Lake Worth's Public Hearing on Millage and Budget

Comment Up
The main purpose of this Special Commission meeting at 6pm tonight is to have the First Hearing of the Budget for Fiscal Year 2012/2013. The City Commission will set the Millage Rate and adopt the Operating Budget.

The proposed millage is:
City millage:  5.4945
County fire:   3.4634
TOTAL          8.9579 per $1,000 of assessed value
No change in the General Fund millage rate

Highlights of the Budget:

• Use of approximately $424,000 of General Fund available fund balance. (We are dipping into Reserves to balance the budget)

• Refuse special assessment $245.76...same as last year

• Stormwater special assessment $75.60...same as last year

• Reduction in the general fund expenditures from the original adopted FY 2012 budget of $2,300,000

• No increases of Water or Local Sewer rates

• Reduction of Electric rates by 5%

• Reduction/Removal of the Utility Conservation fee of 1.4%

• Annual Operating Budget total $155,050,391 for all City funds.

A little trivia from the proposed Budget:  City residents have saved over 3,500,000 gallons of water through participation in the energy and water audit program offered by the Conservation Management Division. For residential audit recipients, the result has been an  average monthly reduction of 165kWh of electricity and 931 gallons of water, saving an average of $50 on the monthly bill.

Because of constant complaints about the high cost of our Utility bills, particularly electricity, the commission is eliminating the monthly charge for conservation from our electric utility bill. In my case, I will be saving an average of $1.50 a month. The city will be keeping the conservation department and paying the cost of the conservation department audits from the general fund operating budget, a budget they had to supplement in order to balance by depleting the City's savings by $424,000.  This is for the illusion--a slightly smaller electric bill and the commission can feel good and claim that they were the ones who finally reduced your electric bill--politics.

The goal is still to ensure that Lake Worth maintains the ability to exit the FMPA through the CROD.  We all need to conserve to help attain this goal. Raise your thermostat up a few degrees, etc. The Conservation Department expects to do 800 residential audits in year 2013 and 50 commercial audits which should help in this regard.

Instead of the city "educating" us on heights in our downtown, they should be focusing on energy conservation, particularly through 2013.  This is the most important goal for 2013.