Financially, we are in a mess. All these bums who caused this financial crisis got their $700 billion bailout. Who has it hit the hardest? The middle-class taxpayer and the poor, that’s who. The very same guy whose job has been out-sourced or eliminated and the guy who has been paying into that 401k that is now down 40%. You and me. All the Seniors living on a fixed income whose investments are assisting them in order to make it in this world for the rest of their lives. That’s who. Everyone is hurting.
Rachlin LLP, the company hired to do our audit for 2007 for $170,000, finally got it done! Most every city around had theirs out in March. Ours has never been out in a timely fashion since they were hired 3 years ago. Mayor Clemens asked if they could possibly get the audit out earlier and the Accountant gave all these excuses. He did report, however, that we were in good shape: We have $6 mil in an account here, $5 million in an account there and another $2 million over there. About a month ago, Mark Bates told me we are not bankrupt. I was a little skeptical. But now I find out that we have a lot of money sitting around while we downsize and stop services and our electric rates will go up. We always seem to find the money to pay these consultants outrageous sums.
The Auditors asked and got a 7.6% raise from last year and we will now be paying them $183,000. When asked where this money would go, we were told for salary increases of 6 to 15%. I looked at the man next to me and we both went, “Wow!” at the very same time. The Commission approved to hire the auditors again-- no bid, no more questions. Take our money and run boys.
There has not been much financial oversight on the Federal level and at our local level the Commission approved almost $1 million dollars last night that was on the Consent Agenda. Commissioner Vespo says that we just can’t manage anything. How dare they vote to give away our assets, terminate employees, give-away our public transportation (Boynton Beach now owns our Trolleys), hell-bent on giving away our beach and the list goes on and on.
Everyone can come into Lake Worth, ask and get what they want for their services and we say, “Gee, can you go a little easy on us because we just can’t manage anything?”
It is time for a change!
