Current Employees and Deferred Members

Because members close to retirement need the most assistance and require the most staff time and resources when preparing to make the transition to retired life, the Retirement Department’s policy is to provide an estimate of retirement benefits to individuals who are within six months of retirement from their position. These requests are limited to once per calendar year and are only provided to those members who meet the six-month criteria.

If you are not within six months of retirement, you can use our online Benefits Calculator to get an approximate estimate of your retirement benefits. The online Benefits Calculator allows members to work up their own projections based on individual assumptions of salary increases and variable retirement dates.

If you are not comfortable using our online Benefits Calculator, you may contact the Retirement Department, and a staff member will walk you through the process or produce an estimate using the calculator for you. These estimates will be very close to but will not exactly match the final estimates.

Your estimate request must be written in writing using the Retirement Estimate Request Form and can be faxed, emailed, mailed, or sent by interoffice to the Retirement Department. Benefit estimates may take up to four weeks to complete.

Should you become totally and permanently disabled, you may be eligible for a disability pension, provided you have at least five years of City service. The five-year eligibility requirement is not applicable if your disability is the result of an on-the-job injury. An independent, Board-appointed physician must find you permanently and totally incapacitated either physically or mentally, for the performance of duty in order for you to qualify for a disability retirement. For more information, please refer to the Tacoma Municipal Code 1.30.630.

Disability Retirement Application Procedures and Criteria for Disability Retirement Tacoma Municipal Code 1.30 Retirement & Pensions

Applying for Disability Retirement

The first step is to request a Disability Retirement Estimate. Retirement staff prepares this estimate, as
well as a regular retirement estimate if you are eligible for service retirement, so that you can see how a
disability retirement benefit compares to a regular or early retirement benefit.

If you wish to proceed with the disability application, you must submit an
Application for Disability Retirement Part 1 and Application for Disability Retirement Part 2.

Part 1 of the application requests that you, the member, to describe the physical and/or mental
condition or conditions that you assert to be disabling and to sign a release authorizing the Retirement
staff to access and release any medical information necessary to process the disability retirement
application.

Part 2 of the application, which you submit to the treating doctors requests the treating doctor to
transmit the relevant records to the Retirement Office so that the Retirement Office can submit the
records to an independent medical examiner (IME). You will bear any costs associated with obtaining
your relevant medical records and transmitting the records to the Retirement Office. You are
responsible for obtaining your relevant medical records from the treating doctors.

The IME will be provided with Part 1 and Part 2 of the Disability Retirement Application, including any
job classification descriptions reviewed by the treating doctors and including any of your medical
records the treating doctor(s) provided to the Retirement Office. The IME will be instructed to answer a
series of questions and to provide a written report to the Retirement Office for the purpose of
establishing whether or not you meet the TERS criteria for disability retirement.

Board Approval

Usually, within a month of your IME, we will receive the written report from our doctor(s).

The Retirement Board has appointed a Disability Committee to review the doctors’ reports and make
recommendations to the Retirement Board about each application. The final decision regarding your
disability retirement application will be based upon the evaluation of the IME.

If the Disability Committee and Retirement Board approve your application, your disability retirement
will become effective on the first day of the month in which you are eligible. The Retirement Office will
contact you regarding any additional paperwork necessary to get your retirement set up.

If your application is denied, you will have an opportunity to re-apply within six months but must provide new medical information or diagnosis.

If you have ever worked for the State of Washington, other municipalities or agencies in Washington State, or the cities of Seattle or Spokane, you might be able to claim portability.

Portability is often misunderstood.

In short, claiming portability allows you to combine certain pension benefits between the Tacoma Employees’ Retirement System (TERS) and the other portable pension systems.

Portability does not mean that your contributions in the other pension system are transferred to TERS. You are only entitled to a pension from each respective system based on the number of years that you worked in each system; however, salary information is shared between the two pension systems. In addition, the number of years that you have worked in each system is combined to determine vesting rights.

If you withdrew your funds from a portable pension plan, you may be able to buy back your service time within a specified time period if you become a member of a portable plan such as TERS. Contact the portable system to inquire whether or not you can buy back time in their system, which could give you portability rights.

Please see our Portability Flyer for more information.

Additional Information can be found on the Washington State Department of Retirement Systems website.

• Deferred Compensation Plan