redink | Newton MA News and Politics BlogIn recent weeks, Joshua Norman wrote a guest column in the Newton Tab about the city’s mounting pension deficit.

Like many municipalities across the country, the gap between the money flowing into the city’s pension fund vs the money promised to future retirees has been steadily growing for many years.  At some point though, something will have to give.  Either the tax payers eventually will have to ante up the promised monies or the promises made to future retirees will have to change.

These sort of problems are always the hardest ones to address since the chickens don’t come home to roost until some point in the future.  The easiest thing to do is just to keep kicking the can further down the road.

Focusing some attention on these sort of long term financial issues is certainly a good thing.  Kudos to Mr Norman for raising the issue.  Frankly though, I can’t really get my brain around the details of these kinds of financial problems.  That’s partly why these issues tend to be so hard to solve.   The eyes of voters like me tend to glaze over when confronted with balance sheets, actuarial tables and growth charts.

What do you more financially literate readers make of Joshua Norman’s analysis of the pension problem?  What do you make of his recommendations?