

I know we certainly have now for the first time, right?

More firefighters on the pension.

More firefighters on the pension, I mean drawing as opposed to paying in.

Right here.

So you go back to 20, you're right, you're right on point.

Go back to 2015, that red circle there, you can see uh that that ratio 0.92.

So there were you know, there were more actives, which is the dark blue than retirees.

And now come out to 2024, and that pink line shows you that ratio.

So now there's a hundred and ten retirees for every hundred actives.

If you look at that far right-hand column, one point well, it's really almost one point one this year.

So you're exactly right.

There are more retirees than actives, and if you think about the analogy of Social Security.

1960 there were five workers paying in for every retiree, and today it's about two to one.

So it's the same reason that Social Security has financial challenges.