Government | Coral Gables Watch

Are the Commissioners in the same Family as the Employees?

September 22, 2010 Leave a comment

Thanks to reporting by the Miami Herald we have learned that the City Commissioners have not taken a reduction in their pension accumulation factor of 3 percent during their first ten years of service. Why wouldn’t the City Commissioners lead the way by reducing their own pension factor to the same as the general employees. Should they think they are in the same family as the employees? Commissioners still haven’t shown enough toughness in handling budget, pensions and other benefits (especially health care benefits).

According to the ordinance, the multiplier for non-union pensions would decrease like this:

• Managers, who include commissioners, would keep the 3 percent multiplier for their first 10 years of service. In subsequent years, the multiplier would be reduced to 2.25 percent for every year of service.

• Professionals and supervisors, would have a 2.5 percent pension multiplier for the first 10 years of service, and then a 2.25 percent multiplier for subsequent years of service.

• Commissioners will decide in a few weeks whether or not to change the multiplier for “appointed” employees, such as City Attorney Elizabeth Hernandez and City Clerk Walter Foeman. Salerno does not belong to the non-union pension plan.

via Coral Gables OK’s pension cuts for employees and managers – Coral Gables – MiamiHerald.com.

Filed under Budget, Government, Pensions

Simple Pension Proposal for Coral Gables Commission

September 19, 2010 Leave a comment

All Coral Gables Commissioners and the Mayor should forego a pension. This relieves them of having a conflict of interest when they raise or lower the pensions of city employees.

Also, Coral Gables Commissioners should forego a salary, accept a small additional amount to cover their personal city-related expenses. This is justified since they have a part-time job, in the public interest, and they have private sources of income.

In other words, the City of Coral Gables Commissioners and Mayor should be treated like the Board of a nonprofit organization with a fiduciary responsibility, but acting as volunteers in the interest of the community.

In 2010 all candidates for Commissioner or Mayor should offer not to accept a salary or pension from the city.

These sacrifices would make our Commission and Mayor exceptional and outstanding community leaders in this time of great personal and business austerity.

Filed under Coral Gables, Government, Pensions

City of Coral Gables is said to Double Bill FEMA

September 13, 2010 1 Comment

One might hope that this Coral Gables Gazette story is not quite as bad as it looks initially. However, it does not engender enormous confidence in the finance director and auditing functions in Coral Gables, to say the least. No great confidence that the City is able to keep track of others’ money, let alone the taxpayers.

Florida has ordered Coral Gables to reimburse over $1.2 million of federal funds the city had apparently doubled billed and was paid twice for clean up expenses of three 2005 Hurricanes: Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

via City ordered to repay 2005 storms cleanup monies.

Filed under Coral Gables, Finance, Government

City Officials Want Trust, but Want to Make the Decisions on Their Own?

September 10, 2010 Leave a comment

The National League of Cities conducted of a survey of more 500 elected officials on local democracy in the US. The 2007 is recent enough to give a clear view on the state of government and community trust and engagement.

It is very striking that while government officials complain of lack of trust and engagement, the elected officials also think that citizens trust them to make most of the decisions for the community–a contradiction in views. In other words, officials think they are not trusted enough by the citizens, but that we, the citizens, trust them enough to make decisions. Curious–sounds just a little self-serving, or not?

See some of the survey results.

Major findings from the latest National League of Cities’ State of America’s

Cities Survey of nearly 500 municipal elected leaders include:

Three in five city officials (58%) report that the lack of trust and degree

of disengagement between residents and government is a big problem in the nation, generally.

City officials are particularly concerned about the role of the media in

public life. Eighteen percent rate as poor the role of print media in contributing

to civility and responsibility in public life; 15 percent rate as poor

the role of electronic media.

Two-thirds of city officials (66%) believe that residents, business owners,

and others in their city trust the city government to do what is right most

of the time.

Over 50 percent of city officials (52%) indicate that citizen engagement

in public life of their city has gotten better over the past five years.

Over three-quarters of city officials (77%) think that their city government

is doing either an excellent (22%) or good (55%) job of reaching out

to engage residents in local decision and policy making.