EMPLOYEE BENEFIT PLANS AND DEFERRED COMPENSATION AGREEMENTS

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2016

Compensation and Retirement Disclosure [Abstract]

Pension and Other Postretirement Benefits Disclosure [Text Block]

NOTE 12 — EMPLOYEE BENEFIT PLANS AND DEFERRED COMPENSATION AGREEMENTS

The Corporation maintains a 401k Plan which has a combined tax qualified savings feature and profit sharing feature for the benefit of its employees.  Effective January 1, 2014, the plan became a Safe Harbor Plan.  Under the savings feature, the Corporation makes safe harbor matching contributions of 100% of the first 3% of compensation an employee contributes to the Plan and 50% of the next 2% of compensation an employee contributes to the Plan.  The safe harbor matching contributions amounted to $264,000, $281,000 and $280,000 in 2016, 2015 and 2014, respectively.  Under the profit sharing feature, contributions, at the discretion of the Board of Directors, are funded currently and amounted to $346,000, $297,000 and $431,000 in 2016, 2015 and 2014, respectively.

The Bank also has non-qualified deferred compensation agreements with three of its officers and four retired officers. These agreements are essentially unsecured promises by the Bank to make monthly payments to the officers over a twenty year period. Payments begin based upon specific criteria — generally, when the officer retires. To account for the cost of payments yet to be made in the future, the Bank recognizes an accrued liability in years prior to when payments begin based on the present value of those future payments. The Bank’s accrued liability for these deferred compensation agreements, reported in other liabilities on the consolidated balance sheets, as of December 31, 2016 and 2015, was $1,474,000 and $1,483,000, respectively. The related expense for these agreements, reported in salaries and employee benefits on the consolidated statements of income, amounted to $117,000, $82,000 and $137,000 in 2016, 2015 and 2014, respectively.