Four Departments, Two Completely Different Pension Systems

• Plan: Florida Retirement System, Special Risk Class
• Size: 2,057 budgeted full time positions, FY2026, up from 1,837 in FY2025
• Union: IAFF Local 2928

A legacy exception worth knowing about

A small closed group of members who came over from the old Lantana and Lake Worth fire departments are still in those cities' Chapter 175 plans, not FRS. If you were hired by Lantana or Lake Worth before the merger, your rules are different from the man standing next to you on the same rig.

The retiree insurance fund that is not a pension

The Palm Beach County Firefighters' Retirement Insurance Fund is a 501(c)(9) VEBA trust holding roughly $122 million in assets as of FY2024. It pays retirees a monthly cash benefit to offset health premiums, and it exists because the County offers retirees the same medical plans as active employees with no premium subsidy at all. The Board voted in November 2018 to raise the benefit by $75 a month effective January 2019.

This is separate from your FRS pension and separate from the state Health Insurance Subsidy. If you are building a retirement income picture and you have not counted it, you are leaving money out of your own math.

• Plan: Florida Retirement System, Special Risk Class
• Size: More than 890 professionals
• Union: IAFF Local 4321, PERC Certification 1466
• Contract cities: Weston, Pembroke Park, Cooper City, Lauderdale Lakes, Dania Beach, Deerfield Beach, West Park and Hallandale Beach, plus most unincorporated Broward, Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport and Port Everglades

The legacy Dania Beach group

Firefighters who became BSO employees on January 29, 2011 when Dania Beach contracted out remain in the closed City of Dania Beach Police and Firefighters Retirement System, not FRS. BSO contributes to that plan quarterly under a 2011 agreement. There were about 26 active members left as of 2021.

BSO retiree insurance, and a carve out that favors you

BSO closed its retiree medical discount and its retiree stipend to employees hired on or after October 1, 2007, except Fire Rescue. Fire Rescue remains eligible. The stipend is 2% of the HMO premium rate per year of BSO service, excluding contract city time, so twenty years with family coverage equals 40% of the HMO family rate.

Two things to understand about it. It is locked in at retirement and never increases. And it ends the last day of the month you become Medicare eligible or turn 65, whichever comes first. If you go at 55, that is a ten year benefit, not a lifetime one, and then you are on your own until Medicare.

• Plan: City of West Palm Beach Firefighters' Pension Fund, a local special act plan under Chapter 175. Not FRS.
• Administrator: The Resource Centers, LLC, Palm Beach Gardens
• Union: IAFF Local 727
• Size: 284 active members, 218 retirees, as of September 30, 2025
• Board meetings: Monthly, first Thursday at 1:30, Fire Station 5

The same bill also:

• Keeps member contributions at 13.1%, but specifies that the two points above 11.1% must purchase eligibility for post retirement health insurance
• Sets duty disability at the greater of 65% of final average salary or the accrued benefit
• Makes total and permanent disability from cancer an irrebuttable presumption of line of duty, tracking Florida Statute 112.1816, and extends duty presumptions to death benefits
• Raises the IRC 415(b) maximum annual benefit from $160,000 to $280,000
• Allows partial lump sum withdrawals from annuities and from the BackDROP balance, but locks your retirement option once the first deposit is made or the first check is cashed

Normal retirement

Any one of: age 50 with 15 years, age 55 with 10 years, or 26 years at any age.

The multiplier, which is complicated

Service before May 13, 2012, and all service for members already eligible for normal retirement on that date, accrues at 4.0% per year. Service after that date for everyone else accrued at 3.0%, now 3.2%. There is a floor of 2.75% per year and a cap of 92% of salary.

Be aware that the House staff analysis describes the accrual history differently from the special act text, showing 2.68% for 2011 to 2017 service and 3.0% plus 1% per year beyond 26 years after 2017. Get your own accrual confirmed in writing by the plan before you build anything around a number.

Average final compensation

Members not eligible for normal retirement on May 13, 2012 use their 3 best years. Members who were eligible, or with a BackDROP date on or before October 1, 2011, use their 2 best years.

Overtime is excluded. Lump sum leave payouts are excluded. That is a real difference from FRS, which counts 500 hours of annual leave.

Vesting

Ten years. Under ten years you get your contributions back with no interest.

DROP is closed. BackDROP is what you have.

The forward DROP took no new entrants after the 2003 to 2006 contract. The operative mechanism is BackDROP, where your benefit is computed as if you had terminated up to 60 months earlier. Eligibility is age 53 with 18 years, age 58 with 13 years, or 26 years at any age.

If you reached normal retirement	BackDROP interest
On or before May 13, 2012	8.25%
Retirement after 5/13/2012 and before 10/1/2015	4.0%
Elections after October 1, 2015	May elect the Fund's actual return, capped at 8% with a 0% floor

COLA

There is no conventional across the board COLA for the current tier. There is a discretionary supplemental distribution each April 1, funded only when investment returns clear set thresholds, and a legacy escalator for Plan A recipients tied to a fifth step firefighter's salary. Retirees on the old escalator are not eligible for the supplemental distribution. Plan your income assuming no reliable inflation adjustment.

Your Chapter 175 share account

State premium tax money used to buy down your contribution rate, which is how it fell from 25% to 13.1%. That phase ended. Since 2018, 100% of Chapter 175 premium tax money goes into individual member share accounts. The state paid $2,481,741 in FY2024, and none of it currently offsets City cost. Your share account is a bookkeeping entry rather than a segregated account, and it is real money at separation. Know your balance.

