City of Pembroke Pines Firefighters' & Police Officers Pension Fund

City of Pembroke Pines Firefighters' & Police Officers Pension Fund

The fund was established in 1973 as a single-employer defined-benefit plan covering sworn police officers and firefighters in Pembroke Pines, Florida. The City of Pembroke Pines sponsors the plan, and contributions flow from both the municipality and active members. A board of trustees—chaired by Steve Dougherty and administered by James Fisher—governs investment decisions, actuarial oversight, and benefit distributions. The plan's primary obligation is to deliver lifetime retirement income, disability benefits, and death benefits to its participants and their beneficiaries. The fund's investment strategy blends traditional public-market exposure with a deliberate tilt toward real assets and private markets. Documented holdings include commitments to timberland vehicles like the Molpus Woodlands Group Timberland Fund and the AmSouth Timber Fund, as well as an allocation to the Ceres Partners Agricultural Fund. These positions signal a multi-decade real-return orientation uncommon among municipal plans of this size. The portfolio also includes a private credit allocation, expanding the fund's reach beyond standard equity and fixed-income mandates. The geographic focus remains domestic, concentrated in the southeastern United States. The fund participates actively in the Florida Public Pension Trustees Association, a network that provides continuing education and governance training for trustees of local police and fire pension plans. While the precise size of the portfolio is not publicly disclosed, comparable single-city first-responder plans in Florida typically operate in the $200 million to $500 million range. The board's deliberate pacing into niche real assets suggests a patient-liability structure that can tolerate illiquidity. The fund's structural differentiator is its governance model: board-level oversight of direct real-asset allocations by a municipal pension plan without an outsourced chief investment officer arrangement. This architecture requires the trustees themselves—rather than external consultants—to evaluate and monitor timberland, farmland, and private credit fund commitments, an operational burden that shapes both manager selection and portfolio concentration. The absence of a dedicated internal investment staff beyond the plan administrator further concentrates decision-making authority in the board.