West Palm Beach Fire Department Retirement and Pension Guide

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

How your benefit is calculated

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. If you were planning on a heavy overtime year lifting your pension, it will not.

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.

Your situation	BackDROP interest
Reached normal retirement 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.

Not every firefighter is in the same plan

Two of these four departments are in the state system and two are in local city plans. Same job, different rules about when you can go and who can change them.