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Punta Gorda trustees discuss commingling police and fire trust assets; no formal vote
Summary
Board members discussed a proposal to pool investment assets for the police and fire pension trusts to increase investable assets and reduce costs, but trustees concluded potential benefits are limited and tabled further action pending more information and police-board concurrence.
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. — Trustees considered whether to commingle the investment assets of the city’s police and fire pension trusts to expand investment opportunities and possibly reduce fees, but concluded there was insufficient evidence of a clear benefit and took no formal action.
One trustee introduced the idea after hearing of other plans that pool assets while keeping benefits separate. The trustee said commingling would not combine benefit structures but could create larger asset pools for investment managers.
Jack, the investment representative, told trustees that increasing assets from about $25 million to $50 million would not open materially new investment opportunities at the margin. “If you were going from 25 to a billion, maybe so. But from in that scale, not a lot of investment changes,” Jack said. He cited Maitland’s combined asset-pooling arrangement as an example: the municipality pools assets for investment while the two plans retain separate benefit structures, but the combined board can be larger and sometimes unwieldy.
Jack said potential custodial savings would likely be modest — perhaps a few thousand dollars per year from consolidation of fees — and cautioned that governance and administrative complexity could increase. Trustees noted that any change would require the police board’s sign-on and probably an ordinance or other legal process before implementation.
After discussion, trustees agreed to gather more information and tabled the item for a future meeting. No ordinance amendments or formal motions to combine assets were made.
