Tavares, FL - Feb. 9, 2012
by Vance Jochim - FiscalRangers.com
These are notes related to the Feb. 9th Lake County Board Meeting
Tab 25 - Lake County Board Quarterly Budget Update
Summary: The Board spent about 35 minutes discussing an update on the current and next year's budgets. They are on target on the current budget, and showed graphs on Quarter 1.
The process and details of the presentation are getting much better and closer to what you would see in corporations. The staff also presented expectations for establishing the budget for 2013, and they expect that revenues will be reduced another 5% for each of the next two years due to dropping property tax valuations and other revenue sources.
The Board and staff also are working out a much better process to ensure the Constitutional officers are engaged in budget talks, so there are no last minute surprises or standoffs like last year.
Details of the budget discussion:
(You can also view the online archived VIDEO of this portion of the meeting HERE (video 2 for the Feb. 7), and the Powerpoint is located under tab 25 on the agenda webpage HERE.
The Board is still in the process of developing the 2012-2013 budget. At their Feb. 7th Board meeting the Board got a quarter 1 status update on the 2011-2012 of the $420-million budget from Steve Koontz, Budget Director.
- Property values declined by 8.3%
- General fund reserves still maintained at 23%.
Thre was a pretty good discussion starting about 20 minutes into the video.
Leslie Campione suggested they pin down the expected 5% per year cut with Consistutional officers early in the process. Don't wait further per Campione. "Define 5% of what number, so no confusion". We need to give direction. Jimmy says "if we don't do that, we might as well raise taxes...". " I support what the Chairman is trying to do here..." Jimmy said.
The Board discussed "lovingly telling the Constitutional officers what their total number should be..." said Jimmy. "We need to pin that number down" said Campione regarding the Sheriff's budget. "It is a target where we need all of them to be in this process..." said Jimmy.
Most of the discussion was related to getting an early agreement with the Sheriff. Staff just had an internal "budget kickoff" meeting to describe expected funding restrictions, and they had Constitutional officer representatives participate to give them an early warning.
Targeted budget numbers for the Board operations and the Constitutional officers will be prepared for the next Board meeting to discuss.
"We are all going to sign the budget targets in blood" said Jimmy, which I take mean him trying to ensure that Commissioner Sean Parks does his research and doesn't flip flop later.
The grants process is being centralized under the Budgets department. In my opinion, there wasn't any real coordination or emphasis on applying for grants, but County Manager Darren Gray seems to be centralizing, controlling and expanding efforts to apply for grants. (which is a good thing - they didn't even have a professional grant writer for the County). ( @ 32 min)
The staff displayed a calendar of dates for the budget process, with a mid year adjustment to the current budget on March 27th, a Board Budget Workshop in June, issuing a recommended budget in July, and the required public hearings to approve the budgets in September. Our advice to anyone affected by the budget is to do your lobbying early - don't wait for the September public meetings because by then, the Board usually has developed a consensus in prior workshops. If they don't let you provide public input at the workshops, then be sure to send emails and make calls to the Commissioners.
There was hardly any input or direction from Welton Cadwell or Jennifer Hill. Most of the discussion and leadership came from Campione and Conners, with contributions from Sean Parks.
I had a few comments about the way budget data was presented, which will be forwarded by email to the County Manager. Otherwise, it was a good presentation.
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Tab 25 - Briefing on progress of the Lake County Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Regulations (LDR's)
I missed the actual presentation because the Board took a LONG break before tab 24 for a closed door session, so I could not provide public input. But, I will.
You can watch the video of the meeting using this link - scroll to the 33:30 time marker to see this section on LDR's. Scroll to 57:00 for 11 min discussion of School District impact fees.
You can also READ this Powerpoint HERE - the online version did not work, so I had to ask staff to send this to me (a constant problem).
Download 2012-02-07 LandDevUpdate
This was a briefing by staff in the "Growth" department on the status of land development activities and comp plan changes. This is because the current County Comprehensive Plan was developed before the two rabid environmentalists were voted out and replaced with Leslie Campione and Sean Parks over a year ago. Also, Governor Scott's office changed the requirement for mandatory comp plans approved by State bureaucrats (I believe), and left comp plans up to the Counties without undue State level involvement. Some states and counties are now getting rid of such Comp Plans because they took years to develop before the public caught on how they screwed property rights. (In my humble opinion). Thus Counties can now revise or reduce comp plans locally, and that process has started due to the excessive regulations included in the earlier versions.
At a meeting early last year, a number of amendments were passed by the new Board to reverse some of the more onerous comp plan requirements, so the status of those amendments was also discussed at the Feb. 7 meeting. An example was restrictions on parts of South County where they could not build any road more than two lanes. Doing so would prohibit development of land for housing due to traffic loads requiring wider lanes and roads. Much of this was related to "Agenda 21" tactics pushed by socialists (see our separate blog posts on Agenda 21 - again, my opinion).
An overview of the video (I recommend watching it for more details and look at the Powerpoint)
- 11 Amendments passed by the Lake County Board are now being incorporated into the initial Comp Plan. These are ones pushed through by land owners and attorneys at a Nov. 2011 meeting.
- The presentation gave an overview of the five year plan to develop and implement regulations, policies, etc based upon the revised comp plan. I expect this to be revised as property owners and the public realize that the local Board can drop other Agenda 21 type components of this plan.
- Landscape ordinance changes demanded by locals.
- Mining regulations (i.e. for sod, etc in Green Swamp area)
- Change "plant" requirements - container size, walls within buffers
- Clarifications because "customer just didn't understand requirements", thus added examples.
- Landscape buffer requirements
- Landscape amendments go to Boards in March & April
- Watering of trees required for one year, then watering could stop and it could die.
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44:09 - T228 - 29 Other business - appointments to mining committee
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49:00 Board Reports
DG - Budget quarterly report will be on website.
New PIO - Mario Roberts
Hill: US Citizens ceremony - 43 countries.
Parks: Lake County Days; Met with Enterprise FL staff
Conners: All good
54:00 Campione: Will talk about CRA's next meeting on 28th, map to be redrawn wo golf course. "I feel so strongly that CRA is needed for Sorrento area, but will retract golf course area from boundary map".
Around 57:20 - School Board meeting re Impact fee study: Moratorium ends Mar 31. (about 11 min discussion)
School Board Chair Rosanne Brandeburg told Campione there was a consensus at prior night's School Board meeting that the impact fees in the new consulting report should be adopted, or the County Board should help implement a new 1/2 mill property tax dedicated to schools to replace the lost revenue.
- She got an estimate that Schools lost about $4.5-million on waived impact fees based upon actual permits issued. Point made that some project would NOT have been done if impact fees were charged. Campione: School board gave clear direction - adopt impact fees in study or discuss approving .5mill tax.
Welton wants explanation of how school funding works.
Conners said he would not support added millage tax. "We asked for a vote, and didn't get it " Consensus is not same as a firm vote from School Board.
Result: Campione will find date for group meeting with School Board. School Board would have preso by Harry Fix, plus CFO presentation on financials, and impact study discussion.
1:08 - Welton: Congress Lake County Days - workforce FL preso,
Adjourned
