Cut ALL the Deputy Mayors for a start. They were not elected and no such positions existed from what I remember prior to this strong mayor stuff. I don't remember deputy mayor being on the ballot.
Why does the mayor have a Director of Communications (along with his own assistant, secretary, etc.), a Media Specialist and a Senior Media Assistant? The County has an entire department that deals with media/public relations and many departments have their own.
The Miami Dade Commissioners budget is bloated and they use their budget to advance self serving campaigns and sweeting their friends and family. Leave services alone.
If the Miami Herald has any remaining self-respect, they will mention this the next time an article appears about the Mayor and his efforts to cut County employee salaries.
The port needs only one director and the budget for commission travel junkets needs to be eliminated from the port for a start. I understand they're funded separately but those funds can be used to pay down the debt the entire county taxpayers are responsible for. I'm tired of paying two port directors and the commissioners foreign vacation expenses out of the port fund. In addition to cuts inside the mayors officer there needs to be cuts from each commission district office. The mom and pop grants are a ridiculous waste of taxpayer funds. The Beacon council can be cut in it's entirety and raise fees from it's members like most groups do with their dues who have no government subsidy's.
As to fire & police salary cuts needs to be made from the top not from "boots on the ground" officers/firefighters. The same applies inside county hall. We can reduce staff on the 29th floor because it's just beyond a waste of money especially when such bad decision making is happening right now.
I just looked up Edward Marquez..... He has a Bachelor's Degree, for goodness sakes! How did he get this job? When was it advertised? Was there a competitive process? Who else was considered? How was the salary negotiated?
We have to look at productivity. Who is doing the heavy lifting, the actual work of running the county? If the supervisors don't really do any actual work, then they can go and it would have no material impact on services. You can get 10 little ones for 1 big one, but do you get 10 times the work from the big ones? How many of the little ones actually do any work? Keep the intern at all cost.
Many jobs don't have secretaries any more. Perhaps the Mayor for scheduling and correspondence, but everyone else keeps their own schedules and do their own typing.
The Mayor's office is just the tip of the iceberg. Every single department has the same type of employees: Admin. Assistants, Secretaries, Division Directors and so on. Each department has an Assistant Director of Administration who supervises a budget staff, personnel office, purchasing staff, etc. The problem is each of these employees only supervise 1 or 2 people. Take a look at the Fire Department for example.
“Cut ALL the Deputy Mayors for a start. They were not elected and no such positions existed from what I remember prior to this strong mayor stuff. I don't remember deputy mayor being on the ballot.”
Prior to the strong mayor, these were Asst. County Manager positions. They were there. I’m not defending Carlito but he has cut a number of ACM positions.
“You have let the "cat out of the bag" Not really. This is just baiting the public, or at least those who read this blog. There may well be some on this list that are overpaid. There may well be others who are worth every cent.
“The Miami Dade Commissioners budget is bloated and they use their budget to advance self serving campaigns and sweeting their friends and family. Leave services alone.”
Yep.
“The port needs only one director and the budget for commission travel junkets needs to be eliminated from the port for a start. I understand they're funded separately but those funds can be used to pay down the debt the entire county taxpayers are responsible for.”
I’m not sure port funds can be used for anything other than port operations. Of course, there are creative ways of moving enterprise funds into the general fund. The Mayor does it all the time. In fact, one of his campaign promises was to reduce this shifting of funds.
“And then there's WASD! Genius, please do a similar check and post WASD's executive salaries.”
WASD is another enterprise fund.
“FIVE Deputy Mayors!”
Again, not defending Carlito but this number has been reduced significantly. I think Burgess had over 20 Asst. County Managers.
This organization, if it can be called that, appears to be similar to the Mandarin Court or to the North Korean Communist Bureaucracy.
Perhaps Tin Horn Dictator and Most High Exalted Ruler of Miami-Dade County Gimenez will ask his court officials to wear uniforms and badges as an indication of their rank.
They could charge the port rent just like they did with the library. Oh, they can find a way to get the money and use it for something else. And the rent could be very high!
I wasn't suggesting that you do any more work on this, I was simply reminding viewers that friends and families play a greater role than other factors or considerations like productivity or usefulness in the work effort.
