Discussion on a review of applicable labor contracts and retirement documents for Town of
Ledyard employee groups with applicability to retirement eligibility and benefits continued.
1.
Review of Retirement Plan amendments, see attachments.
Mr. Thorne started the conversation by saying he recently started going through the contracts,
particularly the police contract which was just signed in December of last year. Mr. Thorne was
questioning why the following is included in the Police Union Contract, Appendix A;
No later than January 31, 2025, the Town and the Union will convene a working group
comprised of two management representatives and two union representatives to discuss the
viability of Connecticut's Municipal Employee Retirement System 2.0 ("CMERS 2.0"). At no time
will these discussions be considered negotiations under the Municipal Employee Relations Act
("MERA") and they will not be subject to the impasse resolution procedures under MERA. In
addition, this Section shall not be subject to the grievance procedure of this Agreement. Nothing
in this Section prohibits either party from making any proposals related to this issue during
negotiations of a successor to this Agreement.
It was his understanding that the Town will not be moving to the MERS system as a whole nor
as a Union by Union move.
Mr. Thorne said he believes that the Union Contracts are the guiding documents and the Board
should not try to duplicate the contracts in the Defined Benefit Plan documentation but rather
refer to the Union Contracts from there. This will alleviate the need to update the document each
time there is a union contract change. Within the document time sensitive information was
referred to but not maintained, this needs to be addressed. Mr. Panosky suggested that anything
that would be subject to a contract change should be alluded to at a high level and the union
contract should be referenced. Mr. Thorne said the other solution would be to update the
Appendix every time a change has been made to a union contract, thus creating a comprehensive
document. Chairman Rodolico pointed out that this is a Town Council document not a
Retirement Board document. Mr. Panosky suggested that the Board asks USI to perform a
review of the document to see what inputs/access they would require to perform a scrub of the
Retirement Plan document in question and to also provide a ballpark cost estimate. USI was
suggested as they have detailed knowledge related to current actuarial requirements and related
information, as well as the various town contracts as they apply to determining pension benefits. It
would be communicated to USI that the approach would be to recreate a document that would
not require a revision each time there is a change in a Union Contract. The document should be
structured so that things which have a variability (such as labor contracts) are referenced going
forward.
Lastly, how would the Appendix be handled? Should it be added to the front of the document, at
the end or placed on a separate table?
