Many years ago when I served in the 1984 Constitutional Convention, Rep. Jean White of Rindge warned us that the retirement costs for firefighters, police and state and municipal workers was not sustainable.
Now we find that communities added the special detail hours to retirement and the rooster has come home to roost. As long as the state was paying the costs for communities, they didn’t care how much they added to retirement costs, but the state has said no more to communities.
Now we, the local taxpayers, pay over 14 cents per every dollar paid for municipal employees, over 30 cents per every dollar paid for police and the same for firefighters, overtime, special detail and all.
The retirement investments haven’t kept up with all the extra to be paid and so the costs have come back to our property taxes. I say it’s time that all public employees go on social security the same as regular workers.
Harriet E. Cady
Deerfield