In the mayor's memo this week he graciously stated that he will not replace his director of public affairs. It's convenient that he doesn't actually have to layoff or fire anyone since the Mr. Arias left willingly. "Lynda Bell's New Chief of Staff: Ruben Arias "Mayor Gimenez's Guy" Replaces Eddie Borrego. By Geniusofdespair"
Now, as a public affairs director, that job would be all about optimizing the mayor's image. Just look at how well that job has been handled!
Now those tasks will need to be divvied up amongst others in this office. The mayor has written that the tax payer is being given $50k in savings. Odd though, since the salary of that empty position is more than $50k.
So who is getting the deserving pay raises as the HR Dept has been ordered to start the retention score comparisons for layoffs?
While Carlos feathers his fiefdom, he bloviates about top-down restructuring in his most recent memo..and he leads by example by cutting a whopping 50K from his 3.5 million operation. If all departments followed suit..that would be a savings of 1.25 million more or less. Gimenez has already demonstrated he's not a leader...now apparently he proves he's not much of a bean counter either. As someone already alluded to in this blog (borrowing from the Honeymooners)..he's the Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler of the Racoon Lodge.) He and his cronies and family need to take a vacation to America.
unbelievable MArquez, salary is $10,000 every two weeks. This here makes no sense at all. The 5% that was taken from the little people for more than 4 years and the mayor claims the county is in a deficit, 45 staff who does nothing but steal money from the lower staff county workers. Are you serious. Most of the county department heads staff are over staffed. If you're going to cut from the top start with in your office
How do the salaries of Gimenez' Deputy Mayors compare to the salaries that Alvarez gave his top employees; salaries that in part that caused his recall?
There is a reason that the voters approved a strong mayor. Braman's support notwithstanding, those that showed up at the polls (notice I didn't say taxpayers) didn't trust the CoComm. Yet we still have a largely unchanged CoComm. It's like the voters don't trust their own decisions and need a strong mayor to trump their bad decisions electing their representatives on the Commission.
I'm pretty sure most voters don't understand the difference between the two forms of government. There are advantages to both and both require an educated and motivated electorate, neither of which exist in the 305.
So now we have both! A bloated BCC with some staffers earning over $100,000, and a bloated Mayor's office with at least three people to screw on a lightbulb.
If Marquez is also Finance Director, then call him that. The ridiculous title of Strong Mayor should not also tag along the uber-ridiculous Deputy Mayors - Five of them!
The point is being diluted. Let's take a moment to remind ourselves what exactly is happening. - The mayor asked employees to give up 5% of their salaries for a specified period. An agreement was reached. - The mayor reneged on this agreement and said the county could not afford it. - Two unions were given back the 5%. Obviously, the rest of the employees demanded the same. The BCC agreed and it is so. - Now, in a petulant, hysterical and childish rant, the Mayor says there will be retaliation in the form of service cuts and firings. - Today's post on this blog is showing him just where those cuts should begin.
If we as the people who own this county and who employ the Mayor and everyone else working at the Government Center, stand up and defend our rights, they will have to listen to us.
Remind Carlos he is a Public Servants. He works for us.
If he is finance director, then he should be paid accordingly. He is the one that holds everything together here. We don't want him to go anywhere so we leave him alone. What we are looking for is dead weight, non-productive people, who if they were cut, nothing would change.
Bottom Line: If Gimenez were doing a decent job, no one would care what his office spent.
One last point... Even a middling or struggling "strong" mayor is better than the "who's in charge -- no one, especially not me!!! " form of government we had before.
Under penelas, the lady who ran his south dade office ran it 5 days a week fully staffed (8 hours) a day by volunteers.
I don't know what happened to her under alvarez. The volunteers went away after she was gone and Alvarez put some clueless guy in there from his downtown office. After a while he closed the office and we didn't have any service in south dade from the mayor's office.
But while that lady was there, we could go in there and her volunteer staff took care of us, when she was busy. I never knew that they were not county employees as they were so well trained.
Looking at this chart, I bet penelas' district manager saved the county some big dollars with her volunteers.
The mayor says that the people under his perview will not get 5% back. That's like 2,000 employees or so. Just so he can make a point because he is mad. So he will collect that money from those employees to keep building the health reserve or whatever reserve. Those employees need it back as well. A lot of those employees are directors and high management but a lot as well are hard working employees living paycheck to paycheck like everyone else. Cut from above!!! Start in ur office mayor!!
