One creative way at least one Illinois community has found to beat the budget crunch resulting from unfunded pension liabilities is to cross-train all first responders.
In other words, they all essentially have the same jobs, and can, therefore, be funded out of a single pension pool, rather than having separate retirement funds for police, firefighters and EMTs.
That’s the cost-cutting approach followed in the Village of Glencoe, a Chicago suburb in northeastern Cook County. For more than three decades, the village has been consolidating its funds, which explains why its firefighters’ pension that has less than 1 percent funding is no cause for alarm.
“Prior to the 1980s, we did maintain two funds, but for ease of administration essentially we stopped adding any new members to the firefighters’ pension fund and only new members to the police pension fund, which is the one we still fund,” Megan Hoffman, assistant to Glencoe’s manager, said in an April 30 story in the North Cook News.
Have other communities followed suit?
Robert O. Barber, the administrator for the Village of Beecher in Will County, told the Will County Gazette some consolidation of training has taken place.
“Beecher has a fire protection district which provides fire and EMS services,” Barber said. “The village provides emergency management support through its (Emergency Management Agency) division support, and our police officers can apply limited first aid, CPR and Heimlich. We also carry AEDs in marked patrol cars.”
Alerts Sign-up