City of Chicago employees and retirees: Rahm’s budget will cost you plenty.

You may have missed it on Friday when Rahm released his budget promises because an alderman went off message and said property taxes would go up no matter what. That made the headlines.

But Rahm’s real message is that city employees and retirees will carry the burden of budget mismanagement.

The five core principals (sic) to reform include:

• Slow the growth of pension costs by reforming the cost of living formula. In the agreements for three pensions funds reached last year, we worked with organized labor to shift cost of living adjustments from a formula based on compound interest to a simple interest approach. This means that retirees will continue to see an increase in their pension payments each year, but at a somewhat slower growth rate tied to inflation. Our pension reform agreements have also included a series of one-year freezes of cost of living adjustments that allow the funds to catch their breath.

• Maintain the current retirement age for public employees. Though retirement age is a common reform pushed by governments across the country, Rahm believes that our hard-working public servants have planned on retiring and are entitled to the security that they have depended upon for years.

• Gradually increase employee contributions. While we will ask taxpayers to pay more, we also ask current employees to pay a little extra towards their retirements. In the reforms we worked with labor to pass last year, active employees contribute an average of roughly $300 a year more towards their retirements. This same commitment from the employees of the remaining three funds will make a significant contribution toward the solvency of their funds.

• Protect retirees with lower pension income. To ensure we protect those struggling to make ends meet, we exempted retirees with annuities of $22,000 a year or less from certain cost of living formulas. We must continue to protect this segment of retirees in future agreements.

• Phase in funding increases. We must restructure pension payments in a way that allows the City’s taxpayers to ease into making the required payments. Just as we’re asking employees to increase their contribution slowly and steadily over time, we would ask the same of taxpayers. After decades of politicians kicking the can down the road and underfunding public employee pensions, we cannot ask taxpayers to bear the burden of a massive balloon payment all in one year. This shock would decimate the city’s budget and the Chicago economy.

If you read it and miss anything about taxing Rahm’s wealthy friends, it is not a reading problem.

It isn’t there.