How will we pay our pension debt?

I went to the Village of Arlington Heights budget meetings in March and I asked President Mulder how she was planning to resolve the growing deficit that the village owes to the village pension funds. President Mulder had no plans to change how they pay for these funds.

In 2002 the village owed a little less than $4 million to the municipal, police and fire pension funds. In a short five years that deficit has ballooned to more than $42 million.

The village raises our property tax every year to make the required annual village contribution to the pension funds but the debt owed to these funds continues to grow. Village officials complain that the problem is caused by increased pension benefits; however, how does this change the fact that this debt is owed?

At what point will the property owners of Arlington Heights have to make up this growing deficit? I was asked what I would do to solve this problem. I would recommend dedicating revenues from existing fees that come directly from services that are associated with the pensions (such as ambulance fees already collected by the village) to be paid directly to the pension funds.

Dedicated revenues are used by the village for a number of different needs, such as road repair. This would ensure that other sources of income would help offset some of the debt.

What we cannot do is put off this problem for others to deal with or wait until the debt is insurmountable. I hope that President Mulder and the trustees would move to quickly address this growing problem and find funding sources other than our property taxes.

Phillip P. Walter

Arlington Heights