Lake Worth's New Strategy

Comment Up

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?