Town of Simsbury Defined Contribution Plans

Town of Simsbury Defined Contribution Plans

The Town of Simsbury administers its defined contribution retirement plans for municipal employees through a Retirement Plan Sub-Committee, a public body that convenes regularly to oversee plan design, investment menu construction, and vendor relationships. The committee includes the Finance Director/Treasurer, the Town Manager, and representatives from the Board of Selectmen, Board of Education, and Board of Finance — embedding oversight across the town's governance layers. Founded as a defined contribution alternative to Connecticut's legacy defined-benefit systems, the plans cover general government workers, public safety personnel, and board of education staff. Simsbury's defined contribution architecture offers participants a lineup of mutual funds spanning core asset classes — typically large-cap US equities, international developed markets, fixed income, and capital preservation vehicles such as stable-value or money market funds. The plans operate through a bundled provider relationship, likely with a national recordkeeper like Nationwide, Voya, or MissionSquare, a common structure for Connecticut municipalities that outsources administration, recordkeeping, and participant education under a single contract. Investment menus for plans of this size in Connecticut frequently include target-date series from Vanguard or T. Rowe Price alongside passive core options. The geographic footprint is entirely domestic, concentrated in Simsbury, Connecticut, with plan assets held in US-registered pooled vehicles. The Sub-Committee operates without a full-time dedicated investment staff — oversight is layered onto existing municipal roles, with the Finance Director serving as trustee and the Town Manager as plan administrator. Philanthropic or adjacent operating vehicles are not part of the mandate; these are statutory retirement plans governed by Connecticut General Statutes and IRS code sections for governmental 457(b) and 401(a) plans. In 2024–2025, Chair Todd Burrick and Vice Chair Heather Goetz continued in their leadership roles on the Sub-Committee, per the town's public board appointments, maintaining continuity in plan governance during a period when many Connecticut municipalities are reevaluating retirement offerings amid rising benefit costs. Structurally, Simsbury's DC plans represent a governance model distinct from the pension boards that oversee pooled defined-benefit assets in larger Connecticut cities. Here, the town itself — through its Board of Selectmen and cross-department committee — retains fiduciary authority rather than delegating to a separate pension commission. The plan's exposure is to provider platform quality and fee benchmarking, not asset allocation decisions made by a board with investment discretion. This makes the relationship with the bundled provider the single most consequential operating decision the committee makes, with re-procurement cycles determining participant costs and investment menu breadth for multi-year periods.