Almost a billion dollars under budgeted for the airport?
Recently I complained about the almost $217,000,000 cost overruns at the Performing Arts Center (PAC). Reader “True New Urbanist” pointed out that:
“Perhaps the PAC was not done right, poor architecture, over budget, and no convenient parking, however, how can you all argue against investment in the downtown core.”
Good point. However, I am not against investment in the downtown core. I am against wasting taxpayer money. Budgets should be realistic up front so we know the true cost of our investments. Over and over we are socked with huge bills after the projects are underway. We can never get on top of the property tax siuation with this careless spending going on.
On the preliminary County Commission agenda for March 6th, the County Manager is asking for an increase of $963,400,000 to the Miami-Dade Aviation department’s Capital Improvement Program. The budget is already at 5 billion plus. With this addition we will be paying $6.2 BILLION of our tax dollars to the airport. This overrun should clobber us over the head and wake us up.
As we talk about tax reform, we have to talk, in the same breath, about spending reform as well. With the inflated tax base we now have, the Commission has gotten into the habit of wasting lots and lots of our money and it has to stop. We have “Teacup” and “Watermelon” sculptures that we paid plenty for (In the Miami Herald Today) besides the big ticket items like at the Airport and PAC.
I want to quote from one of Eye On Miami’s astute readers: “repeal the home rule charter.” RTHRC said:
“No matter where the money comes from, sales tax, property tax or any other tax, spending by county government needs to be brought under control.”
And in a second comment post:
“Where has all the scandal been? I would say more in the county wide areas than in the municipal services function. The big ones that come to mind are runaway overruns at the airport, a seaport that looses money where the one in Broward county makes a profit, mismanagement in water and sewer involving paving, striping, cell phones and postage, paying 100% in advance to built housing without any oversight. I could go on and on. The problem is way too much without proper oversight.”
“With a $4,731,598,000, that’s almost 5 BILLION dollars it’s easy to approve 5 million here 8 million there without even the expenditure being noticed.”
9 comments:
Taxes will never come down if they are spending 6 billion dollars at that poor excuse for an airport. I go Hollywood/Ft. Lauderdale whenever I can. We are in a Catch 22 with the spending...
Cities are often run on graft and corruption, the question becomes when is it too much and when it just enough to get things done? Was 19 C Paris built during Napoleon III corruption free, clean and under budget? Is it not a testament to beauty accomplished with means that make present day Miami's slum seem clearances tame in comparison. How much do you think the Sydney Opera house went over budget, what to guess? Was Robert Moses, the man who built the needed and unneeded infrastructure in NY and NYC democratic and unaffiliated with corrupt businessmen? We all seem to admire the products of these labors, however none of us really want to look to closely at how they were made.
Perhaps it is that Miami lacks imagination, take the PAC, not as much as it is overrun with graft.
Basic oversight, the kind you see in the business community, is just not there. How else can you explain the Water & Sewer department Cell phone disaster? How could a department mismanage cell phones like they did? From what was said in the Hearld it was some supervisor in the mail room managing them on his PC. When the PC crashed he quit managing. Doesn’t the county have a standard method for authorizing who has cell phones, how to budget for them with a system to validate usage? With 30,000 employees don’t you think there should some standard method of being sure all departments monitor who has cell phones and verifying that all usage is audited?
How about the public housing fiasco, what bank would give the entire amount for construction of a home or building to the builder up front? From what I have been exposed to, banks pay out the money in stages, based on the completion of stages of construction. From my understanding the county did not do that basic common sense process. Think of the interest the county could have received if they just would have held back a percentage of the money waiting for the completion of the first stages of the projects.
And then there is the Hearld and it’s reporting of all this. Why did they not pry deeper into the misuse of OUR funds? I don’t recall any questions about how the county tracks cell phones county wide or how a budget item that large, 100% over budget, got past auditors for so long. Did the Herald question how the payments were made in the housing scandal? Do other departments pay in full up front with out checks and balances to be sure the money is going where it’s supposed to?
To some this is no big deal, in a 5 BILLION dollar budget they are just “ROUNDING ERRORS”.
.Business is not exactly all on the up and up, in fact might I suggest that the same backroom deals in politics occur in the boardroom as well. Just look at executive compensation and bonus. If anything given the way business in run in So FL, Miami politicians have taken a page from that book and watered it down. Public sector expense accounts, while large, are not nearly as lavish as the ones in publicly traded corporations
My Comment to true new urbanist.
As to going over budget, I’ve seen it in the business world. “Low Ball” your project so it will get approved then add on “change orders” after the fact to make it function. Play that game with a big project in private enterprise and you’re done for, gone. Look around at big ticket projects in companies that have to make a profit, going way over budget sends CIO’s and other top exec’s packing.
We should expect the same accountability from Miami-Dade County.
How could Carrie Meek and her son not have known what was going on? Isn't Meek from Liberty City? She is the one originally responsible for establishing the surtax that was supposed to be used for affordable housing. What kind of business deals do she and her son have with developers in South Florida?
Hint: start with the Miami-Dade Housing Finance Authority.
Why has Kendrick Meek been pushing so hard for a federal investigation? So the Bush Administration can cover something up?
And then there's the Palm Beach recount....
Yea, the CEO of Home Depot did such a bad job that the board sent him packing with over 200 million dollars. Well it may depend upon the business, but there are alot of time with projects go way over what architects told the client it would cost. This happened as Pollo Tropicals expanded.
Don’t misunderstand me on the Performing Arts Center; you may notice I did not even use it as an example. I do feel that the county did a little “low balling” to get it approved but overall I think it was something needed in the area. Having gone to the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in Palm Beach County I hoped that someday we would have a facility like it here. With that said, I think we were misled on the PAC in that things such as parking were cut from the plans.
Well, for one thing, when a contract goes out to bid... it ought to be 100% designed. Because if it isn't, and it is awarded. Then the winning firm has the contract in one hand and all missing drawings in the other hand, and NO competition to bid against for the additional work. I bet it does more often than they will admit.
That happened with the Miami Arena: they had a mess with costs and cut out 4,000 seats to control the costs. Those missing seats became a critical factor in it's success or failure.
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