SHARON Vacation pay lifts pension for retiring chief of police
A special retirement incentive offered by the city will further sweeten the retirement pot.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARON, Pa. -- Retiring Police Chief Raymond Greene will work only a few days next year, but that's enough to get a salary boost listed in the budget for the chief's position.
Greene will retire at 50 percent of his current year's salary and, at $54,000 this year, he could have retired with an annual pension of $27,000.
Because his retirement won't be official until about Feb. 20, however, his pension will be based on the $60,000 listed for the chief's job in the 2002 budget, said Michael Gasparich, city finance director.
That number includes money to pay Greene for the six weeks of vacation time he earned this year but isn't eligible to take until 2002, Gasparich said.
The new chief, who will be appointed by Mayor-elect David Ryan, will be paid $53,000 for 2002, Gasparich said.
Objection: That raised an objection from Councilman George Gulla at a council meeting Monday.
He said the new chief should start at the same salary paid Greene, noting that Greene was paid the same salary as his predecessor, who happened to be Ryan, who retired in 1998 at $42,000 a year.
No other council members supported Gulla's position, however.
Greene's pension will further be boosted by a special retirement benefit set up by the city that, for a limited time, allowed police officers and firefighters eligible for retirement to count their unused sick time as part of their final year's salary for purposes of calculating their annual pension.
The idea was to get higher-paid employees to retire and bring in new employees at a much lower pay scale, thereby saving the city money.
Gasparich said the benefit should boost Greene's pension to about 70 percent of the $60,000 salary figure or between $41,000 or $42,000 a year.
gwin@vindy.com