Funded status, and why you will see three different numbers

Source	Funded ratio	Unfunded liability
FL Division of Retirement fact sheet	78.54%	$91.2 million
GRS, the plan actuary	about 76.6%	$95.7 million
GRS, after the HB 4065 increase	about 75.4%	$102.0 million
House staff analysis	82.9%	uses a liability measure neither actuary uses

All as of the September 30, 2024 valuation. The actuary's figures are the ones to rely on. Assumed return 7.50%. The fund returned 25.51% in FY2023-24.

• Plan: City of Hollywood Firefighters' Pension Fund, Chapter 175 local law plan, Hollywood Code Chapter 33. Not FRS.
• Administrator: Five member Board of Trustees; Foster & Foster is actuary and plan administrator
• Union: IAFF Local 1375

There is no dedicated plan website. Documents are posted on the City site under Annual Financial & Pension Fund Reports.

You have to understand 2011 to understand your plan

In May 2011 the City declared financial urgency under Florida Statute 447.4095. Firefighter pay was cut 15%, hours increased, overtime pay eliminated. Starting pay fell to $12.83 an hour.

On September 13, 2011, on about 14% turnout, voters approved the pension measure 54.9% to 45.1%. The implementing ordinance froze the benefit structure as of September 30, 2011 and built a lower one for service after. It changed how average final compensation was computed, delayed the normal retirement date, eliminated COLAs going forward, eliminated the DROP, and removed Chapter 175 premium tax money as a future funding source.

Then came years of litigation. In January 2014 the Fourth District Court of Appeal reversed PERC and remanded, holding that the proper standard for financial urgency is the Florida Supreme Court's Chiles test. The pension board sued the City in 2012. The City sued its own pension boards in 2015 and 2017. Retirees sued over the 13th check in Chard and in Kellerman.

In March 2019, after roughly two years of bargaining, a three year contract was reached and the Commission unanimously approved a $2.5 million pension restoration. Starting pay went from $12.83 to $22.27 an hour.

What the restoration did not do was make Tier 2 equal to Tier 1. Fifteen years later, if you were hired on or after July 16, 2009, you still have a lower benefit cap, a five year averaging period instead of three, a lower overtime cap, a higher contribution rate, different COLA mechanics, and no DROP at all.

The two tiers

Tier 1 is hired before July 16, 2009. Tier 2 is hired on or after.

	Tier 1	Tier 2
Multiplier, service before 7/7/2026	3.3%, max 86%	3.2%, max 80%
Multiplier, service on or after 7/7/2026	3.4%	3.4%
Average final compensation	3 highest years	5 highest years, or 5 highest consecutive within the last 10 if hired on or after 10/1/2011
Overtime includable	300 hours	200 hours
Employee contribution	9.85%	11.35%
DROP	Yes	No
COLA	2% per year, starting the later of 3 years after benefits begin or 1 year after DROP ends	2.5% every two years, starting 2 years after retirement

Floor for both: not less than 2.75% per year averaged over your whole service. Vesting for both: 10 years. Benefit paid for life with 120 payments guaranteed, and 50% to a surviving spouse if married at least two years before death. Hired on or before July 3, 2013: 70% of your cash payout of accumulated annual leave counts toward average final compensation.

DROP, Tier 1 only

Age 50 with 10 years, or 23 to 30 years of service. You must elect no later than 30 years of credited service or you forfeit it. Maximum eight years, and DROP plus credited service cannot exceed 33 years. Interest is a fixed 8.0% option if you entered before July 16, 2009, a fixed 6.0% option if on or after, or a variable account at a rate set by the Board. Fixed rate balances keep their rate after separation. No fees.

Whether the 23 year DROP threshold was conformed to the new 21 year normal retirement date in July 2026 is not clear from the ordinance title. Ask the Board directly.

The Planned Retirement Benefit, and the funded ratio trap inside it

Tier 2 members have no DROP, but there is a Reformed Planned Retirement Benefit effective May 2018, maximum eight years, 33 years of combined city service. You cannot draw both DROP and RPRB.

Under the older PRB, earnings credited to your account are reduced based on the plan's funded ratio. Below 80% funded, a slice of earnings above 4% is withheld by the plan. At 80% to under 90% the withheld slice shrinks. At 90% and above the exclusions end. Members share negative year losses. In other words, your personal account performance is tied to how well funded your pension plan is. That is unusual and it is worth understanding before you elect.

The 13th check

Payable each September 30 only when the fund's twelve month return exceeds the 8% assumption, from the excess up to a 10% return, so a two point maximum pool divided into equal shares. Tier 1 members who retired or entered DROP on or after July 16, 2009 are capped at $12,000 a year. And the condition at the center of two lawsuits: no payment at all until the system recovers all aggregate losses from actuarial experience beginning October 1, 2008.

Funded status

Valuation date October 1, 2025
Actuarial accrued liability	$543.5 million
Actuarial value of assets	$379.1 million
Unfunded liability	$164.4 million
Funded ratio, actuarial value	about 69.8%
Required contribution, FY2027	$30.9 million, or 103.9% of payroll

That has improved substantially from about 61.9% at the October 2021 valuation. It is still the weakest of the four plans here. For perspective on what a two point miss on the return assumption does: at 5.50% the unfunded liability would be $276.7 million and the funded ratio about 57.8%. At 9.50% it would be $86.5 million and about 81.4%. The plan assumes 7.50%.

A 2021 Reason Foundation commentary described Hollywood as carrying over $1 billion in combined pension and retiree health care debt, including roughly $530 million unfunded retiree health care paid as you go rather than prefunded. Reason is a libertarian think tank that advocates closing defined benefit plans, so read it as advocacy. The retiree health care point stands, and it is the one most people miss.