This is a line item on your tax bill folks - the Children's Trust is a taxing entity subject to a public hearing!The Trust is having their final hearing TODAY. They voted at last Monday’s hearing held in downtown Miami to raise taxes! Namely to raise the millage to .5000 mills. The Trust Board claims that if they had held the millage at the same rate, they would have to discontinue another 16 million dollars worth of services.
Look at the graphic, one has to wonder if they accomplished all the budget cuts they could have. Items worth noting:
1. Professional Services – I would think that they would have enough experience on staff that they should not need consultants. As far as outside attorney’s go, WHY?? Maybe they need their own legal staff. How many of the staff they have laid off are coming back as consultants?
2. The staff should be limiting their travel and cell phone use. They don’t have to drive to every meeting of which they get notice. They certainly don’t need to be flying about the country until the budget looks less grim.
3. The Trust could operate with less “give away” advertising gimmicks such as pencils and t-shirts. They have a traveling bus, but it most likely is hidden in the cost of the contracted programs. Actually, what does the trust spend on their own programming?
4. Capital expenditures: The Trust laid off staff and then they do computer upgrades? Is updating the computers and software something that is critical at this juncture? The number of programs they are tracking has declined, the number of children serviced has changed and the actual staffing numbers changed for the Trust, yet they are making quite an investment in computer hardware.
It was interesting to see the tax collector gets his share. Is that double taxation for the population? The taxpayers pay the tax collector to maintain the state/county’s tax collecting ability and then pay them again to pay our taxes to the people where they belong? Think about the Trust paying the Tax Collector over a million dollars to forward the taxes collected to their bank account. Then multiply that times collection fee for each entity on your tax bill. Good business for the tax collector; bad for the community.
If you decide to go the final meeting, it is MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009, at 5:00 P.M., on the Miami Dade College’s Downtown Wolfson Campus. Go to Building 2, room 2106 on the first floor. Bring a barf bag.
3 comments:
So, if we cut your highlighted items by 50% there is a $500k savings or a total reduction of their budget of .4%?
The highlighted items are items that conceivably could be reduced from the information provided.
They lowered their budget by transferring some of their responsibilities, such as audits, to non-profits to hire out on the Trusts behalf.
It works for the Trust. That burden puts an additional load the local non-profit's budget. The non-profits have to set aside money that would go to services to accommodate the Trusts new rules. But the Trust successfully cost shifts to organizations that have already taken up to 50% hits on their Trust funding. (More if they have county funding).
It is a tough choice, but I think items such as 120k for computers is either very stupid or a way to hide money to be moved later.
The Childrens Trust was a bad idea to begin with and I always said this would happen. This is nothing but another taxpayer funded boondoggle and I have witnessed lots of folks driving around in Mercedes and sporting $1000 shoes and purses usung the trust. Not to mention the business people that are raking it in (at taxpayer expense) looking the other way.
Thanks for nothing Mr. Lawrence.
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