WE NEED A REAL LIMIT ON RETIREE HEALTH BENEFITS. THIS ISN'T IT.

We’re being told this ordinance will "limit" retiree health benefits. However, ordinance 2026-13 actually creates a new lifetime retiree health benefit for seven high-level and highly-paid positions:

• Borough Manager

• Director of Public Works

• Chief Financial Officer

• Municipal Clerk

• Police Chief*

• Police Captain*

• Police Lieutenant*

  This isn’t limiting the pool, it’s building something new and handing taxpayers the bill

  *These three positions already have negotiated health benefits through their union contracts.

GASLIGHTING 101

At the March 12 council meeting, residents packed the room. Republicans, Democrats, people who had never attended before. They heard that Borough Manager Scott Heck had accumulated over $813,000 in comp time, and that instead of taking it, he would take lifetime health insurance. It was a shakedown! As stated by the Borough Attorney Mark Semeraro at the March 12, 2026 meeting, “However, Mr. Heck does have the right, if this contract is not awarded this way, to walk away with the $813,240.07 and pay for them on his own… By virtue of this contract, Mr. Heck is actually waiving $488,943.94 in comp time that you have concluded he's otherwise entitled to.”

Now we're told the $813,000 and this ordinance are unrelated! That the real reason they are passing this ordinance is to save us money, to "limit" the pool. That's insulting.The Mayor has repeatedly dismissed this scrutiny as an "online narrative." That's the playbook: tell residents what they saw and heard wasn't real. Transparency isn't an "online narrative." It's accountability.

A DEFINITION WRITTEN FOR ONE PERSON

The ordinance does not just create a new benefit. It also rewrites the definition of qualifying service in a way that is hard to explain unless you are trying to fit one specific person's work history. Under the new language, qualifying service can include: 1) Time spent as a part-time elected official, such as a councilperson; 2) Time as a borough employee, and 3) Time that does not need to be continuous.

This appears to have been structured around a single individual's career history while leaving the majority of borough employees who worked full-time for decades without this benefit.

This isn't a retiree benefit plan. It's the Council rewarding one of their own, dressed up as policy.

The Borough Manager has not had a contract since 2014. Lifetime benefits like this are typically negotiated before the work is performed, not created afterward by ordinance. You don't get a new law written around your service history on the way out. Every taxpayer in Ringwood should be asking why this is happening now.