You are such a generous people. Sure, you complain about the price of peanut butter, the price of gasoline, your property taxes and your income taxes. Actually, you complain a lot, which is why I always pretend to be talking on an imaginary ear phone when I see the American public coming down the street.

However, your generosity toward other people is remarkable. Take your concern for retired police officers and firefighters, for example.

Once upon a time (prior to July 1, 1990), you were decent enough to provide retiring police officers and firefighters with a pension equaling 50 percent of their final pay level. Then, as we can see in Chapter 411 of the Iowa Code, you started feeling chintzy about that and decided that people retiring before 1992 could receive 54 percent of their final pay.

Jeez, you thought, that still doesn’t seem right. So, acting through your Legislature, you brought the pensions up to 60 percent for those retiring before 2000.

“I wonder if we’re being too stingy” was the thought that kept echoing through your troubled mind, and you changed the rules to say: “Upon retirement from service on or after July 1, 2000, a member shall receive a service retirement allowance which shall consist of a pension which equals 66 percent of the member’s average final compensation.”

But records were made to be broken, and now I’m told that a 30-year veteran of public service can retire at 55 and receive 82 percent of his or her salary every year this side of the grave.

It almost makes me wish I could go back in time and become a public servant. Instead, I’m looking at a retirement based on free-sample day at the grocery store.

The one catch to kindly and benevolent pension plans is that somebody has to pay for them. In this case, you.

It doesn’t help the general camaraderie much. A beloved friend, neighbor and firefighter checks out for the last time, and you think: “He served us well, and I hope he has a fine retirement.”

A year later, you’re thinking: “Well, how about that – I see he bought a new bass boat. Terrific. I can’t afford new shoes, and he takes my money and gets a boat. And a fish-finder.”

Des Moines and most other cities have lots of major budget headaches, but this problem ranks right up there. In the view of Gretchen Tegeler, executive director of the Polk-Des Moines Taxpayers Association, “it’s the single most significant issue these cities are dealing with.”

Right now, Tegeler said, the affected cities are paying the equivalent of almost 20 percent of a cop’s or firefighter’s salary into the fund that covers this pension plan. In fiscal year 2014, it’s going to be 38 percent.

“Nobody knows how they’re going to deal with it,” Tegeler said. “Des Moines is going to be really, really devastated.”

A group called the Chapter 411 Plan Board makes recommendations to the Iowa Legislature about changing the percentages – “higher” seems to be the most popular choice – and the Legislature apparently finds their logic unassailable every time.

True, the affected workers don’t qualify for Social Security. But Tegeler contends that “the employers (the cities) are putting in more than they would put into Social Security, and the employees are putting in less.”

This pension situation is the top legislative priority of the cities, Tegeler said, but you wouldn’t have known it during the 2011 session. That’s because the Legislature only deals with pension issues every other year.

Maybe it can fit into the 2012 agenda along with preschool, property taxes, gay marriage and so forth. Now that dove hunting has been sorted out.

Jim Pollock is the managing editor of the Des Moines Business Record. He can be reached by email at jimpollock@bpcdm.com