I am on the commission to do the best job I can do for the City as a whole. Even though I, as a human, have my own opinions on things, I believe that my job is to work for the Residents and for the City.
I get a lot of input from individuals and then I do my best to think that input through. I look at options and potential outcomes in terms of strengthening or weakening our City, what opportunities have or could arise and what disadvantages could develop. I try to consider all these aspect in both the short and long term. To me that means within a year or so and out 5 or 10 years.
That being said, I have jotted down a few thoughts that I have had that led me to some temporary conclusions about our budget. I say temporary because I think the right way to make decisions is by gathering information, continually acquiring new knowledge, integrating previous knowledge and experience and assembling a conclusion. ?When I know better, I do better?.
I have been asked several questions about how staff reductions relate to our budget. The staff reduction was 2.8% and I did not mention the equivalent dollars; the change represents a decrease in our budget of $328,134 from last year or 3.38%
I have received several comments about our motorcycle patrol and our water patrol; both in support of keeping them and suggesting elimination. The motorcycle officer is not an incremental resource. If that officer was not on the bike he would be in a car. He is not an addition to our patrols but an integral part of them. The same is true of the patrol boat. While it is obvious the boat does not patrol our streets it does patrol our back yards. In my opinion, our island city (over 88% of our city is water versus 12% dry land) needs some law enforcement capability on the water. Again, elimination of water patrols would not allow us to reduce a FTE. It might save us a few hours of pay but we would not only lose our capability to patrol the back yards I mentioned but also the beach swimming and recreation areas. I have heard many more comments in favor of keeping both these activities. To me, this public safety benefit is well worth it.
A few people have asked why we have both SPB and SunStar respond to medical calls. I have discussed this with the Fire officers and with the City Manager and my understanding is that we provide first response to our residents. We are here, we are quick. The county dispatches SunStar to ALL calls, as policy, for transport. They do not try to figure out on the phone if transport is needed, nor do they wait for our people to arrive on scene and stabilize a patient and then call for transport. We stabilize, they transport. That leaves our crews in our City to continue to protect our residents. We will transport if we absolutely must (multiple victims, etc.) The County is looking at a system of differential dispatch for consideration. Public Safety, response time, the use of ALS engines for response, manpower on the street are a very few factors that will be considered.
I have received quite a few comments about the $50,000 line item under consideration for "Events". I supported this during the workshops as it came about by a plea by several of our small business owners for help attracting business to St Pete Beach. Subsequently, I have had several comments from other business owners that who feel that it is not government's job to help or hinder business and that we should not spend money this way. I have had input from people who think that we need more events not just for business but for our residents to enjoy too. At the same time, I am not a big fan of unallocated budget line items. We did eliminate this item in our last budget hearing. We put $30,000 toward Christmas decorations and the other $20,000 into our General Fund reserves.
I am an advocate of one type of unallocated budget items. Emergency Reserves; to protect us in case of Hurricanes, Oil Spills, etc. I think there is a fiduciary duty to provide the means to protect our community in case of disaster. There have been many years of opportunity for previous commissions to build up general fund reserves but that has not been done. People have pointed out that there might be state and federal disaster funding made available after a disaster. My research tells me that FEMA takes a minimum of 90 days to compensate municipalities. We need operating cash in the interim. Our 25% reserve target is 90 days of operating funds. Having 12%, as we do now, allows us to run out of money in roughly 12% of the year, or 6 weeks. Then we would be shut down and could not even pay our normal operating costs let alone any extraordinary expenses such as generators, water, food, temporary shelter, etc.
Even worse, between the wastewater and reclaimed water enterprises there is a net negative reserve of about one million (an IOU FOR $1,000,000 that was borrowed from our general reserves in the past.). In other words, these utilities can pay ongoing operating expenses but if, for instance, the underwater sewer line were to become ruptured, those enterprises have no reserves at all to deal with the situation and would have to take from the general reserves depleting them even further. Those funds should have been self-sustaining and been building appropriate dedicated reserves when they were established. I cannot imagine why previous commissions did not set them up that way.
We cannot pay for operations in times of a disaster with IOU?s from one of our other funds.
Reserves must be fixed to protect our residents against natural disasters, equipment failure, and things like oil spills.
I also hear a lot of confusion about real estate values falling and "taxes increasing".
One Florida Statute concerned with homesteading is 193.155 "Homestead assessments". Among other things it says that "property shall be reassessed annually on January 1. Any change resulting from such reassessment shall not exceed the lower of the following: (a) Three percent of the assessed value of the property for the prior year; or (b) The percentage change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, U.S. City Average, all items 1967=100, or successor reports for the preceding calendar year as initially reported by the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics".
If you chose to homestead your property in the past and keep your tax assessment low for many of the years of wild real estate appreciation your property could easily still be catching up to its true value even as that value falls.
Also, due to 193.155 (b) above, It appears to me that increases were in the 2.7% range this year.
Penalty this year? Reward of lower taxes during wild appreciation in previous years?
Anyone taking advantage of the homestead exemption should have been aware of the details of the law they were using to their short term advantage. There is no free lunch.
As to the sewer service increases, reclaimed water increases, and storm water increases, I think those "increases" are correcting mistakes that prior commissions made in not setting up logical, self-sustaining enterprise funds with appropriate fee structures but instead depended on our general tax dollars to pay for their operations in a less than transparent manner. A cop-out. In addition, by not funding those utilities as they should have been they have been borrowing money from our general fund reserve with no way to repay! I certainly would not loan out money if I could see that it could not be repaid by the person I loaned the money too. It is long overdue that our commission corrects this.
In general, I tend to favor dedicated fees for specific uses over, general taxes. I think dedicated user fees are more transparent to the taxpayer.
I have had several people tell me that the Bayway landscaping is not needed or could be done with a grant. It is being done with a grant. That has always been the program. Obviously we should have been clearer explaining that fact.
I have had the same type of comments on our budgeted energy improvement program. The situation is such that we provided matching funds of about $29,000 to get a grant of about $250,000 for the energy improvements. I think that is a great return on a $29,000 investment. If we had not taken advantage of that now we would have lost that opportunity. In addition, the sooner we complete those improvements the sooner we begin to realize the operating cost savings. Again, we are not getting the word out to people.
People have asked me to explain my position with regard to increasing the library funding $10,400. I think the library is a great community resource. That is a small outlay to gain another full day of operations. In these tough times people use our library to research, apply for, and communicate about jobs. If we can help get people back to work by providing computer access, it would be great. The library makes significant use of volunteers. The library needs to have employees on site when using volunteers. Obviously $10,400 in NOT a full time person but it is a very minimum of enough additional hours to provide for city staff, along with volunteers, to allow opening on Monday.
Christmas decorations. Lotsa comments about Christmas decorations. About half for and half against. I am leaning against mostly because of the cost; about $30,000 with the requirement of a 3 YEAR contract; $90,000 total. Regardless of my lean, as of right now the commission seems to be in agreement to use $30,000 from the eliminated unspecified $50,000 "event funds" for Christmas decorations. (the other $20,000) is slated to add to our reserves. Merry Christmas.