How long will these employees continue to contribute? Until u get to a number you like?
You realize no one's actually been cut right? There are NO ACTUAL PAYROLL SAVINGS. Moving your guy down south to try save a sinking commissioner (whose votes you desperately need) does not constitute a layoff or budget cut . Ruben is still getting his paycheck paid from the UMSA pot. Only now it is charged on another budget code. This is self-serving smoke and mirrors.
It is what Carlos did with his people last time, shuffle the deck, bury some face cards, claim reorganizational savings, then go after the workers.
This post hit a nerve. Word of mouth negative publicity spreads. The 100 people I tell about our Mayor and his unwarranted attack on libraries, fire departments and Pets Trust all vote in Miami Dade County. My reputation, and that wretched story, will defeat anything he does or says in the media. These actions will be his undoing. Those 100 will spread the story to their colleagues. And, I'm fluent in Espanol.
54 comments:
Outstanding post!
Let's keep the pressure on when he starts saying we need to cut police, firefighters, libraries, etc!
Cut ALL the Deputy Mayors for a start. They were not elected and no such positions existed from what I remember prior to this strong mayor stuff. I don't remember deputy mayor being on the ballot.
Why does the mayor have a Director of Communications (along with his own assistant, secretary, etc.), a Media Specialist and a Senior Media Assistant? The County has an entire department that deals with media/public relations and many departments have their own.
Let's start with the mayor and deputy mayors and work our way down. Thank you genius this is a great post. You have let the "cat out of the bag"
Remember that each Deputy Mayor has several staff - heaven forbid they could share a secretary!
The Miami Dade Commissioners budget is bloated and they use their budget to advance self serving campaigns and sweeting their friends and family. Leave services alone.
Pray tell,
What on earth does Deputy Director Edward Marquez DO that is worth $10,000+ every two weeks?!!!
If the Miami Herald has any remaining self-respect, they will mention this the next time an article appears about the Mayor and his efforts to cut County employee salaries.
The port needs only one director and the budget for commission travel junkets needs to be eliminated from the port for a start. I understand they're funded separately but those funds can be used to pay down the debt the entire county taxpayers are responsible for. I'm tired of paying two port directors and the commissioners foreign vacation expenses out of the port fund. In addition to cuts inside the mayors officer there needs to be cuts from each commission district office. The mom and pop grants are a ridiculous waste of taxpayer funds. The Beacon council can be cut in it's entirety and raise fees from it's members like most groups do with their dues who have no government subsidy's.
As to fire & police salary cuts needs to be made from the top not from "boots on the ground" officers/firefighters. The same applies inside county hall. We can reduce staff on the 29th floor because it's just beyond a waste of money especially when such bad decision making is happening right now.
I just looked up Edward Marquez..... He has a Bachelor's Degree, for goodness sakes!
How did he get this job? When was it advertised? Was there a competitive process? Who else was considered? How was the salary negotiated?
And then there's WASD! Genius, please do a similar check and post WASD's executive salaries.
FIVE Deputy Mayors!
No one elected them
Positions were not advertised
Salaries and benefits at Mayor's will
All created by the "strong mayor"
Carlos Gimenez: the WORST mayor in Miami-Dade history!
We have to look at productivity. Who is doing the heavy lifting, the actual work of running the county? If the supervisors don't really do any actual work, then they can go and it would have no material impact on services. You can get 10 little ones for 1 big one, but do you get 10 times the work from the big ones? How many of the little ones actually do any work? Keep the intern at all cost.
Many jobs don't have secretaries any more. Perhaps the Mayor for scheduling and correspondence, but everyone else keeps their own schedules and do their own typing.
You are right. The phone mail answers the phone as no human being answers the phone when I call, so secretaries are not needed for that either.
My big beef with him:
The fundraiser for Lynda Bell.
We first have to see who is related to whom, so we need an additional graphic.
Boy you lazy people, you too can do public records requests and send me the graphic to post.
Genius, I have a feeling if Bell gets re elected the local emergency rooms will fill up with heart attack patients on election night.
The Mayor's office is just the tip of the iceberg. Every single department has the same type of employees: Admin. Assistants, Secretaries, Division Directors and so on. Each department has an Assistant Director of Administration who supervises a budget staff, personnel office, purchasing staff, etc. The problem is each of these employees only supervise 1 or 2 people. Take a look at the Fire Department for example.
