Some Random Thoughts on the Budget (re: the Commission’s Budget Meeting on Tuesday, September 14)

September 11, 2010 Leave a comment

  • City authorities should accept that the City of Coral Gables is in a real long-term budget crisis that will only get worse unless significant cost cutting and a deep reorganization is performed by city management.
  • The budget should be based on a realistic and educated awareness of the economic, financial, community and business future of Coral Gables–city authorities may be way too optimistic about an early economic recovery.
  • The biggest danger to the financial future of the city is the huge unresolved pension and health care benefit liabilities–a recent step in reducing benefits for general employees needs to be followed with similar agreements with police and firefighters (the “golden employees” of Coral Gables).
  • Public security costs, which are more than 50% of the city’s budget, seem to be untouchable–these costs have to be reduced to solve the budget crisis.
  • The city has been too slow to make the internal organizational reforms to streamline services and reduce the number of middle and upper management staff that certainly would make it more efficient and help prioritize critical services to the citizens, businesses and visitors.  Someone (commissions or management) appears to resisting significant staff reductions at the middle and higher management levels.
  • The city authorities are greatly underestimating the negative impact of the economic recession and tax increases on individual taxpayers who have suffered huge losses in both their assets and incomes.  Many taxpayers are not able to sustain further property tax increases.
  • As far as the citizens know, the problem of Biltmore Hotel operator’s failure to pay its lease has been postponed until after the budget and taxes are approved.  This is concerning because we do not know if the future negotiation will lead to another favorable agreement with the Biltmore operator that in turn forgives significant debts to the city and loads the losses on taxpayers.

Filed under Budget, Finance, Organization, Taxes and Fees

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

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