No Pensions for Councilmembers

Serving a municipality is a high calling.

Public service should be properly remunerated.

Pensions are not the way. Bankrupting cities and public shareholders will only deprive future inhabitants of necessary services.

Is there not some way in which City Council leaders could negotiate to buy current employees out of exorbitant pension liabilities, and offer instead a higher base salary? Then permit these employees to invest their own earnings as they see fit?

I would think that this approach may cost the cities up front a little more, but in the long run it would divest municipalities of the onerous burden of paying elderly retirees well into their nineties and beyond.