As often occurs in local reporting, this article is incomplete. A key portion of a government or school employee's retirement package is calculated using the average salary for the last few years. What many government and education employees do is not use any sick, holiday, or vacation time during this period so that when those unused days accumulate and are paid, it can increase one's salary over 50%, and significantly increase the amount of long term retirement checks. Nothing wrong with that, I would do the same. If you're going to inform us about a change in staffing of fire and police departments, then do the extra research to give a complete picture of how retirement benefits are calculated, and how this added sick pay business, puts more pressure on our never enough city budget.
p albr
Northeast side
Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.
