Lake Worth passes Budget

Comment Up

Last night, Mayor Pam Triolo, Vice Mayor Scott Maxwell and Commissioner Andy Amoroso, all up for reelection, voted to raise taxes across the board with few exceptions.  Maier and McVoy voted against, primarily because of two categories-- parking at the beach and electric rates. These two items are hot button election issues and there was no way that this trio would change their minds. They, instead, will now have a loss at the beach as they added more staff and they will be dipping into reserves at our electric utility.

Commissioner McVoy was disturbed that he got information before the meeting that there were other options that were never presented on the electric fund that would have helped in his argument to  increase reserves and that the average residential bill would only increase by 76 cents a month if they chose two out of the three options. He verified his graph with the electric utility director who was not at the meeting. The other three weren't "buying it" and Maxwell did not want to even include it into the record as he said it was McVoy's "opinion," essentially attacking Commissioner McVoy's credibility.

Maxwell said, "We need to find a way to keep our commitment to the public...we're thinking out of the box."  What he really did was drive another nail into our coffin by spending more and robbing reserves. The Mayor said she never agreed to raise electric rates and that they made a law to have rate parity with FPL. McVoy said that the average monthly electric bill has stayed flat and rate has very little influence on the community and that they, as a commission, needed to mange the city responsibly.

Not going back to the roll-back rate, taxes will be 8.35% higher than last year according to the city manager. We will bring in $6,946,193 in ad-valorem and will be spending $19,817,316 in Public Safety. In Palm Beach County, the Sheriff's budget is now $553.7  million and county employees are getting a 3% raise in 2016.

Not only is your ad-valorem going up, but so is just about everything else--

 No change in the General Fund millage rate of 5.4945 mils. No change in the MSTU of 3.4581.
 Salary increase of 4% across the board.
 Use of approximately $68,889 of General Fund available fund balance.
 No change to Electric Rates after decreasing rates for the prior 5 years.
 Increase in Local Sewer rates of 3%
 Increase in Water rates of 3.5% to fund new wells and other capital needs. Last night Maxwell said it was to pay back the loan from ourselves to build the Casino. That's the latest "line" coming out of City Hall. Read page 55 of the Back-Up to get the real "skinny" or listen to the video and what the city manager said in the very beginning of the meeting.
 No rate changes for Garbage or Stormwater.
 All business taxes up 5%.

Read the PBPost article