Finance Advisory Board Outcome

Comment Up
The Financial Advisory Board does not believe in a free lunch, at least not for Joe Taxpayer.

First of all, the meeting started out with Jessica Plotkin adding something to the agenda--she wanted elections of officers retro-active to April 7 when the FAB first met in 2010. There is no agenda online of this first meeting but the minutes were recorded. This discussion took nearly one-half hour.

If you make elections retro-active, Ron Exline was Chair during that period. Do we all pretend that one month never existed? It is a messy situation. Ms. Plotkin resigned her position before elections took place this year because it was of her opinion that she had served one year, a year is all that she is supposed to serve, and therefore she did not want to serve any longer in that capacity. At her insistence, as well as the determination of a calendar year being whatever the Board desired it to be, elections took place 34 days after the Board's original inception and election.

Because every FAB position terminates on July 31st in staggered years, (three spots coming up this July 31) having elections before their first meeting in August creates a shortage of eligible candidates to be elected as officers. The Ordinance says, The Board shall elect its officers for a term of one calendar year, not to exceed the member's appointed term. So, if you have elections in May, and a member's term comes up two and one-half months later, he can not serve as an officer. Hopefully they will get this worked out where it makes sense to everyone, not just some of the members.

The next item on the Agenda was also instigated by Plotkin--discussion of the revenue ideas that were generated from the piece of paper that floated around the chamber from hysterical people supporting the PBSO at any cost, some ready to give up their first born. The Commission did not want to deal with it as the City was in negotiations with the Sheriff and wanted all the info given to the FAB to do with it what it wished. So, the Chair read every single suggestion...all 42 of them. Discussion took nearly 2 hours. Some of what came out of it was:

• *Add 2 more billboards on I-95. I don't know the genius who thought up that one but it is even more disconcerting that some on this Board would even think this a good idea. Read about the Billboard Mafia.
  

• Raise taxes

• Raise fees...double the parking at the beach...double the decal permits (I can't comment on this--must be residents who never go to the beach)
  

• Close the library (probably a guy who only reads comic books suggested that one)

• Sell half of our golfcourse. Apparently many on the FAB loved that idea because they say the golfcourse is not making any money. In the minds of some, everything in this city must make money. I am really glad that these FAB members are not paid employees. If you market something right, it will make money. People come to Florida to play golf and we own our very own on the water. Right now we are re-doing the greens to make it more attractive to golfers. All you people who gripe that the place doesn't make money--go play golf and go eat in the restaurant. Let's get a marketing plan before these greens are redone.
  

• Have a fire service assessment put on our non-advalorem with every property owner paying the same fee/"tax" of approximately $250 a year. Poor and wealthy pay the same. Afterall, they say, we all get the service. Seems hardly fair to me. Now Allen West believes in a flat tax but even the poor would be off the hook on that. I mean, there are many people in poverty living in our city. This is a government service; it's not like going out and buying a television.
  

• Take the downtown out of the CRA. (I love that idea...the downtown has been the cash cow for the CRA to spend money in all sorts of wasteful and corrupt ways. There is no comparing this to owning our own Utility)
  

• Allowing heights (More density would put a strain on our infrastructure and resources, many of which are old and would need replacement costing the taxpayers multi-millions)
  

• Sell our utility company (That would be by vote of the citizens--we can't just go around saying sell our utility when we take over $10 million from it just to operate our city. We need the revenue because of out of whack pension benefits. We have two mayoral candidates now who are spouting that (Ramiccio and Maxwell) without thinking it through or giving us a plan)
  

*What was revealed from the meeting was the billboard money that the City finally collected. A little history--The original contract was for six signs for $2,310,000 for 20 years minus 1 day with payments to the city from Interstate Sign. Interstate assigned its rights to 3 of the signs and we received only $1,240,000 on the original contract from CBS Outdoor signs. Both these companies pulled their scam by suing us. A settlement agreement was reached on 7-3-07. The deal was a one-time fee of $150,000 per sign on the west side of I-95 and $200,000 per sign on the east side. Then, the Lease was assigned to CBS Outdoor, Inc. We received a total of $1,545,000 according to my calculations, a shortfall of $745,000. I was told that Ed Fry last night used a figure of $1.8 received on the billboards. This figure might include payments that the city is receiving but we never get any line item and we are never told anything about this money.

The money, instead of being deposited into the general fund, was put somewhere in the C.I.P...the "wishlist"--and no one can tell us where it is. So, whether it was $1.5 or $1.8 million, it is still a heck of a lot of cash to sell our soul to the devil. And the FAB thinks it worth discussing because it is revenue. Here, here. We know where it went but we have no idea what the city is doing with this money...money that was received from major blight to our city for 20 years and from companies that stormed the City insisting that billboards go up ignoring our Sign Code. The money could be long gone for all we know. It is too bad that we had such a weak commission at that time. This never would have happened with our present commission. Make that your assignment, FAB--find the money. While you're at it, find the $3.5 mil that was originally in our beach fund. Someone absconded with that on a switcheroo too.

One thing that was not brought up was the cause of our angst--Union retirement benefits. It was totally avoided and never mentioned. We must go to a Defined Contribution Plan, something member Bill Thrasher brought up last year. Perhaps when we get our own fire department, another thing not mentioned, retirement plans will be changed to where they make sense, not only for these depressive times but going well into the future. A government job should not be a give-away of public money and out of whack with the private sector, the very reason why cities are going bankrupt. Another thing that was clearly not discussed and the reason for the list to begin with--the high cost of the Sheriff. The root of problems always need to be weeded out and not ignored.

And to the Board: As you worry about how to get more revenue, I hope that everyone had a good time last night on that free dinner and dance on the taxpayers held at the golfcourse, the very same golfcourse that you dissed on Wednesday night for not making enough money and that you contemplated selling off. You should not reward yourself when the city is in a financial urgency.

This is why the City loses credibility. Raising taxes and throwing costs onto Joe Taxpayer is not okay when you can so easily believe that rewarding yourself is acceptable, no matter how small the gratuity may seem to you or how deserving you feel you are. You either take a stand on BS expenses or it's business as usual.