The mayor announced in a voice mail to all employees today that an agreement has been reached with the pension system. Highlights: increased employee contributions, no loss of benefit for current employees, new plan for new hires beginning in 2008. I’m a little skeptical of that “no loss” part; I think the DROP plan is going away. I’ll know more once there’s an official press release and HMEPS informs us how they see it.
Lake Houston residents are still in an uproar over their fees for sewage service increasing by 10x in the recent Ch. 47 revisions. These residents are not allowed to have septic tanks/fields because they’re too close to Lake Houston. They have holding tanks from which their sewage was pumped at a nominal fee ($15). Collection of the fee was pretty haphazard if at all. Implementation of the charge has been pushed back to the beginning of August, and council may change it.
The council bowed to increasing anti-illegal sentiment and did not renew funding for a day labor hall popular with illegal aliens. It may soon close. There was no point in having a “hall” anyway, as everyone stood on the street for a couple of blocks around, waiting for trucks to pull over and someone to hire them.
Metro performs to standard, firing the train operator who followed orders to proceed onto the wrong track, and then phoned in to alert dispatchers and request orders.
A year after a major scandal broke in which city employees working in the mayor pro tem’s office gave themselves raises and bonuses, council members increase their budgets by 16%, partly to fund compensation for their staff.
The 14 council offices would see 16-percent increases in the next fiscal year, from $309,000 to $362,000. The overall budget for the council department, which no longer includes the famous Office of Mayor Pro Tem, is increasing by $566,000, or 13 percent. Councilman Ronald Green: “There are those of us who can justify the increase in our budget, because most of us are using every dime that’s there. Our team members are underpaid and overworked.”
Council voted against a halfway house that asked to be placed in a prohibited location.
Update: Text of a letter sent by Mayor White to all employees.
Representatives of the City of Houston and the Houston Municipal Employees Pension System have reached a tentative agreement on a plan to strengthen the pension system and continue to cut its unfunded liability.
Current employees will retain all of the benefits they have earned.
The municipal employees’ pension plan is healthier and more secure than it has been in years, as are the pension plans for Police and Fire. Since 2004, we have cut the unfunded liability in half. This agreement continues that type of real progress.
The agreement will mean no change in benefits for current City employees and will maintain the fiscal discipline in the newly adopted Fiscal Year 2008 budget. New hires who join the City workforce after January 2008 will have more options to choose from in how to structure their pensions.
The plan must be approved by the Pension System Board, which is scheduled to meet today, and the City Council.
Under the four-year agreement, the City would contribute $75 million to the system during FY ’08, which is already contained in the newly adopted budget. The City’s contribution would rise to $78.5 million in FY 2009, to $83.5 million in Fiscal 2010 and to $88.5 million in fiscal 2011.
Bill White,
Mayor
Update 2: Ok, so the radio is so badly jammed that the employee had to use her cell phone to call in and alert operators that she was on the wrong track. So it sounds like Metro either has poor radio discipline or needs to address communications bottlenecks which are placing riders at risk. It also needs to explain why the guy who waved the train through isn’t being disciplined also, for not insuring the switch was in the correct position.
