\t\t\t\tAround 1,000 Houston employees accepted the city\u2019s voluntary early retirement incentive, as part of Mayor John Whitmire\u2019s efforts to cut down the city\u2019s $330 million budget shortfall, earlier this year.<\/p>\n
However, some former city employees said they haven\u2019t received their payments yet, despite being told their checks would arrive 30 to 60 days after May 1, according to the mayor\u2019s executive order<\/a>.<\/p>\n What\u2019s happening?<\/strong><\/p>\n Council member Edward Pollard told Community Impact a few days before the Aug. 20 City Council meeting that he received calls from a former city employee who accepted the retirement incentive, but hasn\u2019t received her pension after the promised 30 to 60 days.<\/p>\n \u201cShe said to date [Aug. 20], they still have not received their payments,\u201d Pollard said. \u201cI just believe that as a city, if we make a promise to our employees, there has to be an expectation that we will follow through on whatever that promise was.\u201d<\/p>\n When Pollard asked Whitmire during the Aug. 20 City Council meeting about the holdup, Whitmire said part of the issue was that the Houston Municipal Employees Pension System, which is responsible for retirement benefits for city of Houston employees and operates independently from the city, has \u201ca lack of staffing and a lack of urgency by the board.\u201d<\/p>\n Community Impact reached out to the Houston Municipal Employees Pension System for comment, but did not hear back by press time.<\/p>\n However, Whitmire said 500 retirement payments are expected to roll out this week, with 300 payments sent out last week and 200 to be sent out this week, from Aug. 25 to 31.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of that should have been logistically coordinated at the very beginning,\u201d Pollard said. \u201cAll of the parameters should have been put in place to ensure that there was enough capacity, personnel and resources necessary to process those payments within 30 to 60 days.\u201d<\/p>\n Steven David, the mayor\u2019s chief strategy and operations officer, said in an Aug. 13 post on X<\/a>, formerly known as Twitter, that the mayor\u2019s office met with the pension system multiple times and offered \u201cunfettered help.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey told us they had it under control and needed nothing,\u201d David wrote. \u201cWe started beating down their doors today. It will be resolved quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n The background<\/strong><\/p>\n In March, the mayor\u2019s office sent out a letter<\/a> offering the voluntary retirement incentive to help cut a $330 million budget shortfall the city was facing at the time, according to previous Community Impact reporting<\/a>. Of the 3,047 eligible employees, 1,070 employees accepted Whitmire\u2019s voluntary retirement program that offered both financial support and continued access to health care benefits.<\/p>\n Houston Public Works had the most employees accept the retirement offer, with 342 of 977 eligible employees leaving. The Houston Police Department had 109 of its 329 eligible employees accept the offer.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are not just regular employees. These are retirees, which means that they have been here in the city for a long time,\u201d Pollard said. \u201cThey have served our city well, and we need to make sure that we serve them well as they transition.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Around 1,000 Houston employees accepted the city\u2019s voluntary early retirement incentive, as part of Mayor John Whitmire\u2019s efforts…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":176202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[5310,7988,4345,12176,700,358,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-176201","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-city-council","9":"tag-employees","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-mayor","12":"tag-retirement","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115093427023128420","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}