“Cut ALL the Deputy Mayors for a start. They were not elected and no such positions existed from what I remember prior to this strong mayor stuff. I don't remember deputy mayor being on the ballot.”
Prior to the strong mayor, these were Asst. County Manager positions. They were there. I’m not defending Carlito but he has cut a number of ACM positions.
“You have let the "cat out of the bag"
Not really. This is just baiting the public, or at least those who read this blog. There may well be some on this list that are overpaid. There may well be others who are worth every cent.
“The Miami Dade Commissioners budget is bloated and they use their budget to advance self serving campaigns and sweeting their friends and family. Leave services alone.”
Yep.
“The port needs only one director and the budget for commission travel junkets needs to be eliminated from the port for a start. I understand they're funded separately but those funds can be used to pay down the debt the entire county taxpayers are responsible for.”
I’m not sure port funds can be used for anything other than port operations. Of course, there are creative ways of moving enterprise funds into the general fund. The Mayor does it all the time. In fact, one of his campaign promises was to reduce this shifting of funds.
“And then there's WASD! Genius, please do a similar check and post WASD's executive salaries.”
WASD is another enterprise fund.
“FIVE Deputy Mayors!”
Again, not defending Carlito but this number has been reduced significantly. I think Burgess had over 20 Asst. County Managers.
One employee has 40 support staff.
This organization, if it can be called that, appears to be similar to the Mandarin Court or to the North Korean Communist Bureaucracy.
Perhaps Tin Horn Dictator and Most High Exalted Ruler of Miami-Dade County Gimenez will ask his court officials to wear uniforms and badges as an indication of their rank.
Car allowances, take-home cars, fringe benefits, contractual personnel?
They could charge the port rent just like they did with the library. Oh, they can find a way to get the money and use it for something else. And the rent could be very high!
I wasn't suggesting that you do any more work on this, I was simply reminding viewers that friends and families play a greater role than other factors or considerations like productivity or usefulness in the work effort.
Miss me yet?
Carlos Alvarez
TIME FOR A RECALL?
In the mayor's memo this week he graciously stated that he will not replace his director of public affairs. It's convenient that he doesn't actually have to layoff or fire anyone since the Mr. Arias left willingly. "Lynda Bell's New Chief of Staff: Ruben Arias "Mayor Gimenez's Guy" Replaces Eddie Borrego. By Geniusofdespair"
Now, as a public affairs director, that job would be all about optimizing the mayor's image. Just look at how well that job has been handled!
Now those tasks will need to be divvied up amongst others in this office. The mayor has written that the tax payer is being given $50k in savings. Odd though, since the salary of that empty position is more than $50k.
So who is getting the deserving pay raises as the HR Dept has been ordered to start the retention score comparisons for layoffs?
How about cutting all of them? Go back to manager type of government and stop duplication and get professional services.
While Carlos feathers his fiefdom, he bloviates about top-down restructuring in his most recent memo..and he leads by example by cutting a whopping 50K from his 3.5 million operation. If all departments followed suit..that would be a savings of 1.25 million more or less. Gimenez has already demonstrated he's not a leader...now apparently he proves he's not much of a bean counter either. As someone already alluded to in this
blog (borrowing from the Honeymooners)..he's the Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler of the Racoon Lodge.) He and his cronies and family need to take a vacation to America.
unbelievable MArquez, salary is $10,000 every two weeks. This here makes no sense at all. The 5% that was taken from the little people for more than 4 years and the mayor claims the county is in a deficit, 45 staff who does nothing but steal money from the lower staff county workers. Are you serious. Most of the county department heads staff are over staffed. If you're going to cut from the top start with in your office
How do the salaries of Gimenez' Deputy Mayors compare to the salaries that Alvarez gave his top employees; salaries that in part that caused his recall?
Ed Marquez is also the Director of the Finance Department.
There is a reason that the voters approved a strong mayor. Braman's support notwithstanding, those that showed up at the polls (notice I didn't say taxpayers) didn't trust the CoComm. Yet we still have a largely unchanged CoComm. It's like the voters don't trust their own decisions and need a strong mayor to trump their bad decisions electing their representatives on the Commission.
