FiscalRangers.com Weekly Alert on Local Lake County Government Activities

Tavares, FL - Monday, June 13, 2011 - This was sent out yesterday by email, but I have included some important revisions:

- Tuesday School District Board 1PM "Retreat" CANCELED:  I was notified this morning that the School Board retreat on Tuesday afternoon was CANCELED since the funeral for Tod Howard's son is Tuesday.  However, last night it was still on the School Board website, and is still there this Monday morning.

- Former Florida Senator Carey Baker will be speaking at the Wednesday evening Tea Party meeting, not Alan Hays.  Hays postponed his appearance last week.  Baker currently does not have a political office, but rumors are he is running for a local County Constitutional office.

- I revised the wording in the discussion of overhead on the Lake County Fire Assessment District discussion in the County section below to clarify it.

- The numbering is off due to this blog software not converting properly.  Sorry 'bout that.

vj

1.   Lake County School District Board
   1. a.      Condolences to School District Board Member Tod Howard and his wife Ginger for the loss of their son in a car accident last week.  See article HERE. 
      
   2. Last week, the Board approved a new contract with the Teacher’s Union (not SEIU, which is upcoming).  The explanation of actual costs of a “step increase” wage increase was all convoluted and not understandable.  I brought that up in Public Input and the Board didn’t provide or ask for a public explanation of just how much it cost.  They only described a “net cost” of over $700,000, but my estimate is that total cost was over $4-million but then the District saved money from new 3% required pension contributions (not explained) and 5% required contributions for ONE health insurance plan.  Thus, the teachers were probably given the raise to offset the required contributions, but we don’t know because Board meetings to decide union contracts are SECRET and the PUBLIC is not allowed in them.  And, using peer pressure, if two of five members disagreed, they are still pushed into showing solidarity with the majority, thus all five Board members voted on the contract.
      1.                                                                i.      OPINION:  Wage decisions should be transparent and held in open forums.  Details showing the dollar effect of each component of contract changes should be clearly explained.  Until then, Board members are not being transparent about wage and benefit decisions.
   3. THANKS go to several members of the public and the North Lake and South Lake Tea parties who are continually attending the school district board meetings and sometimes providing public input.
   4. No afternoon workshop on Monday, June 13.
   5. Monday, 6pm:  Regular LCSD Board meeting at 6pm, Monday June 13 at County “round” Admin building  - Use “Board Docs” on the LCSD website to see the agenda AND attachments. (Calendar has the agenda but no attachments).  The more detailed agendas, with attachments are always on Board Docs, but only for regular Board meetings and Workshops.  Tuesday’s special meeting (see below) is NOT in Board Docs, but in the Calendar.
      1.                                                                i.      I read the entire agenda and did not find anything significant.  Most items are on the “consent agenda” and many were discussed at prior workshops.
   6. ***  THIS TUESDAY 1PM MEETING WAS CANCELED DUE TO A FUNERAL >>>>>> - TUESDAY  1PM  – SPECIAL “School Board Retreat” 
      1.                                                                i.      This meeting is NOT listed in the “Board Docs” but in the Calendar and you can print the agenda – one day they will be consistent with everything either in Board Docs or Calendar, but for now you have to read both.
      2.                                                              ii.      Topics are VAGUE and General – they do this when they don’t want people to come to the meeting – there are no attachments and no detailed agenda item explanations, and very few staff will be there, and the press rarely attends these meetings, which is why it is important for public observers to attend.
         1. Topics include FCAT Scores overview, Strategic Plan Update, “Superintendent’s Evaluation Instrument” which could be to review an evaluation, or to revise the evaluation form; “Board projects” (that should be good), Board Watch List (a procedure started by Larry Metz to track progress of decisions which were not tracked before), Audit Process.
2.  Lake County Board of Commissioners – get the meeting agendas HERE
   1.   Last Week: 
