About Fort Lauderdale’ Budget….

1. Our city’s budget is not only bloated at $536 million now, but our elected officials want to increase it by more than 12% next year, to $605 million.

2. Our city’s budget has almost doubled in the last 10 years, even though our population has remained essentially the same:
2002: $345M (no increase over the year before)
2003: $377M (10% increase over 2002)
2004: $415M (10% increase over 2003)
2005: $452M (9% increase over 2004)
2006: $499M (10% increase over 2005)
2007: $536M (7.5% increase over 2006)
2008: $605M (12.5 % increase over 2007, planned)

3. Most cities control their budgetary growth to 2-4% per year; our officials don’t know how to control our city’s budget, allowing an increase of 10% per year for the last 6 years!

4. Now our officials, in order to continue the growth, want to use up a major portion of our city’s savings (which should be used only for an emergency or for major capital expenditures).

5. Compare our budget to other cities our size (approx 185,000 residents):
Knoxville TN: $370 M (4% increase over the year before)
Little Rock, AR: $190 M (5% increase over the year before)
Oxnard, CA: $321 M (2% increase over the year before)
Newport News, VA: $416 M (less than 4% increase over the year before)

6. The 300 highest-paid employees in our city cost us over $46 million dollars annually!

7. If our elected officials had controlled our budget properly since 2003, (and allowed a more modest 4% increase per year), our current upcoming budget would be about $436 million, not the $605 million that they are planning on approving this month.

8. Had our budget been under control since 2003, the cumulative lowered budget costs would have saved taxpayers over $500 million dollars (that’s a half billion dollars) during that 6-year period and would have resulted in property tax savings (assuming 76,000 homes in our city), of over $6,600 per home for that 6-year period. What could you have done with $6,600?

What does this mean?

It means you’re paying a lot more in property taxes than you should!

It means that taxpayers here in Fort Lauderdale (who are paying higher mortgage payments, higher homeowner’s insurance, higher taxes, higher food and fuel costs), are having to do “more with less”. Our elected City Officials and City Bureaucrats however, are enjoying doing “less with more”.

You should be asking your current elected City Officials: “Why have you allowed this to occur? You should be asking every Mayoral Candidate and Commission Candidate running for office in 2009: “What are you going to do to correct this problem and bring our budget back under control?”

What will I do?

As Mayor of Fort Lauderdale, I will work with the four newly elected Commissioners to accomplish the following:

1. With the exception of the Police Department, institute an “across the board” 15% reduction in manpower and operational costs for every City Department.

2. Eliminate the position of “Assistant City Managers”.

3. Mandate a “zero overtime policy” with all Department Heads. Any Department Head who cannot operate within their budget should be replaced. We taxpayers have to live within our budgets, so can they!

4. Review every employee who receives more than $150,000 in total compensation annually, to determine their future role with the City. There is a “disconnect” between what the average wage-earner makes in this City ($45,000) and what many of our higher-paid city bureaucrats earn (well over $100,000).

5. Institute new hiring policies for new city workers. Expand hiring policies to include those with experience in the private sector, not just the public sector.

6. Encourage Fort Lauderdale residents to become city employees (We have too many city employees who are not city residents).

7. Increase the role of CERT and CVC across all neighborhoods, providing this benefit to all neighborhoods, not just a few.

8. Institute operational policies within the City that encourage most departmental budgets to have near zero expense growth year over year, yet still seek out new and increased levels of service to residents.

In short, start running the city more like a responsible business, less like a piggy bank for high paid city bureaucrats!