Updated June 16 - I added a link below in the "1. Budget Update" section to the County Manager's Powerpoint for the budget discussion.
Tavares, FL - June 15, 2011 - The Lake County Commissioners had an offsite workshop yesterday in the wilds of Eustis at the Trout Lake Center. The agenda is HERE and SOME attachments are located under the "Tab" links. Offsite workshops are used many times to make decisions out of public view (no video taping), without public input and poor agenda details.
Major results of the meeting were 1) a discussion on the $16-million budget shortfall for the next fiscal year starting Oct. 1, 2) asking the Sheriff to do REAL budget cuts of another $3-million (5% of his $55+million budget); 3) three County Commissioners, Jennifer Hill, Welton Cadwall and Sean Parks approving the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) for $8.5-million without disclosing it or the fiscal impact anywhere on the agenda, or allowing public input, and 4) Commissioner Jennifer Hill, who sets agenda items, did not provide for any public input during the meeting. (which is normal, but annoying, and an insult to taxpayers).
We issued a bulletin on Monday about the pending meeting, and suggested that item 3 regarding an "update" on Capital Construction Projects might be a ruse for some undisclosed topic, and we were right. The Commissioners did indeed HIDE their intention to discuss and approve the $8.5-million EOC without allowing public input.
The three main agenda topics were a 1) budget update, 2) a discussion on the proposed Fire Assessment fees, and the 3) Capital Construction projects update. There were also some new items brought up by Commissioners at the end of the meeting after some reporters left (which is always why we stay to the end of the meetings).
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Here are more details of the meeting results :
1. Budget Update - I have requested a copy of the
- $16-million budget shortfall: The County will be short $16-million in the next fiscal year, so ideas were discussed to find ways to reduce the shortfall, including asking the County Sheriff for an additional 5% of his budget of $55+million, or about $3-million MORE than the $2-million cost reductions he offered last week. Until now, the Sheriff has not reduced his budgets much in the last three years, and the County Commission operations (which also has a budget of about $60-million) has been taking the brunt of staff reductions and cost reductions as tax revenues fell over the last three years. It was general knowledge tha the Sheriff's earlier $2-million "reduction" was really savings from the new State requirement that employees contribute 3% of their wages to pensions, which reduced the benefits costs of the local Sheriff.
- The budget presentation made clear that the total County budget may be over $120-million, but over half of that is the Sheriff, other Constitutional officers, and interest payments on debt for the Judicial Center ($5.7-million). Thus most cutbacks in spending and staffing levels in budget reductions over the last three years were from the Board's direct operations. There are no required budget hearings for the Constitutional Officers and their budget is only explained by a single page in the 400 page County budget book. The Board never "cutoff" spending for Constitutional officers, but that could be an option for the Sheriff. The other Constitutional offices are fairly small and known to be frugal with their budgets.
- Another budget shortfall idea by Gray was using $8-10 million of the County cash reserves to offset part of the shortfall, which was resisted by Commissioner Jimmy Conner, who believes the reserves should only be used for unexpected emergencies like hurricanes. It might be possible to use $4-5-million of the reserves, per Commissioner discussions, but not $8-10-million.
- If the County does not use reserves or obtain more reductions from the Sherrif, the Commissioners will have to discuss cutting programs like LakeExpress, or reducing funding for libraries or parks. That discussion was deferred to a future budget workshop. The general opinion was that existing Commissioner operations were down to the "bare bones" and cutting of programs would be next on the table. Unlike the Lake County School District, where the Board members went through budgets line item by line item, this Board doesn't seem to be interested in doing that. They basically are relying on staff to bring up ideas, and then react to them.
2. Fire Assessment Fee - A consultant's 39 page report was presented that basically recommended slight reductions in fire assessment fees, which is a GOOD THING. It will come up at a future Board meeting for formal approvals. Here is a link to the supporting documents and report and Powerpoint.