      1. Medicaid Reimbursement:  The Board approved the start of the process to invoice the two Lake County Hospital Districts and recover about $237,000 in Medicaid costs allowed by a Florida State regulation never used before by Lake County.  The earlier estimate was over $2-million, but a staff review found documentation to support billing the Districts for the $237,000 on a pro-rata basis.  Commissioner Chair Jennifer Hill is to meet with the District Chairs and develop an “inter-local” agreement to start the process.  We hope she doesn’t get buffaloed.  Thanks go to several North Lake Tea party members who gave public input at the meeting on this subject (but got carried away).  Also, since the Board was going to let the hospital leaders talk without limits during the agenda item, they let the public input speakers take extra time.
      2. 211 United Way Program:  United Way had obtained approval from the prior Board to contribute $30,000 to a 211 phone hotline where residents could call to get referrals to local community agencies that provide food, shelter, tax advice, etc.  (Which is what three County departments do for the elderly, children’s and veterans’ issues).   I provided research that showed the proposed contract would allow UW to SELL data collected from callers, and that the program did ask for social security numbers of callers.  I was rebuffed by Chair Jennifer Hill when trying to restate that in public input, but later discussion (after many people left) disclosed I was correct.  The UW representative claimed the contract paragraph about selling data was not in her copy, but she had signed the copy on the County website.  The legal department tried to explain intent, but the paragraph was really vague and could be used to sell any collected data, including social security numbers.  Several Board members requested that the paragraph be reworded to specify NO data could be sold.  There were several issues but that was the main one.  In my opinion, the County Attorney’s office was asleep when they issued this contract, which took 2+ months to issue.  The Board should not have been asked to approve a contract that had such a negative paragraph inserted in it and was so loose on some other conditions.   Additionally, there were no terms of service (i.e. how fast the calls should be answered) specified in the contract.  So, they will bring the contract back and it probably will be approved, even though some people, including Commissioner Jimmy Conner, question why the taxpayer should be subsidizing a UW program (but the PRIOR Board did approve it last year, so I expect the actual contract to be approved). 
      3. THIS WEEK - Tuesday, June 14,  9am is the normal Board meeting time, but it a WORKSHOP and ALSO is NOT at the regular location, but at the Trout Lake Center NORTH of Eustis (520 E County Road 44) .  If you go, allow enough time to get there – Trout Lake (look it up) is north of Eustis off HWY 19.  The workshop is primarily about the Preparation of the FY 2012 budget.   There are only three tab items on the agenda:
         1. Preparation of Fiscal Year 2012 budget:   No details or attachments were provided.  This will take up much of the time.
         2. Fire Rescue Assessment Fees:   The “NO fiscal Impact” item is for adoption of a tedious 39 page “Fire and Rescue Assessment Fee Study” which is a report and fire fee recommendations to update the prior 2008 report and fees for a $21-million budget department.   The term is actually not correct, because “rescue services” (i.e. EMS) are no longer funded by this fee, but a separate funding method. To save YOU time, we READ the report and page 19 shows that fees are hardly changing, or were reduces.   You can read or download the 39 page report as an attachment to the agenda item’s tab.  This is a good report to read if you want to understand how fire assessment fees are calculated.  On page 15, it lists the cost of “effort” for residential, commercial, etc. and a total cost of over $16-million, but then on page 9, it says the projected total budget is $21.3 million.  You have to wait until page 10 to learn what the budget components are.  Naturally, they didn’t mention that total or summarize the findings in the agenda OR at the front of the report.     AND, if you look at the page 30 budget summary, you will see they are paying $8.6-million in “regular salaries” PLUS $1.7-million in overtime.  BUT, what is interesting, is that the total “Personal Services” is over $16-million, or DOUBLE the regular pay, by the time they include overtime, retirement, life and health insurance, etc.    Normal overhead ratios for many corporations (excluding overtime) is about 35-40%, but this unit has over 80% overhead.
