Colfax school district reaches end of unfunded pension liability payments
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
by LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — For the past 34 years — since 1989 — the Colfax school district has been making payments on the unfunded pension liability.
The invoice register for the June 19 meeting of the Colfax Board of Education includes a payment of $30,419 for the unfunded pension liability.
William C. Yingst Jr., district administrator, called the attention of school board members to the payment.
Yingst said he believed the $30,419 was the last payment on the unfunded pension liability, or if not the last payment, the next to the last payment because the Colfax school district has been paying that amount twice a year.
Many school districts in Wisconsin, as well as many municipalities or other institutions that have have public employees, have unfunded pension liabilities.
According to information from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, all Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS) unfunded accrued liabilities are an employer cost amortized through additional contributions paid by employers over an extended period of time. The current amortization period was last reset on January 1, 1989, for a period of 40 years.
The liabilities usually are created when there are improvements in WRS retirement benefits that have been authorized by the state Legislature, and eligibility for the benefit improvements is granted retroactively to WRS participating employees for their years of service earned before the effective date of the benefit improvements, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Some school districts and municipalities have kept up with paying the unfunded pension liabilities while others have a large debt that keeps accruing.
According to a 2022 report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Wisconsin and South Dakota had pension assets that exceeded their liabilities in 2019 and were among eight states with declines in unfunded liabilities since the Great Recession (2007 to 2009).
When the unfunded pension liability is paid off, that will represent a $60,000 per year positive cash flow for the Colfax school district, Yingst told the Board of Education.
Yingst noted that in the time he has been district administrator, the unfunded pension liability has been refinanced so that the school district realized a certain amount of savings from the refinancing.
When asked by the Colfax Messenger if there would be some kind of celebration to mark the final payment — similar to the burning of a mortgage — Yingst joked, “We might ring the bell!” in reference to the Norton school bell that has been installed on the roof of the Dee Clark Pavilion and Outdoor Classroom that was dedicated last month.