07-06-2008, 02:07 PM
Budget outruns resident increase
By PAUL QUINLAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 05, 2008
WEST PALM BEACH — The turn of the millennium marked the beginning of a hot streak for Florida, especially Palm Beach County.
For many of the more than 1,000 newcomers who streamed into Florida every day, Palm Beach County was the destination. Between then and now, the county's population grew 12 percent as 135,000 new residents moved in - more than all other Florida counties except the two immediately to the south.
Graphic: County government staff growth
But that was merely a growth spurt compared with the metamorphosis the county's government has undergone during that time.
Flush with cash from the South Florida building boom and real estate run-up, Palm Beach County borrowed, spent and hired lavishly and aggressively, increasing its government staff twice as fast as the population.
The $2.2 billion budget nearly doubled to more than $4 billion, as the staff ballooned from 9,320 to 11,564, budget records show. Borrowing increased the county's annual debt payments from $38 million in 2001 to a projected $75 million in 2009, Budget Director Liz Bloeser said.
Staffs that grew the most, in percentage terms, include fire-rescue, libraries and the supervisor of elections and sheriff's offices, whose staffs grew between 55 percent (fire-rescue) and 34 percent (sheriff's office) since 2000.
Deputy Chief Steve Delai said county fire-rescue was forced to expand after service fell below expectations in the 1990s. During the past five years, the county built or rebuilt 13 stations and added a third staff member to most of its fleet of 36 rescue trucks, among other improvements. The department also merged with six municipal fire departments, increasing the overall staff count.
"When the extra tax money came in, that's what we spent it on: extra service in the county, which is what people said they wanted," Delai said.
Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said correcting the top-heaviness of his department has been a priority since he took office in 2005 and that the staff has grown much less on his watch - about 9 percent.
Still, the department has grown by more than a third since 2000, and Bradshaw said he remains understaffed in a few critical areas, such as the detective bureau. He has refused layoffs.
The average deputy will receive a 7.45 percent raise this year under the three-year contract that ends in 2009, Bradshaw said. With more than 80 percent of his budget devoted to personnel costs, Bradshaw said the next round of union negotiations will present an opportunity to trim expenses - for example, by cutting the cost-of-living increase included in raises from 5 percent to no more than 3 percent.
"I want to be able to treat the employees fairly but keep (costs) as low as I possibly can," Bradshaw said.Defenders of the county's fiscal habits say much of the new staff is dedicated to the new libraries, parks, law enforcement and fire service that taxpayers demanded. For example, voters approved two separate bond issues to expand the county's library system, County Administrator Bob Weisman said.
"We are very efficient for what we try to do," Weisman said. "This is a very lean organization."
But critics say most voters paid little attention to the spending.
Shielded by the Save Our Homes 3 percent limit on annual increases in taxable home value, taxpayers with homestead exemptions found satisfaction in the commission's strategy of lowering or holding flat the property tax rate. The county scooped in hundreds of millions more in property tax revenues every year as the flat or lowered rate was applied to an expanding kingdom of taxable real estate.
The minority of non-homesteaded property owners, including businesses and seasonal residents, were less fortunate. Their taxable values soared, along with their tax bills.
"The philosophy of the commission was what I call TIA: Take It All," county Republican Party Chairman Sid Dinerstein said. "Whatever amount the property values went up was exactly the amount they raised the budget."
Seeing little change in their tax bills, most homesteaded residents were blissfully unaware that statewide property tax collections surged 68 percent during the past four years, said Kurt Wenner, a research director for Florida TaxWatch.
"It took the voter out of the spending process," Wenner said. "People quit going to the meetings. People quit questioning what was going on because their taxes weren't going up. The only people who complained were the snowbirds and the businesses."
Not so this year.
Brief consideration of increasing the tax rate for the first time in a decade provoked public outcry, as e-mails, letters and phone calls rained down on commissioners' offices demanding the rate stay flat. Weisman and others noted that the rate increase simply would have let the county counteract the decline in property values, as state law allows.
But commissioners agreed to reject the rate hike. Now they are considering which programs to cut.
Dinerstein has called for much stronger action: a 10 percent pay cut for all county commissioners and constitutional officers, a moratorium on new capital projects that are not required for public safety and an across-the-board wage freeze.
He also called on commissioners to limit future budget increases to the sum of the rates of inflation and population growth, so as to avoid crunches like this year's.
"It's like a family budget," Dinerstein said. "If the family gets a big bonus, well, if you spend it all that year, all of sudden you're in house you can't afford. Which is where we are right now. We're in a county we can't afford."
