Posted on 10/18/2019 6:11:53 PM PDT by george76
East St. Louis is short $9.5 million between a budget deficit and back payments owed to its fire and police pensions. As a result, city leaders are closing a firehouse and laying off nine firefighters.
Nine firefighters have been asked to hand in their gear and their fire station will temporarily close as East St. Louis, Illinois, faces a $5.5 million budget deficit and interception of nearly $4 million in state funding for debts owed to its police and fire pensions.
Unfortunately, with 100% of the City’s state revenues being redirected to the police and fire pensions, we are faced with the difficult task of strategically reducing some services in order to continue to meet our financial obligations
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The firefighters pension was only 9% funded at the end of 2018, with an unfunded liability of $65.2 million
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the city once had nine stations and 120 firefighters. By Nov. 1 there will be two firehouses and 28 firefighters
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East St. Louis was given a riverboat casino license to rescue it from bankruptcy in the 1990s, along with decades of state financial oversight to control its spending.
East St. Louis has seen decades of population loss and now has over 26,000 residents, with 43% of them living below the poverty line. It has the highest murder rate of any U.S. city.
East St. Louis is the fourth Illinois city to face state funding interception since pension systems were first allowed to seek that remedy in 2018, Pallasch said. The others are Harvey, North Chicago and Chicago.
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While the combined pension debt for Illinois’ five statewide funds is officially estimated at nearly $137 billion, Moody’s Investors Service just pegged the debt at $241 billion, using less rosy estimates of future investment returns.
(Excerpt) Read more at illinoispolicy.org ...
The best thing that could happen to East St. LOUIS is if it burned down.
Much of America, particularly the blue bits, need a good bout with insolvency.
Politics will not change otherwise
East St. Louis hoods => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMnDLoBLolk
The newspapers in Tulsa debated this throughout my youth in the Sixties and Seventies, with the more conservative paper (Tulsa Tribune) predicting that mathematically it would have to end disastrously and the leftwing - although they would seem almost conservative by today’s standards - paper (Tulsa World) boldly predicting that miracles of technology undreamed or increasing efficiency would somehow magically make money to pay the retirements on all these government employee that were being hired.
Here we are.
No surprise who turned out to be right.
Save nine million by laying off nine firefighters?
Bump
Thanks, ‘Rats.
Chicago has 420 billion dollars in long-term debt...
the old farts get the fat pension and the tax payers pay increasingly odorous taxes to support the fat pensions....
if the people on fat pensions want the young workers and the tax payers to suffer, they've accomplished it...
#22 Is that city hall?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3782158/posts
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CAGW Names Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker September 2019 Porker of the Month
Citizens Against Government Waste ^ | September 2019 | Citizens Against Government Waste
Posted on 9/28/2019, 10:14:46 PM by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker (D) September 2019 Porker of the Month for signing a $40.1 billion budget without any spending restraints and $1.4 billion in pork-barrel projects.
223.9 billion shortfall, which breaks down to a debt burden of $52,600 per taxpayer. The state has $6 billion in unpaid bills and the lowest credit rating of any state in the country. Its unfunded pension liability tops $130 billion. Illinois taxpayers are so saddled with debt, taxes, corrupt local government, and dwindling middle-class jobs that 157,000 residents have left over the past five years.
Durbin pushes HIB work permits for India workers
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3786383/posts
Gov OK’s queer equity education
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3786484/posts
fyi
East St Louis has a highway system built by Democrat Communists. All roads enter centrally into the city for maximum concentration. It is a mess.
Communism, and crime is an added benefit.
It was the firefighter and the cop who drove up the insane and unsustainable costs of these pensions, and it was their corrupt and greedy unions who bribed and extorted corrupt politicians to pass them, despite being unable to possibly fund them with available revenue. It is absolutely just that cops and firefighters are the ones to be fired, along with the scummy bureaucrats and politicians. This house of cards is collapsing around the country.
Good.
i had numerous ESL encounters back in the late ‘60s. worked in swansea and lived in caseyville. used to hit some pretty rough joints along bunkum rd. on the way to downtown ESL. i’ve forgotten as much as possible ... glad i did. bailed to far west STL burbs in ‘70.
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