You just can’t make this up

COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

Vero Beach Mayor Craig Fletcher: “Don’t let the little buggers have time to take a breath.”

Mayor Craig Fletcher, who has called for cuts of 15 percent in the city’s general fund budget over the next three years, said in a radio interview with Bob Soos this week that Vero Beach’s ad valorem tax rate is “100 percent below the average of comparable cities.”

You just can’t make this up.

Taken literally, Fletcher’s claim is that Vero Beach has no property tax, though what he surely meant to say is that the city’s tax rate is half that of comparable cities.

In recent budget workshops, Fletcher was unwilling to forego a $10,000-a-year health insurance benefit taken advantage of by only himself and fellow Council member Pilar Turner. Yet, the Mayor voted to eliminate the position of animal control officer and three other civilian positions in the Police Department.

The reductions in the Police Department budget were only a small portion of a much broader range of cuts affecting all departments.

With the support of Turner and Councilwoman Tracy Carroll, Fletcher is pushing for deep cuts in the city’s general fund spending, cuts which he says must be made now in order to prepare for the eventual sale of Vero Electric to Florida Power & Light.

In his regular Wednesday morning radio interview with “Dr. Soos,” Fletcher said, “With all these cuts that we made during the budget hearings, and everything that we are predicting to happen, we are able to get FPL rates that are anywhere from 25 percent to 30 percent lower, depending on your customers base, and we aren’t going to raise the ad valorem rates, and we’ll probably drop the ad valorem rate. We set the tentative millage rate at 2.033, and we can come down.”

Fletcher’s logic seems to be that faced with losing $5.6 million now transferred annually from the electric system to the general fund, the city should cut expenses so deeply that it will actually be able to reduce its property tax rate, even in the wake of the loss of the electric system revenue.

You just can’t make this up.

Fletcher said, “You can’t find another city the size of Vero Beach that is lowering ad valorem rates. We are already one of the lowest in the state at our current rate, but people like Ft. Pierce are seven mills. That’s amazing. Fellsmere is at 4.4, or 4.5 mills, so we are way below the average. We are over 100 percent below the average of comparable cities.”

To put Fletcher’s proposed budget cuts in context, the city has already trimmed 25 percent of its general fund spending since 2007, and in the process has laid off more than 100 employees. Now, in advance of losing $5.6 million in transfers from the electric fund to the general fund, Fletcher is supporting additional cuts in services that will actually enable the city to further reduce its tax rate.

In spite of the projected saving in electric rates, and in spite of the anticipated loss of Vero Electric revenue, and in spite of the fact that the city has already cut some 25 percent from its general fund spending, and in spite of the city’s already low property tax rate, it somehow seems logical to Fletcher to further cut services and taxes.

Asked about the city’s continuing efforts to negotiate its way out of contractual obligations to the Florida Municipal Power Agency and its bondholders, Fletcher said, “Keep pushing. Don’t let the little buggers have time to take a breath.”

You just can’t make this up.

In the first clear admission that the closing cannot possibly take place within the next fiscal year, Fletcher said he believes the city’s transactional attorneys will have to go to each of the 14 members of the FMPA’s All Requirements Project to seek a waiver. “Our recourse is that we put a dog and pony show together and go to each individual municipality and say, ‘Look, you’re not going to be any worse off than you are right now. We are not going to bring the bridge down. You have recourse just as we do. We just want out, and we want out now,'” Fletcher said.

Last Tuesday, transactional attorney, John Igoe, laid out the city’s argument for why the decision to give Vero Beach a waiver on its contractual commitments can and should be made by the FMPA’s executive committee, rather than being submitted to the joint action agency’s membership.

Not unlike many other commercial contracts, though, the FMPA covenants provide that changes must be approved by all parties to the agreements. Igoe argues that by requiring contract changes be approved by each and every member, the FMPA has created a scenario where any one of the 14 members of the FMPA’s ARP can “veto” Vero Beach’s request.

While it is true that if everyone holds a veto, the only thing that cannot be vetoed is the status quo, it is also quite possible many of the ARP member cities will object to Vero Beach’s effort to force changes in the FMPA agreements, and Fletcher seems to know as much. “They are very, very afraid that this would be the card that brings down the house of cards, and they have very good reason. They are way out there on the price range and they can’t sustain it, and this is the first assault on it,” Fletcher said.

