The City of Doral repeals retirement plan for elected officials

DORAL, FL – The City of Doral repeals retirement plan for elected officials on Wednesday’s council meeting after several past meetings where this item was discussed.

“The fiscal impact over the course of 10 years to our tax paying residents would have been 3.5 million dollars, (if the plan wouldn’t have been repealed)” said Vice Mayor on social media following the passing of a motion that had 3 votes in favor and 2 against it. 

He also mentioned through his social media channels that the money spent if the pension plan, that began in 2021 after an ordinance was approved, “could be better used as a resource for the improvement of our community and the funding of our clubs and projects.”, while also noting it “completely violated Florida Statues.”

This issue was first put on the table this year in February’s council meeting where through a motion, the City of Doral council approved to hire the services of a special counsel to analyze the pension plan, aiming at completely repeal it in the future. 

Then, in April’s council meeting, another motion was approved this time to make a recommendation aimed at the pension committee in order to suspend payments and direct the city attorney to bring back a new ordinance to repeal ordinance 2021-02 about elected officials’ pension.

The final vote occurred finally yesterday in the most recent council meeting where the City of Doral attorney announced Pedro “Pete” Cabrera, Sandra Ruiz, Juan Carlos “JC” Bermudez and Mike Di Pietro, former elected officials, have just served the city with a lawsuit for the payment of June of the now repealed pension and health benefits plan.