HOUSTON —The city should consider privatizing its ambulance service, reducing survivors’ pension benefits, turning over libraries and other operations to the county, taking one firefighter off each truck, requiring employees to pay more for health insurance, imposing a blight tax on neglected foreclosed homes and scrapping cost-of-living allowances to pensioners, according to a list of suggestions sent to Mayor Annise Parker by an advisory group Tuesday.
The city’s Long-Range Financial Management Task Force was created by City Council last summer to come up with ideas to keep the city solvent in the face of rising health care and pension costs, unpredictable revenues, aging roads and pipes, $13.1 billion in debt and the increasing demand for services.
The group’s final report, to be presented to Council on Wednesday, does not recommend any particular course of action among its 110 alternatives. However, it contains a sobering warning of what could happen if the city does nothing. Under a worst-case scenario devised by city finance officials, the city would spend $11.3 billion more than it takes in the next two decades.
Full story: Report: City should trim pensions, privatize EMS