Starke Police Officers' Retirement System

Starke Police Officers' Retirement System

The Starke Police Officers' Retirement System is one of three pension plans administered by the City of Starke, Florida, alongside sister funds for firefighters and general municipal employees. The plan was established under Florida law as a defined-benefit vehicle for the city's police force, with contributions drawn from both officer payroll and municipal general-fund allocations. Starke, located in Bradford County southwest of Jacksonville, has a population under 6,000, placing this pension fund among the smaller institutional asset owners in the state. Investment strategy and deployment specifics are not publicly disclosed. Like most Florida municipal police plans, the fund likely operates within the diversification parameters set by state statute, with a portfolio spanning domestic equities, fixed income, and potentially small allocations to real estate or private markets. Many comparable Florida municipal safety-officer plans are structured through the Florida Municipal Pension Trust Fund or similar pooled vehicles, though Starke's exact arrangement is unconfirmed. The plan's liability profile is tied directly to the demographics of a small police department — likely fewer than two dozen active and retired members. The City of Starke's most recent audited financial statements list the police pension fund as a discrete fiduciary entity, but the municipality does not break out detailed investment holdings or performance data publicly. Investment oversight presumably resides with the city's pension board, which Florida law requires to include both city-appointed and officer-elected trustees. No recent board minutes or investment consultant RFPs have been identified in public records. What distinguishes this plan structurally is its scale. As a plan covering a single department in a small municipality, it faces the classic tension between liability-matching precision and cost efficiency. Plans of this size rarely staff dedicated investment teams internally; they typically delegate to a consultant-of-record or participate in state-sponsored pooled funds that aggregate smaller municipal plans to achieve institutional pricing and access.