Eligibility

Retirement directly from active service with a participating employer is called a service retirement. Your eligibility for retirement depends on your age, your years of service credit and your plan. 

General Plan members are eligible to retire when:

• You are age 50 and have 10 years of eligible service credit. 
• You have 30 years or more of eligible service credit, regardless of your age.
• You have reached age 70, regardless of how many years of service you have.

Safety Plan members are eligible to retire when:

• You are age 50 and have 10 years of eligible service credit.
• You have 20 years or more of eligible service credit, regardless of your age.
• You have reached age 70, regardless of how many years of service you have.

Optimizing Your Retirement
There are several factors that might optimize your monthly retirement benefit:

• Your birthday, or immediately following your birthday, or at any three-month interval after your birthday is a good time to retire because your age is counted in quarter-years for determination of benefits.
• If you plan to retire in the spring, you might want to choose a date no later than April 1^st so that your retirement allowance includes any cost-of-living adjustment.
• If you plan to retire in the winter, you might want to avoid the end of the year, since retiring then would mean that large amounts of vacation, holiday time and sick leave may be cashed out and included in your taxable income for that year. Also, if you retire toward the end of the year, your tax rate for any retirement allowance benefits paid that year will be based on income that includes compensation from your job for most of the year. If you will be in a lower tax bracket after you retire, you might want to wait until January to start receiving benefits.

You may want to plan for the cash-out of leave accruals that will be included in your final compensation.  The cash-outs of leave must be within the final compensation period.  Leave cash-outs received after separation from employment are not included.  For a leave cash-out to be included, you must be entitled to elect to receive a cash- out of that leave prior to termination from employment. Further, only the leave cash-out equal to the amount you are eligible to accrue each year is included.  For example, if you cash out 200 Holiday hours in your final compensation period, only the amount equal to 112 hours will be included in final compensation because one can only accrue 112 hours of holiday time in a year.

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