January 12, 2016
Are “we the people” being snookered another time by the Fort Smith city establishment?
Something does seem to be agog.
A year or two ago, without warning, citizens were told by various members of the city establishment that the police & fire retirement funds were in short supply. All these utterings showed no signs of concern or emotion. These same sentiments have been put forth on any number of occasions without a modicum of explanation. Were the funds misspent, allocated to other departments, or gross incompetence?
Then comes an edict from the Nationalist government, more commonly referred to as the Federal Government, that orders the city of Fort Smith to spend at least $600 million to upgrade its sewer and waste water systems, accompanied by a $300,000 fine, all of which should have been accomplished 2 decades ago and the funding was available. Followed on the heels of these travesties and almost in unison, no explanation by appropriate officials, the prompt exodus of decades old employees City Manager Ray Gosack followed by City Financial Director Kara Bushkuhl.
After a year or so, still no explanations from the City Directors or Mayor pertaining to the Fire & Police Pension Funds! Publicly, there have also been no reactions from Police Chief Kevin Lindsey & his band or the City Fire Chief and his crew. If there really is a shortage in the two retirement funds, why are the victims so composed?
Maybe, because there is no shortage.
You see, the city of Fort Smith and all cities are for-profit corporations. In the case of Fort Smith insiders will exclaim that Fort Smith is not a for-profit entity and remember citizens all local governments are controlled from on high, in this case Little Rock, D.C. & the United Nations, e.g. Lindsey and his band of merry men belong to 2 international policing organizations who set the protocols for the FSPD, not we the people who pay their salaries & perks.
Pension fund accounting (and others) are required by government to project out 35 years ( government safety net) to satisfy all projected payments to participants (in this case police & fire) with what they will be paid at TIME OF RETIREMENT. They use Max-projections.
Example: employee making $50K today at retirement, after pay increases, projected inflations, etc. will be making $185K, additionally: governments DO NOT ACCOUNT for the projected income for the fund out 35 years in full. They redact much.
Here’s the crux: based on the new accounting, the pension fund that may have been 150% funded today, in the snap of a finger, could now be adjusted to being 60% funded (40% underfunded). City governments may project whatever financial position referencing pension funding they wish. Additionally, they use Liability Accounts, Enterprise Ops & NGO’s.
It appears the city has not prepared a financial statement since 2011.
Most local pension funds/systems are strictly Participatory. What that means is the employee does not own ONE CENT of the retirement fund; they just have a ticket to ride under the contract terms.
The local government owns 100% of the FUND BALANCE. Now if the employees owned 100% of the balance, what the accounting used by local governments would be 100% fraud and an indictable offense.
If the employees owned all their retirement funds (and they should) when they retired they would receive hundreds of thousands of dollars and most of these funds are so huge there would never need to be any more contribution.
The Fort Smith city government is a pay/play pal like the Fort Smith City School Board where the transparency window pane has been blacked out.
Notice: when you ask a City Board member, a State Senator, a School Board member they always plead ignorance (“I don’t know”), which some don’t, but that’s their crude way of being evasive, i.e. not answering the question.
So you must know that Lindsey and all the rest know there is no real pension shortfall, but perhaps they do not know the devils in the details.
More reasons to impose term limits on all politicians and bureaucrats.
More pertaining to the Fire & Police Pension Funds: Times Record 1/11/16…Acting City Manager Dingman, “Our particular issue is based on the amount of funding we haven’t put into the past”. An open honest statement that past & present City governments failed to recognize the oncoming pension shortages, demonstrating gross incompetence or ………???
Now our alleged “public servants” are pushing for issues & taxes that have been previously turned down by the voters. The Board and others are assiduously exerting effort to resuscitate the moribund Civic Center & the “prepared food tax”, and no doubt increase their bloated administrative numbers.
I have written rather extensively on at least 2 occasions that the only means to subdue this tax eating piranha is to implement Zero Budgetry immediately.
If you do not understand the mechanisms involved in implementing the accounting measure of Zero Budgetry log on to the website arkansasfreedom.net and search the term.
One of the finer points of Zero Budgetry is that it demands each government department head indelibly justifies & anticipates every expense of his or her department each and every year for their upcoming budget. Some departments could actually show profits. A loose governmental budgeting process is the formula that allows government to make tax pincushions out of citizens…raising taxes. Zero Budgetry is a must.
Examples of non-essential spending: Trails; sharrows; quid pro quo softball complex which could & should generate hundreds of thousands of dollars for taxpayers; a strict bidding process for city equipment; $777,000 for Convention Center; cancel Delta Dental’s bribe of F.S. officials to mass fluoridate pristine drinking water; cut all financial assistance to the stated private enterprise project known as the Marshal’s Museum; terminate downtown Urban Renewal for private property owners; utilize competent negotiators in construction projects, e.g. the recent $2 million cost overrun in the Waterpark; reduce the bloated F.S. city work force by eliminating duplication & non-essentials; discontinue taxpayer subsidized services to illegals and numerous 501c3’s, 501c4’s, & NGO’s like Frontier MPO; The city’s lavish spending on multi-ladder fire trucks, high dollar SUV’s, pickups, flatbeds, etc.
The Fort Smith School district is spending 10’s of millions on programs for illegals that range from infants to able-bodied adults. Gov. Hutchinson, this past week, made another one of his self-serving political statements regarding the newly minted 220,000 Arkansans presently enjoying Obamacare, i.e. the Private Option, compliments of the producing taxpayers. Hutchinson fails to identify these 220,000 as mostly young, unmarried, unemployed males. Notice these faux compassionate souls are most always on the tax teat, i.e. welfare/government check themselves. In Hutchinson’s case he is recipient of at least 6 welfare/taxpayer checks in his mailbox monthly. Remember when he had compassion for illegals when he was the U.S. Drug/Border Czar and “worried about illegals ability to sleep for fear of deportation”, similar to Superintendent Gooden referring to illegals when he said “we’ll take all we can get”. Never mind the cost to our beleaguered middleclass and the destruction of our language, borders and culture.
The principal constitutional functions of the city are fire, police, streets, water, and waste water sewerage control, not entertainment.
It seems the city’s priorities have long gone astray for the benefit of a few.
Joe McCutchen
arkansasfreedom.net