THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 5, 1996 TAG: 9601050452
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Short : 46 lines
The city has inadvertently shortchanged at least 255 retirees because their monthly pension checks were lost somewhere between the printer, the post office and the mailbox.
Both the post office and the city say they don't know what happened to the checks. The city's retirement system says it printed the checks as usual. The post office says it sent out all the checks the city gave it.
But the city does know that 255 retirees have called in the past two days to say they did not receive their money. The checks were sent out Friday, Dec. 28, to be delivered by Saturday Dec. 29, said a city official. By Tuesday, Jan. 2, retirees had realized that something was amiss.
``We just don't know where those 255 checks are,'' said Ted Wilder, executive secretary of the employee retirement system. ``It's embarrassing to say, but we just don't know where they are right now.''
A monthly pension check can range from about $100 to $2,000, Wilder said. The amount depends on how long someone worked at City Hall and what their salary was.
Each month, the city writes about 2,000 retirement checks, about half of which are directly deposited into bank accounts, Wilder said. The missing 255 were among 1,100 sent by mail.
The routine, Wilder said, is for checks to be printed by the data processing office, then hand-stuffed into envelopes by retirement system workers. They are then hand-carried from City Hall to the central post office on Church Street, Wilder said.
The city plans to reprint the checks this morning , Wilder said. After that, retirees can either pick up the checks or have them delivered by mail, Wilder said.
Reprinting the checks involves some work, Wilder said, because the computers have to be reprogrammed to print checks in the correct amounts and to the right individuals. MEMO: Anyone who did not receive a check or who has questions should call
664-4738. by CNB