3. Capital Projects Update AND UNDISCLOSED APPROVAL OF $8.5-MILLION Emergency Operations Center (EOC)- As mentioned in our earlier email this week, the fiscal impact or issue of the EOC Center was not disclosed in the Tab 3 agenda description. The topic was BURIED at the end of the staff Powerpoint. The agenda only said this:
"Update of Various Construction Projects Under the Direction of the Department of Facilities Development and Management. No actions being requested at this time."
This was a clear "Dirty Politics" attempt by Chairperson Jennifer Hill to avoid public notice of the main topic, approval of the pending EOC which in the past has resulted in numerous public input attendees. This workshop also did NOT ALLOW public input, so basically Hill and the Commission railroaded the project approval through without allowing public input. As before, Commissioners Jimmy Conner and Leslie Campione did not support it, and Sean Parks, Jennifer Hill and Welton Cadwell DID support spending about $4-million of future sales tax revenues on this project EVEN THOUGH THEY HAD AN EARLIER DISCUSSION ABOUT THE $16-million budget shortfall. By postponing this project, they could have released $4-million in 2012 sales tax revenues to offset some of the shortfalls.
So, if the Commissioners later say they have to reduce funding for staff, programs, LakeExpress, the libraries or parks, just remember, the three Commissioners, Parks, Hill and Cadwell, who voted to spend $4-million on the EOC center rather than save the funds to keep those programs. (Note: this depends on which type of expenditures the Sales Tax revenue can be used for.) Cadwell and Hill also previously pushed through the new $50-million Judicial Center expansion which increased debt payments by $5.7-million per year, starting next year. The project would have been $90-million if Jimmy Conner had not proposed a reduction in the project size. So, the big spenders Hill and Cadwell (and possibly newbie Parks?) will keep spending like this until they are out of office. Remember that.
Other Articles on this meeting - READ the COMMENTS for extra details
- Commissioner Jimmy Conner published some information about the meeting at his blog HERE.
- HERE is the Daily Commercial Article on yesterday's meeting.
- HERE is Steve Hudak's article in the Lake Sentinel
Other Issues Discussed at the Meeting ( I wrote this before reading the above articles:
- EMS Audit - The Commissioners initiated a plan to have an operational audit of the Emergency Medical Services for Lake County and staff has obtained 8 qualified bidders and selected a "short list" to be interviewed next week. I am personally worried that they went to the most expensive big accounting firms who mostly do financial auditing and the Board will choke on the price.
- Future meetings are scheduled on budget decisions, including July 12th and other dates that SHOULD be posted on the County Commissioner meeting agenda website page HERE.
- The Capital Facilities Advisory Committee ( CFAC - formerly known as the Impact Fee Committee) has forwarded a request that the Commissioners seriously consider setting aside 2% of the general fund budget for Road construction projects. That may be discussed in the future, or dropped. Although Roads are short of funding, the 2% setaside would create a shift of funding away from existing programs when shortfalls are already a problem. Additionally, the Committee had previously heard information that local cities have been conning the County into maintaining 108 miles of city roads. The cities would annex property on both sides of County highways, but not the street, leaving the County to pay for maintenance on the roads. The cities would gain property taxes from the properties, but escape responsibility to fund maintenance of the roads the residents used. County Manager Darren Gray has been meeting with cities to setup a process to "transfer" these roads back to the city for maintenance. This is apparently one of those backdoor deals old time County politicians would allow, but I don't think it will work in the future. Note: This need for roads funding COULD be filled by using the $4-million set aside for the EOC center.
- 5 Year Past Budgets should Use 10 year data - County Manager Darren Gray showed tables listing major revenue and expense totals from the County budget so you could see the drop in revenues over the last five years. However, there was no similar table showing the Sheriff's actual expenditures and revenues over the same period, so you can't see if he ever actually reduced spending at all in the last five years compared to the County operations. However, I believe they need to show a TEN year prior budget trend, because that would show the true rise and fall of budgets past the period of high property values. Current budget allocations should be based upon 2003 numbers before property speculation, and not 2006, the high point of property values.
