Jamie Munks
The State Journal-Register
Three Springfield aldermen are sponsoring an ordinance that would see excess payment-in-lieu-of-taxes revenue the city receives devoted to paying down unfunded liabilities on police and fire pension funds. The ordinance would devote roughly $2 million in excess PILOT revenue from City Water, Light and Power to spending down the city’s hundreds of millions of dollars in unfunded liabilities for its police and fire pension funds.
The city budget projected about $7 million in PILOT monies would come in last fiscal year, when roughly $9 million is now sitting in city coffers from the revenue source. The money is currently in the corporate fund as part of the city’s unappropriated fund balance, Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin said.
McMenamin, a frequent critic of Springfield’s mounting public pension issues, is spearheading the proposal. Ward 9 Ald. Steve Dove and Ward 10 Ald. Tim Griffin are co-sponsoring the ordinance with him. The ordinance specifically calls for $1,059,893 to be funneled from the corporate fund to the police pension and fire pension funds.
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The proposed ordinance is largely based on a report of the Blue Ribbon Committee on Springfield City Finances, which was convened by previous Mayor Tim Davlin, McMenamin said. “We first explored and identified the scope of the city’s financial problems, driven chiefly by the ever-increasing pension liabilities from the fire and police retirement programs due to past under-funding and additional pressures,” the committee wrote in the report. “We were taken aback by the enormity of the problem.”
Current Mayor Houston was a member of the Blue Ribbon Committee that produced the 70-page report in 2008 during Davlin’s administration.
“It will help,” McMenamin said of the effect that dedicating PILOT funds will have on the city’s unfunded liabilities. He acknowledged, though, that it’s unpredictable because the PILOT amount depends on the performance of the utility’s electric fund.
Joe McMenamin for Ward 7 