Tuesday, June 16, 2009 10:43 PM CDT
City agrees to offer early retirement; 19 eligible
By HERB MEEKER, Staff Writer
hmeeker@jg-tc.com
MATTOON — City commissioners approved an early retirement option now open to 19 employees.
The Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund (IMRF) early retirement incentive was accepted unanimously by city council members Tuesday night. City documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show up to 19 employees, including six managers or supervisory employees with Public Works, as well as operators or laborers, could opt for early retirement as soon as they wish.
The city is offering the program to save on personnel costs to help reduce the budget deficit in the general fund. About 90 employees are now covered by the IMRF system, but to claim early retirement, the employees must be age 50 or older or have 20 or more years of service with the city.
The council vote was by Mayor Dave Cline and commissioners Randy Ervin, Rick Hall, Tim Gover and Chris Rankin.
If all eligible employees choose early retirement, the additional liability created by the incentive is estimated at $2,102,831, Mattoon City Treasurer Preston Owen said Tuesday night.
The IMRF system is offered to municipal and many public sector workers throughout the state. This would be separate from the pension funds maintained for Mattoon firefighters and police officers. IMRF employees in Mattoon include supervisors, laborers, office workers, and professionals such engineers, as well as elected officials.
In other business, the council purchased a four-channel radio “voting” or repeater system to reduce radio transmission problems experienced by Mattoon Police Department. MPD Chief Dave Griffith said a voting system allows radio equipment to search for the nearest transmitter towers for effective forwarding of radio signals. He said radio “repeater” devices are not mounted on radio towers to the south or east of Mattoon, which results in radio traffic “cutting out.”
Repeaters would be purchased through the Omega funds, derived from the confiscation and sale of properties, vehicles and other items from that financial fraud investigation several years ago. The $19,982 purchase is through Barbeck Communications of Effingham.
One repeater will be placed at Lake Land College to assist with better transmission for mobile and portable MPD radios. Other repeater locations will be determined later, officials said.
The vote was unanimous, but Ervin abstained due to his position as public safety chief at the college. He added the purchase is needed and will benefit security for the city and college.
The council also ratified the nominations of Robert Becker and David Skocy to the city administrator search committee with the recent retirement of Alan Gilmore.
The commissioners also approved a renewal of a five-year lease agreement with the owners of Vinnie & Al’s Pla-Mor Golf at Peterson Park. The lease, which establishes insurance requirements and an annual rent of $900 during the first year, can be extended for another 15 years on the miniature golf course.
In other council business, a $300 tourism grant was awarded to the the East Central Illinois Antique Farm Equipment Club for July 17-19. The council also accepted a $228 change order for the Illinois Central Railroad Depot restoration project and authorized the mayor to approve all future change orders less than $1,000 on the project. The goal is to keep the total cost below $2.73 million on the work funded by federal, state and private funds.
Contact Herb Meeker at hmeeker@jg-tc.com or 238-6869.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
|
|
misfit2 wrote on Jun 17, 2009 12:00 AM: