Neptune Beach council presses actuary, trustees over police pension COLA and asks for clearer 15-year cost table

Neptune Beach councilors spent the longest portion of their meeting pressing the police pension’s advisers for clearer numbers after the pension board adopted a phased COLA that rises to 3 percent in later years.

Pension attorney Pedro Herrera told council the pension fund is a separate legal entity with trustees’ fiduciary duties owed to participants and beneficiaries, not directly to the city. He said the fund receives contributions from members and the city, premium-tax dollars, and largely depends on investment returns. Herrera confirmed the fund has reported what the transcript called a prepaid or overfunded balance in the roughly $700,000 range on valuation reports and that those amounts appeared in valuation documents as credits the city could apply against future required contributions.

Doug Lozen of Foster & Foster, the pension actuary, presented side-by-side 15-year projections showing the city’s contribution as percent of payroll and in dollars with and without a straight 3 percent COLA. Lozen said early-year additional costs to the city are roughly $400,000 a year under the 3 percent scenario, rising toward about $500,000 in later years, and that the prepaid funding shown on the Oct. 1, 2023 valuation remained largely intact as of that valuation date. He agreed to run a revised analysis that reflects the actual phased-in COLA as adopted (1 percent gradually increasing to 3 percent by 2032), and to add a “delta” column showing the cumulative difference the city will pay versus the baseline.

Councilors repeatedly said they wanted the actuary to deliver a concise table the council can read quickly: the actual awarded/phase-in percentages, the city-dollar difference for each fiscal year, and a cumulative 10–15 year delta. Council leaders also asked whether neighboring municipalities benchmarked COLA policies; Lozen said some local plans have COLAs and his firm can search for comparable smaller jurisdictions but cautioned exact apples-to-apples comparisons are limited.

Labor representative Mark Leone of the FOP said from the union perspective COLA is a bargaining matter and should not be imposed without bargaining, and the FOP declined to comment on active negotiations. Sergeant Dustin Camping (Netton/Neptune Beach Police Department) said the police department wanted transparency and was available to answer council questions.

Next steps: the actuary committed to prepare the requested table showing the phased-in award as passed, a delta column, and a clear statement about the remaining prepaid balance as of the most recent valuation; council requested that material before final policy decisions or budget amendments.