100 years ago in The Record
Sunday, Jan. 6, 1918
The Troy police department pension fund will “exist in name only” by June 1 if the city doesn’t take action to replenish it, the city’s Police Benevolent and Protective Association claims. The PBPA meets tonight to appoint a committee to lobby Mayor Cornelius F. Burns for “the enactment of a law similar to that which governs police funds in other municipalities,” The Record reports. According to a report released by public safety commission John F. Cahill, the pension fund has dwindles from $5,180.67 in 1917 to $1,948.37. The fund pays out pensions at half-pay to 25 retired policemen. The number of pensioners has been increasingly recently while several traditional revenue streams have dried up. “Troy’s fund has been maintained by every member of the force paying at least $1 a month; by two per cent of the excise receipts for the city; and by special contributions made by private citizens as a reward for some act of a member of the department,” our reporter explains. Until “four or five years ago,” the pay policemen received for “special work at weddings, receptions, dances, fairs, baseball games, basketball contests, etc.” was turned over automatically to the pension fund. A recent policy change designated these assignments as off-duty work, for which policemen were entitled to keep all money they earned. As our writer notes, “This cut down the receipts of the fund materially.”
More recently, the state government’s effort to reduce the number of saloons further handicapped the pension fund. Many saloons were forced to close last year after the state legislature passed a law limiting the number of saloons in each municipality to one for every 750 people. The move cut the Troy pension fund’s receipts from excise taxes by $900 last year. An increase in the liquor license fee this year is estimated to cost the pension fund an additional $400.
What specific measures the PBPA will request from the mayor is unclear from our report, but the idea certainly will be to provide the pension fund with a more secure revenue stream.
Warmer here
It’s still too cold for a thaw, but the Record reading area appears finally to have escaped the worst of the deep freeze that has gripped the Northeast since late December. The Sunday Budget reports a temperature of 18 degrees above zero at 2 a.m. this morning, after a high yesterday of 22, and publishes a poem to celebrate.
“Joyful news, ring the bells,/Shout the glad tidings far and near;/The weather forecast for to-day/Is that it will be warmer here,” the writer rhapsodizes.