Why is this ball mad?

Sure.

Oh, well, well, no, you've got to do it.

Director Paulson, would you like to take it away?

Yes, thank you.

Um for the record, Karen Paulson, Director of Human Resources, and uh we are here to continue the discussion on a proposed amendment to the city's twenty-five and thirty-year pension plans.

Uh joining us today via teams are Jay Keaton and Paul Madden, the city's pension attorneys.

Um they're here to um and available to answer any legal or technical questions as well as explain plan language.

Uh the proposal originated from a formal uh former council member request last year.

Um for a little bit of background, we had the initial discussion in October at the committee level, and in that meeting, we discussed prior reforms made to the plan, uh discussed restoring eligibility to part-time employees, and whether to include council members in that as well.

At that meeting, the consensus was made to move forward with the restoring eligibility to part-time employees, but not to include council members.

And to also make the change effective prospectively, not retroactively.

Um removing obsolete retirement committee language, and also updating administrative provisions.

So again, staff is here to get some consensus and also answer any questions that you may have as we move forward.

I think I was expecting a little bit longer presentation, so I'm trying to bring up everything in uh councilmember Bram, do you want to start or do you want me to start?

Uh I I can.

Okay.

Some of these are my inability to read a very technical document, and some are just questions.

So and I I tried to start it the first earliest page and work my way through.

So on page five, can you just share with me the reasoning why city council members in this draft are not included as part-time employees?

Was there logic behind it, or just the prior council said we don't want to do that?

Yeah, that was the consensus for the prior council.

Okay.

Yeah.

The prior language in the plan document um when part-time employees were included, council members were called out specifically.

So it said part-time employees who worked a thousand hours or more, including council members.

And then back in 2011, when we made broader pension reforms, at that time, the administration decided to limit participation to full-time employees only and carved out part-time and council members from being eligible to participate.

So the amendment that was brought forward for discussion last October was to bring back part-time eligibility, but then there was some discussion whether to include council members or not to include them, and the again, the prior consensus was not to include them in the proposed amendment.

And the again the prior consensus was not to include them in the proposed amendment.

All right.

And so if with apologies between administrations bouncing one way than the other, if we chose to return council members, would would that be part of our motion, Madam Chair?

I think so.

And I'm also I'm not contradicting what you are saying, Director Paulson, but I do think I think I would characterize it somewhat differently, and I would have to go back and watch the meeting.

I think it's a matter of interpretation.

I think I would characterize it as we were trying to move forward and we we knew that we wanted to, we knew that for certain we wanted to include part-time employees, and I think there was dissension about including the council members.

I don't I wouldn't agree that it was decided that we didn't want to include council members.

I think that was something that we knew that there was an agreement on, and so we kind of went with what we knew we had all agreed with.

Um just a little bit of a semantics difference, but I think it's important in terms of the policy discussion to make sure that we're representing the points of view.

And didn't attorney Gray send out a memo trying to differentiate the between uh elected officials and employees.

I'm trying to find the memo.

We did, and I I was gonna ask her why she sent that out.

I don't know.

I just remember getting on trying to look for it.

Yeah, no, I appreciate your bringing that up because when I saw that I wondered, hmm, what prompted that?

All right, well, uh as you searched, Councilmember Hopkins for that.

Um and then is there any benefit why part-time employees under a thousand hours?

What what are the financial implications of extending pensions to part-time employees under a thousand hours?

So to get credit for one year of service in the plan, you have to achieve one or one thousand hours.

So that's why that distinction was made as far as number of hours worked in the year.

When we did our costing analysis, the actuaries only um included those that worked more than a thousand hours in that cost estimate.

So I I would be unsure of what financial um costs there would be to include those individuals.

Okay, because by definition, one year has to be a thousand hours or more.

Correct to receive credit.

Uh page six number and I'm I'm looking at the 25-year plan, because there except for a couple dollar differences, there the language I think is identical, correct?

Between 25 and 30-year.

So just up on page six number two.

The contributions made by the participant pursuant to Section 27, which are not picked up by the city.

Uh I just to verify, an employee can have a payroll deduction and also pay additional funds into the pension, correct?

No, they they can't make additional voluntary contributions to the pension.

Where do those where do those contributions come from?