Soaring Costs With Burr Ridge Police Pensions: Official

BURR RIDGE, IL – A Burr Ridge trustee last week urged his colleagues to put more money into the police pension fund.

At a Village Board meeting, members were told the police pension account was 72 percent funded.

That's a big increase from 2020, when it was at 59 percent. This is largely because of a surge in the stock market that benefitted most pension funds.

In the 2021 budget year, the village contributed nearly $780,000 to the police pension account. That's up from $550,000 a decade earlier, or a 40 percent increase, according to state reports.

"Yes, I understand that it's at 72 percent, but that can change easily depending on the markets out there," Trustee Russell Smith said at the board meeting.

He recommended the village pay more than the state's minimum threshold. He said the village received a report that its required pension contribution is expected to increase by at least 65 percent in the next decade.

Because of that, Smith said he was disappointed the village was not planning to add more money into the pension fund. The village, he said, has the ability to do so because it is "very strong financially."

"I don't want to be that trustee that says, 'What are the other villages doing?' I would rather Burr Ridge be a leader," Smith said.

He noted the village is a model because it is a rare municipality that is debt-free.

Village President Gary Grasso said he has made the police pension fund a priority since he returned to the helm in 2019.

Trustee Joe Snyder said he was comfortable with the village's level of payments to the pensions.

"I do not wish to put more money into the pension plan," he said.

He said he feared Burr Ridge would lose if it funded its pension account at a higher level and then the state decided to put money into local pension funds.

He said the state would say to Burr Ridge, "If you guys weren't so good, we would give you money."

Trustee Guy Franzese disagreed with that logic. He doubted the state would bail out local pension funds in his lifetime or Snyder's.

"I'm not holding my breath," he said. "They've got such a mess on their hands with their own pension fund. They're not going to come and bail us out."

Franzese agreed with Smith's suggestion for a goal-setting meeting in which trustees could discuss long-term priorities such as pensions and infrastructure improvements.

"We're long overdue," he said.