- 5-year Future Budget Plan - New County Manager Darren Gray is bringing new, positive sophistication to the budget process at Lake County. He is working on a five year budget plan, and plans to bring in an Economist to provide information on trends like Orange County does. This is unheard of in local government budgeting. The much bigger School District doesn't do that. One reason I support using 5 year future budget plans is to show future effects on budgets when the Board makes budget decisions. For instance, if the Judicial Center debt payment will go up from $3-million to $5-million, officials can immediately see the effect of committing that much revenue to debt payments on the remaining budgets. Until now, budget discussions seem to always focus on just the next year, and not long term effects of decisions.
- EOC funds could offset County budget shortfall - When the EOC $8.5-million approval was being discussed, they discussed that the County is setting aside $4-million in 2012 sales tax revenue for the County portion of the project (rest is from Feds and State), but the County Manager did not list that $4-million as an option for offsetting the budget shortfalls. By postponing or canceling the EOC, $4-million in sales tax revenue could be used to offset part of the budget shortfall. We do understand that sales tax collections can be only used for certain expenses, but they should be available for roads and other necessities first before spending them on a new building.
- New Florida State Severance Limits - The State legislators passed a rule that no government employee can receive more than 20 weeks severance (about 4-months).
- EOC and Sheriff budget negotiating issue derailed by Commissioner Sean Parks, Welton Cadwell and Jennifer Hill. - After discussing the need to request $3-million more from the Sherrif, and then when approving the EOC funding, Commissioner Leslie Campione intelligently made the point they should hold approval of the EOC, which the Sheriff wants, and which is being paid for by the County budget, not the Sheriff's budget, until the Sheriff provides the additional $3-million budget cuts requested. However, Parks, Hill and Cadwell would not agree, thus they approved the EOC without any conditions for the Sheriff. So, the Sheriff gets the EOC for his dispatchers FREE without contributing out of his budget, he got the old County Courthouse FREE when the new Constitution offices offices across the street were provided, his budgets are never reviewed or approved by an independent body during public meetings, and if he refuses to provide the requested $3-million, then the County will either increase taxes or cut programs because he has refused to match other government cutback actions.
- Can Lake County Taxpayers Afford to have Jennifer Hill as Chair of the Commissioners? I don't think so. She mostly likes spending without limits or conditions. She also is not assertive in discussions related to budget issues. She went to the Sheriff about a month ago at the direction of the Board to ask for budget cutbacks and only returned with the savings from shifting pension costs from the employer (the Sheriff) to employees, who now must contribute 3% of their own wages to the pension program. That is not a cut. Now, she is returning to the Sheriff to "ask" for another 5% of his budget, and she is NOT a strong negotiator, so I don't expect much. The taxpayers cannot afford a weak leader and there needs to be another Chair appointed.
That's it for now - I have more from previous meetings and will post it later.
vj
Note: If you have friends who are interested in Lake County local government spending and policies, forward this to them. And, go to our "FiscalRangers" page on Facebook and LIKE us to get more news. If you are NOT on our email list, send an email to [email protected] and ask to be added to our email list.
Comments
- I posted the comment below to the Orlando Sentinel article :
I also attended the meeting. Another factor to consider is that three of the Commissioners, Jennifer Hilll, Welton Cadwell and Sean Parks also went and approved the new Emergency Operations center for $8.5-million which will be using over $4-million of 2012 sales tax funds. If they had postponed this project, that $4-million would be available to help offset the projected $16-million in budget shortfalls. So, in a few weeks, if the Commissioners decide to cut 2012 budgets for programs (Lake Express, Libraries, Parks, or staff) , remember those three Commissioners who would rather spend funds on new construction instead of reducing the $16-million budget shortfall.
Additionally, the Commision Chair, Jennifer Hill set the agenda, and prevented public input at the meeting AND the public was not forewarned about the EOC decision because it was not mentioned anywhere in the main agenda page. It was buried in a presentation on "Capital projects update". This was a complete lack of transparency over an $8.5-million spending decision, and voters should notify Jennifer Hill, Sean Parks and Welton Cadwell if they think such an approach stinks.
Vance Jochim
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