The Manhasset School has confirmed that it has approximately $280 million of unfunded and un-accrued Retiree Health Care benefits promised to its employees and retirees. This amount is four times the annual school budget of $70 million. The next step is for the district to disclose how it plans to fund this obligation and the effect on future annual budgets.

As a brief summary, our school district has been promising a lucrative lifetime health care to virtually all of its retired workers. It seems no one really knew the cost. At least, no one was telling taxpayers of the cost. A new accounting regulation called GASB-45 requires the school district to find out the cost, tell the taxpayers of the cost, and how it will pay for the cost.

The school district should comply immediately to the spirit of GASB-45 and provide information to taxpayers, after all GASB-45 was effectuated in June 2004, although school districts our size could wait until year 2007 to comply.

Most literature on this topic stresses the importance of addressing this issue as each day, month and year that goes by the unfunded liability grows - in our case annual medical insurance inflation is about 12 percent, thus by next year our liability will grow by over another $30 million to $310 million.

Anyone interested in learning more, I will email a NY Times article- send email to terrivivinetto@aol.com.

Jack Vivinetto