The shadow of Detroit hovered over Burlington city hall on Tuesday as more than 100 municipal employees and local residents gathered for a “summit” on the city’s underfunded pension system.
The name of the Midwestern financial disaster area was spoken just once, and then only to reassure the audience that Burlington’s pension problems are nowhere near as dire as Detroit’s. The Queen City’s situation is actually only slightly worse than that of the average U.S. municipality, a national expert on pension issues noted.
Still, the gap between current resources and future obligations is relentlessly widening in the pension plan that covers close to 1000 municipal workers in Vermont’s largest city. Mayor Miro Weinberger put it succinctly in introducing the topic addressed by a dozen stakeholders during the three-hour session: “We’ve gone from having a significantly overfunded system to a significantly underfunded system. Taxpayers’ contributions to the system have increased dramatically.”
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It’s time to take a long hard look at large inventory of “tax-exempt” property in the city. The mantra has always been that we are in this together and everyone needs to pay their fair share. It’s time for the city to call in a chunk of the free ride many of these organizations have been enjoying for far too long. The amount of money we are talking about is staggering.