PEORIA, Ill. — The Peoria City Council approved an early retirement incentive (ERI) Tuesday night in an effort to aid the city’s budget amendment.
The incentive applies to employees in the Illinois Municipal Retirement System.
Council-member Zach Oyler said giving an incentive to tenured employees will assist with moving forward with the budget and adding diversity to the city’s staff.
“A lot of our diversity efforts have happened in the last several years and with having to take the lay-off route we eliminate a lot of those efforts,” Oyler said.
City Manager Patrick Urich said the early retirement incentive does not include members of the police and fire departments.
“Police officers have a separate statutory pension system, and firefighters have a separate statutory pension system,” Urich said.
Council-member Rita Ali said the police and fire departments are areas where the city struggles with having a diverse staff.
“So the area that we struggle with, police and fire, is not included within the ERI,” Ali said.
Ali said for fire the diversity percentage is 15% and 18% for police.
The ERI will have a 12 month window where employees can decide to retire.
While the council approved the ERI, discussion for the voluntary separation incentive (VSI) was deferred until the next council meeting.
“Any employee that had 20 years of service would be able to basically take that retirement and get $25,000 of health insurance,” Urich said.
Employees would have to put in their retirement by August 14 and retire before August 31.
