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Officials want to know if it would trigger other increases, hurt taxpayers.

NANTICOKE – The city might dig itself into a financial hole if retired police officers are given a cost-of-living adjustment.
Nanticoke Mayor John Bushko said retired officers deserve an increase in their monthly pensions because they have not received a raise in more than a decade. He wants to increase their pensions by $100 a month.
Bushko’s motion to grant the increase was made at Wednesday’s council meeting, but was defeated by a 3-2 vote.
Councilmen Jim Litchkofski, Jon Metta and Brent Makarczyk voted against the motion. Bushko and Councilman Joe Dougherty voted to authorize the increase.
Police department retirees would have seen an immediate increase in their checks if the motion had passed.
“I am sure it will not cost the city one dime to fund the police pension,” Bushko said.
Litchkofski, Metta and Makarczyk said they are concerned that increasing the police pension funding would require the city to increase funding to the city’s fire department pension and possibly other union pension funds.
That in turn could pose a financial hardship on the city, said Metta, the city’s accounts and finance director.
Litchofski said he would love to give the retirees a pay raise but would not do it until he was assured by financial experts and the city’s labor lawyer that it would not cost the city taxpayers thousands of dollars.
“If the pension fund is bankrupt or doesn’t have enough money in it, then the money has to come from the city coffers,” Metta said. “We don’t want that to happen because the city is under a financial burden right now.”
City Administrator Kenneth Johnson said he favors the increase but noted “that might kick off giving a new benefit to the active police, which then kicks off and gives the same thing for the firemen. Everything could be connected because we don’t know if there is parity.”
Bushko insisted that increasing the police pension would not affect the firemen’s pension fund.
Makarczyk made a motion requesting the city’s labor lawyer, Joel Barras of Philadelphia, review the union contracts, so the city will know if parity exists.
Investment banker Don Williamson of ASCO, which handles the city’s police and fire department pension funds, sent the city a report last year stating the police department pension could handle the increase, but the fire department pension could not because that fund is not as financially healthy, Makarczyk said.
The police pension fund has a surplus of more than $900,000; the firemen’s pension fund is underfunded by about $250,000, Johnson said.
A combination of some bad investments and the retirement of some firefighters shortly after the pension was created put the fund in the red, while the police pension grew because no officers retired immediately after it was created, Johnson and Metta said.