By PAUL QUINLAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 05, 2008
WEST PALM BEACH — The turn of the millennium marked the beginning of a hot streak for Florida, especially Palm Beach County.
For many of the more than 1,000 newcomers who streamed into Florida every day, Palm Beach County was the destination. Between then and now, the county's population grew 12 percent as 135,000 new residents moved in - more than all other Florida counties except the two immediately to the south.
Graphic: County government staff growth
But that was merely a growth spurt compared with the metamorphosis the county's government has undergone during that time.
Flush with cash from the South Florida building boom and real estate run-up, Palm Beach County borrowed, spent and hired lavishly and aggressively, increasing its government staff twice as fast as the population.
The $2.2 billion budget nearly doubled to more than $4 billion, as the staff ballooned from 9,320 to 11,564, budget records show. Borrowing increased the county's annual debt payments from $38 million in 2001 to a projected $75 million in 2009, Budget Director Liz Bloeser said.
Staffs that grew the most, in percentage terms, include fire-rescue, libraries and the supervisor of elections and sheriff's offices, whose staffs grew between 55 percent (fire-rescue) and 34 percent (sheriff's office) since 2000.
Deputy Chief Steve Delai said county fire-rescue was forced to expand after service fell below expectations in the 1990s. During the past five years, the county built or rebuilt 13 stations and added a third staff member to most of its fleet of 36 rescue trucks, among other improvements. The department also merged with six municipal fire departments, increasing the overall staff count.
"When the extra tax money came in, that's what we spent it on: extra service in the county, which is what people said they wanted," Delai said.
Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said correcting the top-heaviness of his department has been a priority since he took office in 2005 and that the staff has grown much less on his watch - about 9 percent.
Still, the department has grown by more than a third since 2000, and Bradshaw said he remains understaffed in a few critical areas, such as the detective bureau. He has refused layoffs.
The average deputy will receive a 7.45 percent raise this year under the three-year contract that ends in 2009, Bradshaw said. With more than 80 percent of his budget devoted to personnel costs, Bradshaw said the next round of union negotiations will present an opportunity to trim expenses - for example, by cutting the cost-of-living increase included in raises from 5 percent to no more than 3 percent.
"I want to be able to treat the employees fairly but keep (costs) as low as I possibly can," Bradshaw said.Defenders of the county's fiscal habits say much of the new staff is dedicated to the new libraries, parks, law enforcement and fire service that taxpayers demanded. For example, voters approved two separate bond issues to expand the county's library system, County Administrator Bob Weisman said.
"We are very efficient for what we try to do," Weisman said. "This is a very lean organization."
But critics say most voters paid little attention to the spending.
Shielded by the Save Our Homes 3 percent limit on annual increases in taxable home value, taxpayers with homestead exemptions found satisfaction in the commission's strategy of lowering or holding flat the property tax rate. The county scooped in hundreds of millions more in property tax revenues every year as the flat or lowered rate was applied to an expanding kingdom of taxable real estate.
The minority of non-homesteaded property owners, including businesses and seasonal residents, were less fortunate. Their taxable values soared, along with their tax bills.
"The philosophy of the commission was what I call TIA: Take It All," county Republican Party Chairman Sid Dinerstein said. "Whatever amount the property values went up was exactly the amount they raised the budget."
Seeing little change in their tax bills, most homesteaded residents were blissfully unaware that statewide property tax collections surged 68 percent during the past four years, said Kurt Wenner, a research director for Florida TaxWatch.
"It took the voter out of the spending process," Wenner said. "People quit going to the meetings. People quit questioning what was going on because their taxes weren't going up. The only people who complained were the snowbirds and the businesses."
Not so this year.
Brief consideration of increasing the tax rate for the first time in a decade provoked public outcry, as e-mails, letters and phone calls rained down on commissioners' offices demanding the rate stay flat. Weisman and others noted that the rate increase simply would have let the county counteract the decline in property values, as state law allows.
But commissioners agreed to reject the rate hike. Now they are considering which programs to cut.
Dinerstein has called for much stronger action: a 10 percent pay cut for all county commissioners and constitutional officers, a moratorium on new capital projects that are not required for public safety and an across-the-board wage freeze.
He also called on commissioners to limit future budget increases to the sum of the rates of inflation and population growth, so as to avoid crunches like this year's.
"It's like a family budget," Dinerstein said. "If the family gets a big bonus, well, if you spend it all that year, all of sudden you're in house you can't afford. Which is where we are right now. We're in a county we can't afford."