Linda Mason, who handles Jasper’s municipal court clerk duties as well as property taxes and business licenses, talks about city employees’ unhappiness with a change in retirement plans during the April meeting of the Jasper Board of Mayor and Aldermen.JASPER, Tenn. – For months, city leaders in Jasper have been finalizing the procedures to switch the town’s retirement plan with Nationwide Insurance to the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System.
City employees, frustrated with the lump sums they are set to receive from the Nationwide plan, worked together to come up with a proposal for the town’s leaders.
At the Jasper Board of Mayor and Aldermen’s April meeting, Linda Mason, who handles Jasper’s municipal court clerk duties as well as property taxes and business licenses, said the reason almost 30 city employees showed up at the meeting was simple.
“We, as employees, have been faithful to the town of Jasper,” she said. “For years, through the best and the worst of times, when budgets have been tight, when budgets have been plentiful, we’ve been here.”
Mason said employees were recently “disappointed to say the least” about the results of the town’s switch to the TCRS.