Chris Roque
Describe the public policy and jurisdictional level to which it belongs
What are the undesirable social conditions relating to this public policy?
Which societal goals do the societal conditions reflect? Who are the players?
What are the positive and negative points of this issue?
What is your opinion on the issue?
The policy is that the pensions of police officers and firemen are too costly and they are taking a large amount of local budgets which is bad for us, the tax payers. This issue is accruing in New York City
The undesirable social conditions relating to this public policy are the fact that the pensions are affecting the availability of the tax payers money. If this continues to grow then a huge amount of our money will be going to the pensions of retired officer and firemen. Westchester County's pension costs are expected to more than double over the next five years to $163 million in 2015, from $77 million this year. Yonkers' cost will rise to $50.1 million in 2012, from $31.3 million in 2010.
This policy reflects the usage of our money on a large amount of pensions. If we were to stop the pensions we would benefit the state more and also benefit the people more. The players are Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone, Detective Keith Olsen, and president of the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association, any police officer that is retired and also us the people who pay tax.
The negatives are the fact that a lot of the tax money are going into the pensions, and with that, causing us to not rebuild our community or for that our city. The positives are all for the officiers and firemen, they are getting a large amount of money for what they did in their past. I agree with this policy because I feel that the jobs of policemen are jobs that not anyone can do, if anything they should get more money because they are risking their lifes trying to protect us from harm.
http://www.lohud.com/article/20110213/NEWS01/102130362/Police-fire-pensions-gap-widens