In Wilson v. Board of Tr. of Police and Firemen's Ret. Sys., 322 N.J.Super. 477, 731 A.2d 513 (App.Div.1998), the Court reviewed the Board's decision not to include longevity pay as compensation under this statute. The ordinance and contract at issue provided that police officers could opt to include longevity pay in their bi-weekly salary payments after completing twenty years of public employment. Id. at 479-80, 731 A.2d 513. The Court held that this salary structure improperly attempts, based on the employee's years of service, to increase the employer's established salary. While the twenty-year distinction is phrased in general terms and applies to all employees with twenty or more years of service, its application to individual retirees reveals that the twenty-year option is an individual salary adjustment granted primarily in anticipation of retirement. Id. at 481, 731 A.2d 513. The Court recognized that the type of compensation excluded pursuant to the statute "is not limited to salary increases granted in the year immediately preceding retirement." Id. at 482, 731 A.2d 513. The Court said, "the twenty-year longevity payment option cannot trans-form an otherwise impermissible lump sum longevity payment into pensionable salary merely by making the same total dollar figure paid periodically in the employee's bi-weekly paycheck rather than in one check at the end of the year." Id. at 482-83, 731 A.2d 513. Furthermore, we noted that the approach at issue "deprives the pension fund of both employer and employee contributions on longevity payments for at least a twenty-year period." Id. at 483, 731 A.2d 513. The Court also observed that while this produces "substantial cost savings to the employer and the employee" during that period, "the fund will receive employer and employee contributions for only a limited number of years prior to the employee's retirement, thereby disrupting the funding mechanism and the actuarial soundness of the pension system." Ibid. The Court expanded on that subject with the following thoughts: Exclusion of the type of longevity payments from an employee's base salary for the purpose of calculating pension benefits promotes consistency and predictability in the collection of contributions and payments of benefits. Utilizing uniform base salaries enables the actuary of the fund to predict with greater precision the amount of monies necessary to fund benefits and to adjust contribution rates in order to maintain the stability and sufficiency of available fund assets. The soundness of a fund is directly related to the certainty and predictability of past transactions from which certain assumptions are derived. Not only can the fund not predict whether an employee will or will not choose to exercise the option to receive longevity payments in his salary shortly before retirement, but a pension calculated on these payments that have been unfunded for a minimum of twenty years can only threaten the actuarial soundness of the fund. Id. at 484, 731 A.2d 513.