Trust of the voters that our elected officials were acting in the best interests of the taxpayers is really at the root of this problem.  A number of years ago, Mayor Ed Austin, who came into office as a democrat and changed to republican during his time in office, signed an agreement with the unions allowing for the current guaranteed rate of return we currently have (it was a really bad agreement), and every mayor since has done nothing to fix the problem.  Another issue is the guaranteed 3% cost of living increase that is paid each and every year and is not based on anything at all when cost of living increases should at least be based on the actual cost of living indexes, and there are other issues as well including spouses benefits which are non existent in the private sector unless the employee does not put money towards them.  So, with the current cost of living increases, in about 20 years, anyone retiring is receiving about twice the amount they retired at whether or not the cost of living has actually increased.  We, as the residents and taxpayers of Duval County, have allowed this to happen by not standing up and protesting the original agreement that got us into this mess to start with, and since mayors are in office for either 4 years or 8 years depending on if they serve 1 or 2 terms, they have no skin in the game and just kick the can down the road for another mayor and city council to deal with.  The time to deal with this situation is NOW, but will Mayor Brown take the hard stance or will he allow the city to go bankrupt or will he allow the residents to lose city services and see huge tax increases as well to feed the monster these mayors have sat down with the union and agreed to via union contracts that put the monster in place.  What our unions have is totally unheard of in the private sector where most people do not have a retirement unless they put the money away from their pay checks and a fairly substantial amount if not all of the money.  The public sector, at one time, did not receive pay equal to the private sector so benefits were important, but now, most public sector workers receive a larger paycheck than their private sector counter parts, so it is time to scale back the benefits and move from the current retirement program to a defined contribution plan or 401K (like the rest of the folks in the private sector have).  We, as taxpayers, had elected public officials agree to contracts the taxpayers of Jacksonville can not afford by any stretch of the imagination.

Increase is no surprise, official says; additional money needed because the  funds' investments did poorly.
An excerpt from the article:

"From 2010 to 2011, both plans’ unfunded liability — the amount  of money the city is expected to need to pay for benefits over the life of the  fund — jumped $126.6 million, to $755.7 million.

For the upcoming year, the report says, the city will need to  contribute $66.7 million to the general employee fund and $12.9 million to the  corrections officer plan.

That amounts to 20.5 percent of general employee payroll and  39.1 percent of correction officer payroll.

That money is not needed for current benefits but is the amount  actuaries have determined will be needed in the future to pay for benefits  employees earned in the past."

Read more at Jacksonville.com:  http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-03-22/story/jacksonville-ho...