For The Candidates: A Proposal For A NEW AGENDA For The City of Coral Gables

This is the list of issues, problems and ideas for the future of the city Coral Gables Watch for inclusion in a needed New Agenda for the City of Coral Gables. Following is a list of examples of possible NEW AGENDA items.

  • Prepare and discuss with the public a NEW AGENDA for the City to face the major pending problems, such as unfunded benefits, taxation, staffing and organization;
  • The City Manager should routinely report to taxpayers the progress on the budget and organizational changes;
  • The city commission should agree on a new Code of Ethics;
  • Change the election dates for the city of Coral Gables to coincide with national and state elections.
  • Prepare and publicly discussion a long-range financial plan for the City of Coral Gables
  • Target a freeze and/or reduce actual amounts of taxes paid by citizens (not just millage rates) during the next three years;
  • Accelerate a plan of reducing pensions and health benefits, especially for firefighters and police;
  • Prepare a plan and publicly discuss how to reduce unfunded pension liabilities during the next five years;
  • Have a community town hall meeting at least twice a year to discuss the budget and other current issues;
  • Develop a realistic and flexible agreement with the Biltmore that protects the taxpayers not just now, but in the coming years from subsidizing the operators;
  • Undertake a review of financial mechanisms and the defective EDEN system to establish a modern, functional accounting of spending and revenues.

Miami-Dade County Manager Burgess to Resign | NBC Miami Sound Familiar?

Does this sound familiar to those of us in Coral Gables–city managers retire or resign, and are never fired.

Hours after Mayor Carlos Alvarez was removed from office by a resounding recall vote, Miami-Dade County Manager George Burgess is set to step down.

Burgess is expected to make the announcement during a Wednesday afternoon news conference which Alvarez is also expected to attend.

via Miami-Dade County Manager Burgess to Resign | NBC Miami.

Privatization is not such a great solution for the city of Coral Gables

There is a lot of bad experience with the privatization of municipal services in the US.

And there are many hidden costs to the city government of privatization or outsourcing.

There have been serious issues of maintaining the quality of services by the private operators.  The region of South Florida has a particularly bad history of incompetent outside contractors, weak state laws to be able to sue contractors for incomplete work, and there are high city costs of selecting and supervising the contractors.  Evidence is that the community can be very unhappy with the quality of privatized services.

In short, privatized costs do not save costs nor is quality of services sustained.  Greater effort should go into improving the efficiency of Coral Gables government operations.  That is the job of the city manager and the city commission.

He appeared more eager that the other aspirant to take on challenges that the city will face in the coming years, among them increasing privatization of services.

via Commission hires assistant county attorney.

Obama as a Republican

If you thought things might have “changed” with Obama.

Forget it.

If you are a Republican, you could have hardly asked for a better guy.

Nearly 44 million people were living in poverty in 2009, which was more than 14 percent of the American population and a jump of four million from the previous year. Anyone who thinks things are much better now is delirious. More than 15 million children are poor — one of every five kids in the United States. More than a quarter of all blacks and a similar percentage of Hispanics are poor.

Are we doing anything about this? No. Our government officials, from the president on down, are too busy kissing the bejeweled fingers of the megarich.

Hardly anyone cares. Hardly anyone even notices.

With the tax cuts for the rich saved and William Daley coming on board, the atmosphere is being readied for Obama & Co. to tap the fat cats for the zillions necessary for next year’s re-election run. And that, of course, is the only thing that really matters.

via Misery With Plenty of Company – NYTimes.com.