You're a member of the City of St. Cloud Police Officers' & Firefighters' Retirement System — a defined-benefit municipal plan under Chapters 175 and 185, Florida Statutes, administered by its own Board of Trustees. It is a separate system from the Florida Retirement System (FRS), with its own formula, eligibility rules, DROP terms, and cost-of-living adjustment. This article walks through the mechanics your projections are built on, with the plan's Summary Plan Description (SPD) as the source for every rule.
The benefit formula
Your annual benefit at normal retirement is your Average Final Compensation × your accrual percentage, where the accrual percentage is built from your years of credited service:
- Police Officer members: 3.75% per year of credited service.
- Firefighter members: 3.75% per year for service before October 1, 2020, and 4.0% per year for service on or after that date. Each rate applies only to the years earned in its period — the two bands are added together.
Unused sick leave adds to the percentage: your accrued sick hours at termination divided by your position's annual scheduled work hours, credited at your terminal accrual rate. The SPD's own example: 1,000 sick hours ÷ 2,080 scheduled hours × 3.75% adds about 1.80% to the benefit percentage.
The total benefit is capped at 100% of your Average Final Compensation.
Average Final Compensation
AFC is one-twelfth of the average annual salary of your best 5 years out of the last 10 years of credited service — or your career average, if that is greater. Salary means your W-2 compensation plus deferred items, with two limits for service after October 1, 2019: overtime counts up to 300 hours per year, and payouts of unused sick or annual leave are excluded (amounts accrued before 2019 are grandfathered).
When you can retire
- Normal retirement: age 55 with 10 years of credited service — or, at any age, 20 years of credited service for Firefighter members / 25 years for Police Officer members.
- Early retirement: age 50 with 10 years of credited service. The benefit is reduced by 3% for each year commencement precedes the date you would have reached normal retirement had you kept working — which, for many members, is the 20- or 25-year service mark rather than age 55. Alternatively, a member who separates can defer commencement to that date and receive the unreduced amount.
- Vesting: 10 years of credited service. A member who leaves earlier receives a refund of their own contributions.
DROP
At normal-retirement eligibility you can enter the Deferred Retirement Option Program: your benefit is frozen and, instead of being paid to you, accumulates in a DROP account while you keep working — up to 5 years for Police Officer members and 8 years for Firefighter members. You elect how the account is credited: a fixed 6.5% annual rate, or the fund's net investment return (the plan permits one change of election). The balance is paid out when you terminate employment. The fund's actual future return isn't knowable in advance, so this tool models the market-linked election only at a rate you assume — the same footing as every other assumed return here.
Cost-of-living adjustment
Benefits increase 1% per year beginning 5 years after retirement. Years spent in DROP count toward the 5-year wait, so a member who spends 8 years in DROP sees increases during the later DROP years. Members who leave with a vested deferred benefit (terminated-vested) are not eligible for the COLA.
What you pay in
Member contributions are 5.55% of salary for Police Officer members and 12.62% for Firefighter members. If you leave before vesting, those contributions are refundable.
The payment form behind every number here
Every amount this tool shows is the plan's normal form: 10 years certain and life — payable for your lifetime, with at least 120 monthly payments made in any event. The plan also offers optional forms (life only, joint-and-survivor at several percentages, a Social Security leveling option, and a partial lump sum), but those are converted from the normal form by the plan's actuary using factors that are not published — so this tool does not model them. If you're comparing against an estimate from the plan's actuary for a different payment form, the amounts will differ because the form differs. There's a full article on this: the payment form behind your numbers.
Where these rules can change
Your benefits are set by city ordinance and collective bargaining, not by the Florida Legislature — the SPD is updated as ordinances amend the plan. For the authoritative version of any rule here, the SPD and the plan's Board of Trustees are the sources.