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CLASSIFYING DEPARTMENT RESPONSES

May 7, 2019

Yesterday we discussed how to determine if you should categorize department responses into fire or ambulance. The next question is, how do you determine if the call is an ambulance call or a fire call? There is no 100% correct answer – it is a case-by-case basis that must be determined locally. If the determining…

TRACKING AMBULANCE VS FIRE CALLS

May 6, 2019

In the New York State LOSAP Point System, the department responses category stipulates that calls should be broken into two categories – emergency rescue and first aid squad (ambulance) calls and “all other” calls. A question was raised about if calls be split into the categories, and if so, how. In this post, we’ll handle…

DB VS DC – ONE APPROACH

May 3, 2019

Recently, some questions have been raised about which plan is better – the DB or the DC plan. There are a lot of factors to consider when making this determination, and the assumptions you use play a major role. I’m going to look at one example. Let’s consider comparing a $20 DB plan and a…

CAN YOU REQUIRE MORE THAN 50 POINTS TO EARN SERVICE CREDIT?

May 2, 2019

A question was raised today about the 50-point threshold here in NY State, and if a sponsor can require more than 50 points to earn service credit and a service award benefit. According to the Office of the State Comptroller, the answer is no. Opinion 2001-2 states, in part: Section 217(c) of the GML provides…

ELIMINATE THE PRACTICE OF SIGNING OTHERS INTO ACTIVITIES

April 30, 2019

The recently released report on the Office of the State Comptroller audit of the Jamesport Fire District (you can download it below) has the following to say regarding signing others in for activities: 120 points were supported by attendance records where the member didnot sign themselves in. Instead, the members were marked as present bysomeone…

LATEST STATE LOSAP AUDIT – PART 2

April 29, 2019

Last time we looked at a recent audit report released by the State Comptroller. Here is another section of the report, regarding the Miscellaneous Category: Miscellaneous – GML authorizes a service award program to provide points for“miscellaneous activities,” with one point per activity (up to a maximum of 15points). For this purpose, GML defines “miscellaneous…

LATEST STATE AUDIT ON LOSAP

April 26, 2019

The Office of the State Comptroller recently released the latest LOSAP audit – this time the audit was of the Jamesport Fire District. You can download a copy at the end of this post. There are several things to react to here, which we will do in some later posts. But off the top, the…

ADJUSTING THE INTEREST RATE

April 24, 2019

This post is a piggy-back of the last post – go back one day to read that (you may want to read a few of the prior posts as well). We saw in the last post that is we assumed a 2.5% rate of return on the investments but consistently earned only 1.5%, contributions would…

FAILING TO MEET EARNINGS TARGET

April 23, 2019

Yesterday we looked at a simple scenario to help illustrate how the funded ratio increases towards 100% over time as contributions are made and earnings are realized. It looked like the following, where the first number is the assets of the plan, the second number is the present value of accrued benefits, and the third…

FUNDED RATIO

April 22, 2019

The last two days we’ve discussed the time value of money, and mortality. Both of these concepts are key to developing the annual contribution that the sponsor of a DB LOSAP must make each year. They are also used to determine the present value of all of the promised benefits, which is a key component…