I'm pretty sure most voters don't understand the difference between the two forms of government. There are advantages to both and both require an educated and motivated electorate, neither of which exist in the 305.
So now we have both! A bloated BCC with some staffers earning over $100,000, and a bloated Mayor's office with at least three people to screw on a lightbulb.
If Marquez is also Finance Director, then call him that. The ridiculous title of Strong Mayor should not also tag along the uber-ridiculous Deputy Mayors - Five of them!
The point is being diluted. Let's take a moment to remind ourselves what exactly is happening.
- The mayor asked employees to give up 5% of their salaries for a specified period. An agreement was reached.
- The mayor reneged on this agreement and said the county could not afford it.
- Two unions were given back the 5%. Obviously, the rest of the employees demanded the same. The BCC agreed and it is so.
- Now, in a petulant, hysterical and childish rant, the Mayor says there will be retaliation in the form of service cuts and firings.
- Today's post on this blog is showing him just where those cuts should begin.
If we as the people who own this county and who employ the Mayor and everyone else working at the Government Center, stand up and defend our rights, they will have to listen to us.
Remind Carlos he is a Public Servants. He works for us.
Only someone who works here can really attest to the mountains of waste that take place every day. But if we do, we lose our job.
If he is finance director, then he should be paid accordingly. He is the one that holds everything together here. We don't want him to go anywhere so we leave him alone. What we are looking for is dead weight, non-productive people, who if they were cut, nothing would change.
Well, at least he pays his intern! Bravo!
Bottom Line: If Gimenez were doing a decent job, no one would care what his office spent.
One last point... Even a middling or struggling "strong" mayor is better than the "who's in charge -- no one, especially not me!!! " form of government we had before.
Who can we cut?
All of them, Katie.
Jack Osterholt is an ass. Cutting him would save $225,000 per year plus $75,000 in benefits. Plus, the County would run better.
$77,000 average salary for less than mediocre work. Average Americans make $32,000 less for hard work.
Luz is the lady makes the coffee for staff. She was hired from a contractor which provided the services.
Under penelas, the lady who ran his south dade office ran it 5 days a week fully staffed (8 hours) a day by volunteers.
I don't know what happened to her under alvarez. The volunteers went away after she was gone and Alvarez put some clueless guy in there from his downtown office. After a while he closed the office and we didn't have any service in south dade from the mayor's office.
But while that lady was there, we could go in there and her volunteer staff took care of us, when she was busy. I never knew that they were not county employees as they were so well trained.
Looking at this chart, I bet penelas' district manager saved the county some big dollars with her volunteers.
Gimenez should fire Ed Marquez and Gimenez should fire Osterholt sending him back to Broward County. Save the taxpayers a fortune.
In reviewing this list of employees in the mayors office I see relatives, godparents and extended family members in unusually high numbers?
In reviewing this list of employees in the mayors office I see relatives, godparents and extended family members in unusually high numbers?
The mayor says that the people under his perview will not get 5% back. That's like 2,000 employees or so. Just so he can make a point because he is mad. So he will collect that money from those employees to keep building the health reserve or whatever reserve. Those employees need it back as well. A lot of those employees are directors and high management but a lot as well are hard working employees living paycheck to paycheck like everyone else. Cut from above!!! Start in ur office mayor!!
How long will these employees continue to contribute? Until u get to a number you like?
You realize no one's actually been cut right? There are NO ACTUAL PAYROLL SAVINGS. Moving your guy down south to try save a sinking commissioner (whose votes you desperately need) does not constitute a layoff or budget cut . Ruben is still getting his paycheck paid from the UMSA pot. Only now it is charged on another budget code. This is self-serving smoke and mirrors.
It is what Carlos did with his people last time, shuffle the deck, bury some face cards, claim reorganizational savings, then go after the workers.
Why is there so many "Mayor's Aides"? What does the "Deputy Chief of Staff" do?
This post hit a nerve. Word of mouth negative publicity spreads. The 100 people I tell about our Mayor and his unwarranted attack on libraries, fire departments and Pets Trust all vote in Miami Dade County. My reputation, and that wretched story, will defeat anything he does or says in the media. These actions will be his undoing. Those 100 will spread the story to their colleagues. And, I'm fluent in Espanol.
Carlos Gimenez is as bad as the disgraced ex-Manager George Burgess.
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