COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

July 3: “It sounds like they just want to run the city into the ground.”

July 17: “The good news is with all these cuts that we made during the budget workshops…”

Mayor Craig Fletcher’s propensity to change his mind and to simultaneously embrace contradictory positions is nothing new. Now that the Mayor is helping to gut the Police Department, though, he has taken his flop flopping to a new and dangerous level.

Less than a week before acquiescing in deep cuts in the city’s general fund budget, including laying off grounds keepers and eliminating several positions in the Police Department, Fletcher appealed to residents to help him prevent his fellow Council members, presumably Tracy Carroll and Pilar Turner, from running the city “into the ground.”

Apart from his commitment to “Bible thumping,” Fletcher’s convictions, at least those related to public policy, have never been any firmer than quicksand.   The suppleness of his thinking was most recently revealed in his concurrent opposition to and embrace of deep budget cuts which he says will enable the Council to consider reducing the city’s tax rate, but which will also degrade the quality of life in Vero Beach.

Though Fletcher is well aware the city has slashed its budget 25 percent since 2009, he wants to see an additional 15 percent in spending cuts over the next three years.   Yet, on July 3, this same budget hawk went on Bob Soos’ Morning Magazine radio program asking citizens to help him save the city from deep cuts in services.  “If you like your police as much as I do, I would strongly encourage you to be in front of the City Council the first day (of budget workshops), which will be Monday.”

Pointing a finger at his fellow Council members, as if he alone wants to preserve city services, Fletcher said, “The reason they are looking at the Police Department so heavily is because they are 34 percent of the budget, just the Police Department alone.  So where do you get the most response that would be at the largest expense.  That’s an estimated $72,000 per officer.  That includes salaries, benefits, and operating costs. They are very high on the list for getting shot at. This is going to trickle down to officers on the street.”

Fletcher added, “The reason they want this 11 percent is because of that benchmarking study that was done, and it comes up that we have more officers on the street than these other benchmarking towns – Melbourne, Cocoa, Ft. Pierce, etc. But I can’t emphasis enough we are not like Melbourne and Cocoa. I don’t want to be like Melbourne, Cocoa and Ft. Pierce.  We have more services and that’s why people love this place so much.”

Expressing concerns about proposed cuts in other departments, Fletcher said, “They are going to cut real heavily into public works, which, I think, 14 people get removed from public works.  And public works is why we have such nice parks.  The streets are so nice.  The shrubbery is cut and everything.  It sounds like they just want to run the city into the ground.”

Fletcher ended his July 3 remarks saying, “These are huge, huge impacts on what’s going to happen in the daily live of the city. Please show up.  Somebody come and help me convince the other Council members that we don’t need to do this.”

Yet, when push came to shove the following week, when it came time to stand up and be counted, Fletcher was as compliant as putty.

Amazingly, following the Council’s budget workshops, Fletcher was back on Soos’ show July 17 bragging about the supposed benefit of making the cuts to which he had earlier objected.

“The good news is that with all these cuts that we made during the budget hearings, and everything 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 rate, and we’ll probably drop the ad valorem rates.  We set the tentative millage rate at 2.033 and we can come down.”

There is the Craig Fletcher who insists the city can and should cut its spending and additional five percent a year over the next three years, and the Craig Fletcher who says, “no, no, no.”   Will the real Craig Fletcher please stand up?