NEWS ANALYSIS
MARK SCHUMANN
The Vero Beach City Council is set to approve a 2013/2014 budget that, while reversing earlier temporary cuts for its highest paid employees, does not provide for raises for its remaining employees, who are now in the fifth year of a wage freeze. Changes in health insurance benefits and pension contributions have and will further reduce take-home pay for City workers. Across town, the Indian River County Commission is considering 3 percent pay raises for most of its employees.
The final draft of the city’s budget also eliminates 16 positions, an 8 percent reduction in General Fund employees. If approved as drafted, the coming year’s budget will leave the city with 28 percent fewer employees than it had in 2008, yet Councilwoman Pilar Turner continues to insist the city is grossly overstaffed.
In pushing for layoffs, Turner argued that benchmarking studies revealed Vero Beach has twice as many workers as comparable cities. However, the median General Fund budget for the eight cities benchmarked was $21 million, while Vero Beach’s budget was $19.4 million, which will be cut another $1 million in the coming year.
If Vero Beach has more than twice as many employees as comparable cities, then it must be paying them half as much. This, of course, is not the case. What is the case is that Turner continues to include the city’s enterprise fund employees, such as those in the electric and water and sewer enterprises, in her comparisons.
Across town, the Indian River County Commission will hear a proposal today from County Administrator Joe Baird to give 3 percent raises for the County’s 286 nonunion employees, who, like City’s workers, have been without raises for five years.
The County is also negotiating for 3 percent pay raises for 456 employees in Teamsters Local 769 and the International Association of Firefighters. Raises for the 460 employees of the Sheriff’s Office have already been approved by the Commission.
Baid said recent improvements in the local economy and increases in taxable property values support and justify raises for County workers, whose income has been flat since the beginning of the Great Recession.
These across-the-board raises for County workers were, however, opposed by Taxpayers’ Association Glenn Heran, who said his accounting business isn’t doing any better than it was 13 years ago. The apparent lack of growth in Heran’s practice may be related to the economy, or it may have something to do with the amount of time he spends on volunteer projects, such as working to dismantle the Florida Municipal Power Agency.
Indian River Guardian 
Glenn Heran should consider that is accounting business might not be doing well because of his opinions that all government employees are paid too much. He has been his own walking advertisement of a lack of concern for his friends and neighbors in COVB. Naturally, those same friends and neighbors are not flocking to do business with him.
It is long past time for Glenn Heran and the other “limited government” people to remember the Goldren Rule – DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU.
man, im hardly for big government but enough is enough. I’m WILLING to pay more in taxes so that the sheriff deputies do stay here in Indian River to work. the same with county employees.
Mrs Turner doesn’t know what she is talking about. She compares apples to oranges and expects us to believe what she says. Her very convient analysis is colored by her desire to see Vero cease to exist as a city.I believe she is anti public employee and will find any excuse to terminate city workers. Shame on her.