COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

The limited government crowd continues to claim the City of Vero Beach is trying to serve as a modern-day version of the Depression-era Works Project Administration, but they are woefully short on facts with which to make a rational argument.  If their chief spokesperson on the City Council, Pilar Turner, were staring in the classic sitcom, Mayberry R.F.D., she would probably insist that Sheriff Andy Griffith pare down to a one-person department by laying off deputy Barney Fife.

The principal argument Councilwoman Pilar Turner and her supporters offer for laying off more general fund employees is that the city’s government has become “bloated.” Never mind that the city has slashed its general fund budget 25 percent since 2009.  That fact seems to be lost on those who now worship at the altar, not of “limited government,” but of smaller government.

Councilwoman Turner is forever claiming the city is overstaffed.  Her use of benchmarking statistics is misleading, though, for she fails to differentiate between general fund employees and those working in the city’s enterprise departments, such as water and sewer, the electric system, the airport, the marina and the solid waste department.

Turner, along with Tracy Carroll and Craig Fletcher, are pushing hardest for steep cuts in the 2013/2014 budget, yet they know that with the sale of Vero Electric the city will lose more than $7 million a year that has been transferred from the electric fund to the general fund.

Fortunately for the city and its taxpayers, new rental income and tax revenue from Florida Power & Light, along with a restructuring on the city’s pension funds, will leave the Council to solve a budget gap of approximately $1 million, not $7 million.

One would think that in preparation for the eventual sale of Vero Electric, the City Council might consider a combination of tax increases and spending cuts in order to balance city’s the budget after the keys to the power plant are handed over to FPL.

Instead, the Council troika seems prepared to close the projected budget gap exclusively through spending cuts.  Those layoffs are set to go into effect in October, despite the fact that by all reasonable accounts the electric system will likely not be sold until late 2016, and certainly not within the next 18 months.

Turner, for one, consistently argues that access to utility revenue has enabled the city to operate a “bloated” government.  But even with the eminent loss of that traditional and reliable source of some $7 million, Turner wants to make more than $1 million in additional spending cuts.  She also wants to see the city turn over its profitable water and sewer system to the County. What is the end game here, the bankrupting of the city?

All but one of the eight cities with which Vero Beach was compared in a recent benchmarking study raises less property tax revenue per resident than does Vero Beach.  At $266 per resident, Vero Beach was less than half the average of the eight cities included in the study.  Marco Island was the highest, at $845.  The average was $577.

Vero Beach also has the second lowest property tax rate of the cities studied.  Only Marco Island has a lower millage rate, at $1.99 per thousand.  But Marco Island’s total taxable property base is $9 billion, as compared to Vero Beach’s $3.1 billion.

An interesting comparison is to consider the millage rate each city would have to assess if it were working with the same property tax base as Vero Beach, which is valued at approximately $3.1 billion.  For example, if Marco Island were to raise an average of $845 per resident on a tax base of $3.1 billion, that city would have to set its millage rate at 5.95 — nearly three times Vero Beach’s rate of 2.033.

For the remaining six cities in the survey group, their millage rate would actually come down, if only they had Vero Beach’s $3.1 billion tax base.  But even allowing for this adjustment, Vero Beach would still have the second lowest millage rate in the benchmarking study.

Whatever case Turner and the “limited government” crowd have for continuing to hack away at city services, it is an argument grounded, not in reality, but in an extreme fundamentalist expression of Libertarian political philosophy.