Though Fletcher has for months expressed confidence a closing could take place by April, 2014, he acknowledged Wednesday that he has known all along it would be a struggle for the city to find a way out of its commitments to the FMPA. “To be straightforward, we knew we would be in a fight before we ever started this,” Fletcher said.

You just can’t make this up.

10 comments

“…little buggers…”? Is there an invisible ventriloquist behind Vero’s mayor pulling the strings and making him say really strange things? All this trimming – before long we’ll have gone from having a city that “looked” like Beyonce’ to one that is reminiscent of Twiggy.

What??! I am a resident of Vero Beach and am for raising the millage rate to keep our high level of service as well as some of the positions open that our city council people seem intent on cutting. It’s as if an arm of the local Taxpayer Association/Tea Party has invaded our local government. Well, no thanks! Thanks for the reporting of Inside Vero to let us know what’s really going on.

the county proposed rasing the millage and I don’t have have a problem with that as they wanted to give raises to the sheriff deputies. if the troika has their way they will have no city.

They are not lowering our level of service from what I can tell. All they did this year was eliminate some unneeded positions,due primarily to new technology. That’s not a bad thing. Our millage rate is fine, considering that we pay more for power, which is what we need to work on lowering, as we are going to be in the power buisness for the foreseeable future. The way I see it, the only essential service we are not getting enough of is code enforcement. Our neighborhoods are falling apart due to people having no regard for the rules, ask Mrs. Hillman. Lets solve that.

As city residents, an increase in our county tax, purely to fund the
sheriffs department, is wrong. We receive no service from them. We can opt out as Indian River Shores has done. Just as the county residents opted out of funding our recreation department, which they use at almost a 2 to 1 rate. The city residents are paying for a lot of county services that we don’t use. Taxation without participation, if you will.

For many years the islandside activists joined together to get the level of service they now enjoy. But I noticed last week that even edge-trimming is stripped from their mowing service.

It matters how poorly Jacoby and Piece of Pie Park are maintained. They were finally mowed after over four months of neglect -but the trash was not picked up and got shredded in the commercial mower which was too big for the little parks, the tall grass was not raked up and they blew the clippings onto the playground equipment. We as a neighborhood spent years getting the city to respect our little parks; we received grants to refurbish them and to pave 18th Street including sidewalks with up to date drainage; our streets would flood before the new drainage was put in.

And the 20th Avenue canal-park just got sloppily mowed after months of neglect.

The city recently privatized all grassy areas not irrigated-that’s a lot of small green spaces-around power poles, along city streets, sidewalk easements, small parks etc. In the middle of the fiscal year the city out-sourced-where did the money go that was originally budgeted for these areas?

And has anyone else noticed how many street light have gone dark and have not been replaced in the last three years-on both sides of the city?

The electric issue is separate from the actual running of the city-we either need to raise taxes or we don’t. Don’t suppose corrective cuts were made-make the city council prove every cut and every expense.

Anthony. the city doesn’t have a jail, and the city cops share their k-9 officer with the county and Sebastian and other cities. Sheriff’s also patrol a1a within Indian River Shores. they don’t have to ask permission to go into any of those areas. when the cities cops leave their limits they must ask the county to take over. The city of Vero no longer has fire stations. they did in the 80s and earlier but gave them to the county. the kept the truck for the airport but the not fire fighter who mans it. I have the Vero k-9 officer at my doorstep as my wife called in a robbery. he was asked by the ircso to respond with the other deputies.so I didn’t pay for a city officer to respond to that call. you all did. I don’t mind paying for another agency to use sheriff’s k-9, I have seen him working within city limits.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think the Sheriff’s Department does have services the VBPD doesn’t have. For example, as I understand it, a person might be arrested in the City but after a short period of time, that person may well be moved to the Sheriff’s facility. I think the County officers provide City with “backup” if needed. However, I thought the County asked the Sheriff to cut back on budget not so long ago. Now, it’s raising taxes to fund IRCSD? Once the winter folks return, I think we’ll notice some problems with reduced service, but it remains to be seen. The question that keeps gnawing at me is why the major hurdles were not addressed and resolved BEFORE signing anything with FPL. My guess is if everyone had seen the difficulty and extended timetable for this to go through, they might have decided to look for alternatives, and FPL didn’t want that to happen. Doesn’t matter now.