            1. OPINION 1:  Neither the agenda or the report had an “executive summary” so you have to read the full Fire Assessment report to figure out what fee changes are recommended, or even what the size of the budget is for the department.   By using such poor communication methods, government decisions are “obfuscated” by such long reports and meaningless agenda descriptions, and the Board members should kick back reports and agendas for a more professional summary of results in both the agenda and the reports (or Powerpoints).   The Lake County School District Auditor reports were like that for a long time (now improved due to actions former Board member Larry Metz and by the LCSD Audit Committee).   Newspapers don’t make you wait until the end of a 1000 word article to tell you if a budget was passed  – they tell you in the first sentence AND the headline.  The County BCC needs to demand the same type of communications from staff AND consultants.
            2. OPINION 2:  I don’t know how much this “study” cost, but I estimate it might be anywhere from $50,000 to $200,000.  I wonder why STAFF is NOT capable of doing it.   If STAFF are capable of preparing the financial records to meet accounting regulations, why can’t STAFF also prepare these types of reports?   If the FIRE services budget is over $20-million, you would think they would have someone with the expertise to do this.  I would like to see at least of one the Board members ask that question and get some answers from the staff.
            3. OPINION 3:  The overhead allocation of over 80% of the regular pay (excluding overtime), or $6.5-million in overhead for a regular payroll of $8-million  is outrageous and needs an explanation.   Appendix B provides a fairly detailed line item of budget details.
            4. Construction Project Updates:  No decisions or actions are being requested.  These updates are normally provided at regular meetings and are routine.  So, this could be routine, or there is something being discussed that is abnormal since it is on this workshop agenda and not a regular meeting agenda.
            5. Additional items – Normally, these aren’t added, but since Sean Parks joined the Board and County Manager Darren Gray came onboard, Parks or the staff tend to bring in items at the last minute.  Thus, I have to now check the agendas on Mondays to see if there is an agenda addition for the Tuesday meeting.
               1. We do know of one possible added item to be discussed -  Last week’s Capital Planning Advisory Committee (CPAC – formerly the Impact Fee Committee) submitted a request to Sean Parks to recommend that the Board ALLOCATE 2% ( an estimated $1.2-million) of the General Fund towards Transportation Capital spending (Roads).  Currently, there are no general funds being used for maintenance or capital spending for roads.    CPAC had a long discussion about the shortage of funds for Roads, and decided not to wait for their future report and make this recommendation to the Board NOW for the current budget discussions.   Some people would consider this a tax increase, because it will take a bite out of the existing general fund and reduce funds for existing programs, providing more pressure for added taxes.  I will write a blog entry later on this issue because many significant issues are coming up at CPAC meetings and the press rarely visits them.  This CPAC recommendation may be discussed, but I don’t expect any decisions until the Board has more time to digest it for discussion at a future budget workshop.
               2. Fire, Library and Parks fees to be doubled?  This probably will NOT be discussed at this workshop, but there is another CPAC recommendation to approve a 2010 consultant’s recommendations for impact fee increases (some would be  doubled) for fire, libraries and parks, while also simplifying commercial impact fee categories that affect road impact fees (no more $50,000 fees for specific businesses) and implementing cost of living index increases in fees.   But, that recommendation will take about 3-weeks to get to the Board since it involves revising an ordnance, thus we will have more information later.   School impact fees and transportation fees are later and separate subjects and not part of this pending recommendation.
3. North Lake Tea party – Wed, June 15^th- 6pm - If you haven’t attended a meeting, it is this Wednesday evening at 6pm at the Tavares Community Center. 
   1. http://www.northlaketeaparty.com/
   2. Speakers this Wednesday are former Florida State Senator Carey Baker, and also Marilyn Bainter, North Lake County Hospital District Board member.  This could be interesting if “someone” would ask Baker why he (when he was Senator) , current Senator Alan Hays, and representative Marlene O’Toole have consistently refused to help other Lake County legislators implement revised spending rules for the North Lake County Hospital Tax District.  A Florida regulation clearly says the legislators are responsible for oversight and there sure isn’t any oversight over how District funds are spent.  
   3. Additionally,  I will NOT give a “local issues” update at this meeting on the CPAC tax issues as planned because there are two main speakers at the meeting.

 

It’s 2:10 am and I am finished.

Revised at 8:15 am Monday after sleeping on it.