MARK SCHUMANN
If the city needs to cut expenses, one place to begin would be to stop wasting staff time developing draft budgets predicated on wildly improbable assumptions. A case in point is the draft budget for the 2013/2014 fiscal year, now available for review on the city’s website.
Despite the fact that Councilmen Jay Kramer, Craig Fletcher and Richard Winger have all made clear their unwillingness to support draconian cuts, City Manager Jim O’Connor has persisted in asking department heads to hack some $1.4 million out of a general fund budget that is already 25 percent below where it peaked in 2007.
Amazingly, O’Connor’s draft budget assumes the electric system will be handed over to FPL by April. As much of an affront to majority rule as it is to craft a budget that will appease no more than two Council members, likely Tracy Carroll and Pilar Turner, it is also an assault on reason to assume the electric system will be sold by April. A closing by that date is simply not going to happen. Anyone who believes otherwise is either seriously misinformed, or is given to wishful thinking.
Not only is O’Connor’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal delusional, it is also undemocratic. In developing a budget that could result in the laying off 30 or more employees, O’Connor is accommodating Councilwoman Pilar Turner, who is forever echoing the libertarian themes of Glenn Heran, Bob Solari and the local Tea Party and Taxpayers Association. It is as if Heran and Solari jointly hold a seat on the Council.
Arguing that government should provide only “essential” services, Turner has pushed to sell, not only the electric system, but also the city’s water and sewer utility.
Turner, whose home is located directly across the Lagoon from the sewage treatment plant, has made clear her willingness to turn over the city’s profitable and well-run water and sewer system to the County – as if the County is not a government.
Failing that, Turner has said it makes perfect sense to spend some $25 million to relocate the treatment plant, despite the lack of any direct economic benefit to the city or its water and sewer customers.
By also insisting the 17-acre power plant site be cleared of the substation, as well as the generators and fuel tanks, Turner, along with her Council colleagues Tracy Carroll and Craig Fletcher, has managed to drive up the cost of selling the electric system by tens of millions of dollars.
All the while, Turner argues that the city needs to drastically cut spending, yet she is content to let the taxpayers contribute some $9, 126 a year toward the cost of her health insurance. Mayor Fletcher, another budget cutter, is the only other Council member taking advantage of a perk the city clearly can no longer afford.
The following point has been made before, but it bears repeating. Even if the city were able to sell the electric system in early 2014, it would be facing a budget shortfall of approximately $1 million. As many have argued, that gap could be closed with tax increases, budget cuts, or some combination of the two. There is simply no need to slash $2.1 million out of general fund spending, as Turner proposed.
Given that 80 percent of general fund spending goes to pay for salaries and benefits, the level of cuts Turner seems eager and pleased to impose can only be achieved by laying of some 30 city employees.
Though Councilwoman Tracy Carroll is currently keeping a low profile, after a recent firestorm over bigoted and insensitive statements made by herself and Fletcher, she has in the past shown little respect for city employees.
To listen to Carroll, you might get the idea she believes parks mow themselves, and city streets are self-cleaning, and sharks are not dangerous and all 911 calls are false alarms. When you are living in fantasyland, what need is there for brave lifeguards and a dedicated police force?
Anyone who cares about the fate of the city and the quality of life in our community would do well to attend the Finance Commission meeting scheduled for next Tuesday at 3 p.m.
Now is the time to be heard.
Indian River Guardian 
When will the COVB “leaders” learn that accounting ledgers have two sides? If there is not enough funding to support “essential” services, then it is obvious that revenues must be raised.
The advice given is spot on. Now is the time for the residents of COVB to tell their “leaders” what they deem is essential.
A gain in property values with no change in the millage rate will help bridge part of the deficit.That’s happening. Returning land to the tax roles by selling unneeded properties, which the city has in abundance, and the proceeds from said sales is another source. The argument that we should hold the land till values rise is baloney. The city should not be land banking. Sell the brick albatross, sell the vacant land across from the cemetery. Sell all the vacant unused, unneeded city land. Yes, there are some ways to cut expenses, but lets concentrate on the other side of the ledger, also.
It is baloney to think of selling off the city assets that belong to the residents, and not the city fathers. All the infra structure was bought and paid for over many years by the residents, and only they as a whole should be able to change the status quo. Land banking is not a bad idea. There will always be an increase in value. Privatization, however, in the long term only leads to increased costs for the tax payer. You will still need city employees to oversea the private sector to make sure you get what you are entitled to, otherwise the new owners will just milk the assets dry, sell off their stake and the circus will begin again.. Just look at the mess Europe is in where the control of major assets have been sold off to “out of country” companies for cents on the dollar. Then the new owners charging exhorbitant fees for basic services, and making tremendous profits will and do, constantly increase their basic charges for services. Electricity up 19% this year alone! Gas 24%! (That is gas not petroleum). Last year the increases were similar.
In the UK all the major water companies are foreign owned, registered in “tax havens” and contribute nothing to the exchequer.
If you want to see Vero spiral downwards to destitution, then go ahead. You will regret it. Once you go down the road to privatization there is no return.