Industries that Don’t Recover Affect Coral Gables and Florida

September 10, 2010 Leave a comment

There are some messages in this article that are relevant to Coral Gables and South Florida.  Some of the key industries that will not recover in the foreseeable future include: state and local government; construction;  installation, maintenance and repair; newspapers; realtors; bank tellers; airline employees; big telecom; pharmaceuticals; and automotive manufactures.

It has become clear that jobs in some industries may never come back or if they do it will take years or decades for a recovery. 24/7 Wall St. examined the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Employment Situation Summary” and a number of sources that show layoffs by company and sector. The weakness in these sectors will make it harder for the private industry, even aided by the government, to bring down total unemployment  from 9.6% and replace the 8.3 million jobs lost during the recession. The losses in these industries have to be offset by growth in others before there can be any net increase in American employment.

via The Ten American Industries Which Will Never Recover – 24/7 Wall St..

Filed under Coral Gables, Economy, Florida, Housing, National

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.

Filed under Community, Government, National

Community Budget Committee

September 9, 2010 Leave a comment

What the city of Coral Gables needs is a new community organization that keeps an eye on city spending, taxing, fee decisions and organization, constituting a community forum to deliberate about the annual budget and undertake little studies and evaluations of the budget  (say) with  help from UM or other sources.

Community, nongovernmental committees exist in other cities to great success in raising citizen awareness, engagement and participation in the governing process, especially when the city is only slightly interested in consulting with the community on the budget, government spending and organization.

Filed under Budget, Community, Finance

Letter about Police Communications: Just Wondering?

September 9, 2010 Leave a comment

I take note of the letter currently in the Coral Gables Gazette about the staffing, overtime costs and overtime demands in the Communications Department.  The full letter can be found in the Coral Gables Gazette.   The following are some relevant extracts from the letter.

In January of 1999 the City built a beautiful communications center on the 4th floor of the police department.  At the time of the move there were 21 communication operators.  The staffing requirement at that time was 30 operators 10 per shift. The move to the new center was done with 9 operators less than what we needed. The operators were informed that 12 hour shifts were necessary for about a month due to the transitional period from going from a card system to completely being computerized.

In January of 2000, a few operators were hired and the mandatory 12 hour days were reduced to a mandatory 8 hours a week in overtime.  As the trainees came out of training the mandatory overtime went down to 4 hours a week and eventually the mandatory overtime was no longer required to run the center. Presently overtime is still necessary for staffing purposes as we are still not completely staffed due to some of the new hires quitting or not successfully completing the training process….

…At this time the department is still not fully staffed and we are still working overtime on a volunteer basis…

Regardless of what the City Manager has said, there have been measures put in place to decrease the overtime cost in the communications section. This includes a reduction in minimum staffing, reducing the amount of compensatory leave you can earn a month and revamping the training program. Based on the move and upgrade, to the new Communications Center, this situation was imposed in order to fully staff the center and provide the residents with the exceptional service they have always been use to…
I don’t completely understand the arguments (nor do I know what information was presented at the referenced Impasse Hearing).  But I have looked at the current and recent past budgets.
  • Exclusive of overtime pay, the average operator costs the city about $79,000 annually, including an average salary of $47,974 and benefits of $31,183.
  • The number of communications operators positions has remained steady at 32 from 2006 and then 33 to the present.
  • The city manager’s budget has cut overtime to total of $330,000 compared to a budgeted amount of $560,000 in 2007.
  • This looks like good management to me given the city’s financial situation.  Also, it would seem that the city is doing its best to keep the communications unit fully staffed although one always has people coming and going for different reasons.



Filed under Finance, Government, Organization

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