Eldred Township nonunion employees will get a bump in their pensions in 2026.

The Eldred Township supervisors recently passed an ordinance amending its nonunion pension plan. The pension plan is administered by the Pennsylvania Municipal Retirement System.

Township secretary Ann Velopolcek explained that full-time township employees put in 4% of their income toward their pension and the township contributes 2.5%.

“When you receive your pension, the amount you get is determined by a formula that they use which is the average of your last three years’ salaries, a pension multiplier, and your years of service,” Velopolcek said. “Up until now, our multiplier has been 1%. The township is reimbursed for their portion by the state up to a certain point for the amount per employee. We weren’t reaching that threshold, so some years ago we started talking about increasing the pension multiplier, and this is it. So it’s going from 1% to 1.8% which is a nice almost double in our pension amount.”

What this means is if, for example, an employee makes $48,000, $50,000 and $51,000 in the last three years of his employment, then the average is $50,000. That is multiplied by 10 (if he worked for the township for 10 years), which would be 500,000. Multiply this by 1.8% (or .018) and it equals $9,000 a year or $750 a month pension. With the 1% multiplier, the amount per month would be $500, Velopolcek explained. The change doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2026, and isn’t retroactive.

Supervisor Scott Clark, chairman of the supervisors, said, “There is no increase to residents or anything like that.”

In other business, Clark said that after the annual audit, the auditor recommended to the township to increase the bond amount of the treasurer to $1.3 million dollars. The bond amount was $800,000. The cost to do the increase was $1,749.

The supervisors also approved the septic fee schedule.

“We’ve been working over the last couple of months to upgrade the fee schedule to compare with what we’re being charged by the engineer,” Supervisor Susan McGinty explained.