Let's inform the people of what we want them to know--
Last night the city set out on a new course of action to inform the residents of the economic state of our city by presenting our financial picture to the Bryant Park Neighborhood Association. Michael Bornstein was invited to have a presentation and was asked to invite some of the commissioners to attend. On several occasions in the past, Scott Maxwell has told us that the city had 30 plus meetings on the Lake Worth 2020 roads improvement plan of which few of us were aware. This time the City wants to change its strategy and "get it right." Mr. Bornstein and Commissioner Amoroso had an interesting and informative meeting especially for all of those residents who are not familiar with our budget--how we make our money and how we spend it all.
City Manager, Mike Bornstein, led the Power Point presentation on the budget pointing out that we take more money ($9,138,387 or 30%) from our enterprise funds (electric, water and sewer) than we receive in ad-valorem taxes, ($6,315,694 or 21%) to operate our city. Enterprise revenue funds more than supplement our budget and without them we would cease to exist. On the one hand, this commission is continuing its electric rate reduction to bring our rate into parity with FPL in order to eventually appease businesses, now within a 6.7% difference in residential rates (commercial rates are no longer the highest in the State), which means even less money for operations. Then the city tells us that the only way it can operate is to transfer funds from that Utility. Water is up 5% and sewer rates by 8%. Commissioner Amoroso said that he was never for selling our electric utility, an option that was recently panned by the Electric Utility Advisory Board.
Out of the $30.324 million 2015 operating budget, the city projects that personnel services will take 41%, up one percent from last year even though the city has eliminated one position. Out of the total $30 mil operating budget, there is $20,914,270 in non-controllable costs or $68.97%. It was also mentioned that we have a shortage of personnel in some departments.
Answering a question on street maintenance, it was stated that we have $500,000 in the budget with $300,000 of that going towards street lights. According to the 2015 budget, Street Maintenance Actuals have been as follows:
FY 2009-2010: $1,027,719
FY 2010-2011: $ 850,688
FY 2011-2012: $ 523,186
FY 2012-2013: $ 550,145
FY 2013-2014: $ 511,016
So, the street maintenance budget has has gone down during this administration. Where has the difference been applied? Can you even imagine passing a budget by a 9.7% increase and not allotting more for road repairs particularly as the Commission just tried to grab $63.5 million in a general obligation bond for that very thing? Only McVoy and Amoroso voted Nay on the new budget.
Commissioners Scott Maxwell and John Szerdi were also present last night. Mr. Szerdi twice asked the attendees, "What do you think the city should do to finance fixing our roads?" And this is the new strategy for the city...let the folks know that we have very little left over after paying all the uncontrollable costs such as police protection, employee salaries, benefits and retirement. What then do we do to fix the potholes?
8 comments:
What was the old strategy?
Under Bornstein--telling us virtually nothing. Even the detailed weekly newsletter was eliminated. Now we get a fluff piece once a month with nothing of importance in it. The 30 something meetings on the GO bond were phantom.
The Commission needs to put on a workshop to gather serious ideas on how the tax payers want to fund road repairs. The people who said they had a hard time voting in the August 26th election had a forum that gave each speaker unlimited time to state their concerns in front of the Commission.This same format needs to be followed at the roads workshop.
The CM looks defeated here in this photo. What is he doing these days for our city? Does he listen or ever respond to citizens or even care? Is it really just all about the big paycheck for him?
I think he's enjoying his job. He has a lot of admirers and has made many friends. This was the only shot I took of him and it is a bad photo...he is always upbeat and was that night as well. I am not sure he responds or listens to us as he reports to the commission.
There is no such thing as " uncontrolable cost" in the real world when cost exceed income you bankrupt, then you can reorganize.
There is no getting around the elephant in the room that our system of government at many levels not only in Lake Worth but the whole country does not work.
The world has changed and our system of government did not evolve with it , welcome to Globalization and Technology which have made the labor force redundant and much more effeciant( lose of tax base).
Outside of government jobs our work force ( tax payers ) are making less money then ever so the tax base is not now or will never be enough going forward .
So until local government can rein in the cost of government ( Public saftey and pensions inpartiular )inline with what the working tax payers can afford, it will not end well and soon we will not have good roads for public saftey to operate on , just look at Detroit.
We need public saftey but , we can not afford a Ferrari we only have a tax base for a chevy , if the City Manger ( or anybody for that matter) ran his personal budget like he runs our city he would be bankrupt.
If the city could just get some of the shrill screechers that don't pay any property taxes to pitch an and pay their fair share it would be a lot easier to balance the budget
"Shrill?" I guess this is the same bimbo whose house is in foreclosure. No class just crass.
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