Look at the Fat, not the Muscle

Tonight’s the night—the first public hearing on setting our millage. It is imperative that everyone attend City Hall.

Overall, the city is proposing a 24.5% increase. The City Manager's proposal is around a 14% increase.

The City, when you ask them, insists our millage is DOWN from last year and then just hand us Budgets for Dummies. This entire millage is based on sneaky financing because NOW, not only do we pay for Fire/Rescue on our Ad Valorem, something that used to be included in last year’s Lake Worth millage, but every service in Lake Worth has increased – EVER SINGLE ONE OF THEM.

Whereas last year we paid a total millage of 7.88 which included debt service, this year’s proposed millage will be 6.3031 with debt service. Now add in Fire/Rescue of 3.5062 and you have a total millage of 9.8093. Not cool. This is a whopping increase!

Waste removal up

Stormwater up

They want to raise our Electric by 3.5% tonight.

Where you see Enterprise Funds is where a department generates INCOME such as our golf course, beach, electric, water, stormwater to name a few. As the money in stormwater is mostly all profit, most of these accounts are padded.

When we outsourced our police and fire rescue to Palm Beach County, we lost control of overtime. This directly affects our bottom line in pension costs. Unfortunately, as good as our Sheriff Department tells us they are doing, they are going to break the bank in two years…just a prediction.

Perhaps the City should be looking at gasoline accounts, cell phone accounts for all those employess who NEVER answer their phones but we are paying for them and other areas instead of laying off Code Officers, etc. All you Budget guru's need to be at this meeting to ask the right questions.

Look at the fat, not the muscle. There is always fat if you look. And where is the Audit for 2008? Where is the Utility Audit since 2007? Why can't we get answers.