I made
sure that those fees were ended before I left office (despite current
candidates taking credit for it). You
would think that would be either a cut in tax rates or being able to fund more
maintenance or new capital projects, but no, this council still anticipates
raiding unallocated reserves by over $3 million this year alone.
The
proposed budget is one where the mayor and council seek to increase authorized
personnel (employees) from 70 part and full time (2010/2011 budget – 45 full,
25 part time) up to 82 employees, 12 new (49 full and 33 part time). This is a 17% increase in non-police, non-contract
personnel authorized in a single year. See numbered page 37 of
the proposed budget .pdf page 41. Many of the new
employees are required to run the tennis program, the true costs of that
discussed later in this article.
This
should be raising your financial alarms.
This council spent $140K last year to buy out the tennis vendor contract and proposes $344K more out of reserves
this year for the tennis courts alone. Tennis
courts!
Leaving
some of these big spenders on the Village Council in office for another 4 year
term could completely wipe out the reserves before the end of their next term
in 2016. That’s right $11.4 million down to zero; as Palmetto Bay cannot
maintain this level of reserve spend down for 4 more years. This level of spend
down should not even occur in a single year.
Would you
spend down 25 percent of your family’s entire savings this year? If not, then I strongly suggest that you read more of this article.
I will not
restate the facts (taken from the actual proposed village budget). You can read
them for yourself: Palmetto Bay budgetReview, part 3. Starting to separate voting fact from campaign fiction A/K/AThe proposed raid on unallocated reserves.
The
question is why this is happening. I
have a few clues:
1. The failure of Mayor
Stanczyk and Vice Mayor Pariser to properly use Palmetto Bay’s very effective
lobbying team to identify and bring in grants or appropriations to reduce the
costs of projects. $42,000.00 is
budgeted in this proposed budget (numbered page 70) for State lobbying
services.
Very little have in grants have been brought in
through the efforts of the Stanczyk/Pariser administration. I would suspect less than $15,000 over their
two years. Money is out there, but more
importantly, it may not be time to take on huge projects that require draining
of reserves if there is no assistance from outside sources.
The initial Palmetto Bay council brought in
nearly $20 million (yes, nearly $20,000,000.00) in grants from items that
purchased large properties like Thalatta ($3.6 million), paid for the purchase
of the Ludovici Park/library property ($250,000 from private donor), well over
a million to reduce the costs of Village Hall construction and a very long list
from the Florida Recreational Development Assistance Program (FRDAP) that paid
for much, if not all of the costs of the playground and pathway creation/revisions
up through 2008 in the area parks.
This council is not working to find alternative
sources even though this current budget still provides for $8,000 for council
legislative travel (numbered page 70) and appear to be using the fact that many
of the sources are currently unavailable as their excuse to raid your reserves.
2. Poor oversight from
Mayor Stanczyk and Vice Mayor Pariser in how they direct staff to spend. There
are several prime examples of this:
A. Removing village vendors
from their contract, such as the Jane Forman Tennis Academy (JFTA) without
first looking at the costs of government taking over a new business venue. The
JFTA is no fan of my time as mayor, but I never would have cut off her
contract, at least without a full assessment of the economic impact. These costs, listed below are taken verbatim
for the village budget and should have been disclosed through due diligence. Here
is the current list of costs that Mayor Stanczyk and vice mayor Pariser have
now obligated we, the taxpayers, to undertake:
1.
Item P 10, $250,000.00
for 2012/13: Coral Reef Park New lighting (Musco) for tennis center courts
2.
Item P 16, $ 94,000.00
for 2012/13: Coral Reef Park Resurface tennis courts; installation of new
benches with canopies between courts
3.
Item P 18, $ 10,000.00
for 2012/13: Separate Playground Lighting from Parking Lot, Electrical Circuit
to Allow Playground Lighting to Turn Off at Sunset.
(see
numbered page 104 of the proposed budget)
The above list is
$354,000.00 for one year alone, out of reserves, to cover the costs that used
to be, or should have been covered by the outsourced tennis vendor.
Perhaps the most
ominous, let me slyly refer to it as the bonus, is the $10K that essentially goes to making sure the playground goes dark at
sunset, so families and especially children cannot play after dark in the park,
even though the adults are playing tennis on lit courts, refurbished to the
tune of your hard earned saved reserves of $344,000.00.
By the way, why are we paying for lights at all if we
want to program the playground lights to go off at sunset? (Again, I’m not
making this up, the programmed projects are listed on numbered page 104 of the
proposed budget).
The conclusion is inescapable
that the $50 to $70K in REVENUES that the village received annually
in past years from the JFTA is gone and the tennis Courts have now become a
huge expense to the Village taxpayers under the Stanczyk/Pariser administration.
Remember, the current budget
(2011/2012) included $129,000 of our tax dollars to buy out the JFTA and there
has been no showing of any income that exceed the proposed or even the ongoing
current recurring expenditures attributable to the tennis courts. This was
pointed out by Grant Miller, Community Newspapers in his 11/29/2011 article: Lack of transparency inPalmetto Bay government
B. Failure to resist
spending to replace existing quality equipment and facilities. The council leadership has never explained
why they were in such a rush to spend tens of thousands of dollars to remake a
tot lot that was redone in 2005. Were there not more worthy projects to
do? ANSWER: Certainly there are and they
are listed throughout the $1.3 million capital projects for Coral Reef and
Palmetto Bay parks. This is duplicate/wasteful spending.
C. Money spent to start
ambitious plans started before testing the public for their approval. I am
specifically referring to the costs, hard in the form of hiring consultants to
produce the feasibility studies as well as the soft
cost in significant staff time devoted to failed projects such as the
ill-advised Thalatta plan and the apparently dead
parking garage plan.
3. The failure of Mayor
Stanczyk and Vice Mayor Pariser to properly hold a public visioning workshop to
properly assess the current wants and needs of the residents. August and September are traditionally budget
months. 2012 saw that month being devoted to the NPO ordinances. This during a
time we should have been focusing on Palmetto Bay’s finances. At least 3 public workshops were held on the
proposed ordinances, but zero were held once the proposed budget was released, where
the council brought forward an open transparent conversation to truly assess
budget priorities and whether we could live within our revenues, should
reserves be tapped (or tapped out).
This is
our money. Shouldn’t we be consulted
before they decide how to spend it, especially before they take a critical step
in spending down our reserves? Staff is clearly doing the best it can, but the
leadership of the Village Council is clearly letting down the residents by
failing to keep its focus.
Nothing is going to change until the voters make changes in the elected officials making these decisions.
ReplyDeleteCan you provide additional details into these proposed additions to the parks?
ReplyDeleteYou really need to review the documents in detail. The proposed capital projects (numbered pages 104-105) total $3,454,747. Many are great projects. Some have been discussed and approved as a concept, such as safe routes to schools (W19, W20, page 105 $133,160 for Coral Reef Elem and $5,670 for Howard Drive), but have people been notified who will have a sidewalk placed on their street? Some proposals bother me such as P09 - Palmetto Bay Park Conversion of Skate Park to Mini Soccer Fields with synthetic turf. Where is the public input? Who says we have the parking for more soccer. Who made this decision and why is the public not being consulted? The skate park was the result of a huge public master plan process. It is obvious that current Mayor Stanczyk and Vice Mayor Pariser think they know what we want and do not feel the need to consult the taxpayers. The one-year cost of the conversion, by the way, is a whopping $250K. I could list more, but these answers really need to come from the current elected officials.
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