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| No PR Campaign, no reasonable explanation, just higher taxes. |
Now Gimenez is making it worse, showing us that we didn't agree to the increase so we are all going to be punished. Our Libraries will be closed and our wait time for fire rescue will be elongated and dogs will be dead. It is as if he is saying: Sorry public, you should have listened to me just look at what I have the power to do!
We are the public. We pay the bills. We need to be treated with respect and not threatened. Maybe no one would have been adverse to the tax increase if there was an effort to explain it before hitting us over the head with it.
Anyone thinking the strong mayor was a super bad idea?
36 comments:
Yes. And I was on staff of one. It is time the commission control the budget numbers... Fund and unfund crap and be prepared to over ride the mayoral veto.
It may be that he is trying to force them to do it, so he can look important and angelic.
The only NET tax increase should have occurred cuz of the dogs, given that 2/3 of public voted for it (though I was against it). The increase in the library funding should have been offset by reductions in the General Fund.
Carlos Gimenez should reduce expenses. He needs to reduce the pay and benefits of 26,000 County employees starting with the dozens of friends he has hired. Gimenez needs to get the employees to be more productive. Too many only work 5-6 hours a day.
The Big Problem is that the Mayor let the commission make him "The Bad Guy".
If the votes were not there on the commission to raise the tax rate, he should have given the BCC his "RECOMMENDATION", and let them lower the rate themselves, or come up with their own budget. The BCC are the final decision makers on the budget. Make them work. Don't let them just accept your millage rate.
If the administration spent 9 months analyzing and developing this budget, how the hell did they flip in 24 hours?
A super bad strong Mayor is a super bad idea.
Gimenez is trying to garner favor with the base of old right wing Cuban American voters who did not support him in past elections. And he threw the anglo and African American voters and educated Hispanic voters under the bus with the library cuts, etc... Perhaps this was the doing of political "advisors" who conducted the now infamous poll.
Don't think Gimenez saw this firestorm coming.
I think we all want accountability with our tax dollars. At the same time we also want services that enhance our quality of life. I am encouraged with the support I have seen for libraries, the pets and even the fire department. If everything was about cost cutting then we wouldn't have Starbucks or Boars Head meats. In my opinion, some things are worth the extra cost. I hope this message is sent in the voter booth.
You want what! a return to the commission controlling the budget. You must have a very short memory. Look at the chairperson of the commission, she should be the poster child for what wrong with this community. She voted for the Marlins and was a big supporter of the Dolphins attempted push for tax dollars to upgrade the football complex. You want to reduce spending, start with the Community Based Organizations while some are necessary a large number of them do little or nothing year in and year out but since most are in the black community the commissioners being the political cowards that they are run scared and continue to fund these fake CBO's who fill no mission but to rob our tax dollars. Cutting a budget this size is not going to be easy and everybody will not be happy. The entire budget problem was created by past and present county commissioners who could not wait to vote for the police and fire department's labor contracts each and every year knowing it would lead to the mess we have today. If this community was serious about getting this budget problem fixed it must start with the removal of every commissioner city and county who voted for the Marlins ball park. We as a community can't afford to keep these same gangsters.
The Strong Mayor form of government was an ill-conceived idea for Miami-Dade County. A regional government deserves to have a professional administrator. Vesting this much power in a political office is a huge mistake. We have yet to elect a competent politician to the office, and the elected bureaucrats (two former department directors/ police and fire) have proven inept at the job. Perhaps it is time to revisit the Charter.
The Mayor can shoulder some of the burden here but the CoComm must also. It is the CoComm that votes for the millage, not the Mayor.
15% pay cut across the board from county employees will fix the problem. Most people in Miami are living with $30K or less par year, why not Dade County employees. Do we live in a serfdom?
Mayor Gimenez just gave his Port deputy director Juan Kuryla a 70% payraise from $170,000 to $300,000
and reclassified him as Director Designee, hoping current Director Johnson bows out. Kuryla is about to become Mayor Gs Dennis Morales, the errant top aid to ousted mayor Alvarez who got a hefty payraise while all other employees got
cuts. Kuryla's background includes reassignment from his prior Public Works post to a
remote field location because of improprieties, personal bankruptcy, office love affair leading to divorce, shady dealings with potential port vendors and
clients resulting in Inspector General investigation, inability to show up for work before 10am, aggressive behavior toward law enforcement at traffic stops and other unstable episodes. He is favored by this administration and
commission because of his ability to cater to their needs, including numerous junkets to foreign locations using a Port Budget loophole. The Port budget also
includes a $5million line item for payment in a legal judgment against the County for a judges ruling that the Port of Miami has a way of doling certain business permits illegally protecting incumbents -- ``creating a handful of entrenched privileged companies". The judge said evidence showed other
``established, qualified, competent and trustworthy,'' companies were denied permits even as some incumbents who didn't use their permits received automatic renewals. This is a rare surfacing of the hidden backchannel network that exists in the County for every major expenditure where privileged insiders are awarded
business while those who are not tied into the system of lobbyists, commissioner aides and top County staff are denied. Kuryla is person most responsible for this lawsuit due to his ability to manipulate the formal selection process.
His original budget proposal was that of a Strong Mayor, however he bowed to the Commissioners who didn't want to face a vote on a tax increase. This makes him a weak mayor. Also pays too much attention to Cuban radio.
15% pay cuts across the board? I guess you've been listening and side with the politicians. County services should not have to be maintained of the employees backs. The commissioners slush funds need to be cut. How long do you plan on living after retirement? And if you have to work till the day you die, you screwed up somewhere along the line
"Employees backs"? Really? Do people realize County and City employees make 25% to 100% more than employees in the private sector? More importantly, no one in the private sector gets defined benefit pension plans. Gimenez needs to slash pay and benefits and stop forcing the taxpayers to contribute to overpaid County employee pay and benefit schemes.
Private sector usually pays more for the same skills than the public sector (with some notably stupid exceptions). People usually seek work in the public sector for stability or out of idealism.
So when you were living high off the hog in the private sector 6 years ago, you said no to your raises and benefits?
The facts :
Overtime is high due to an understaffed fire department. No hiring since 2008.
There is an appropriate ratio of supervisors to worker because 1)supervisors ride the trucks 2)National safety standards for "Emergency" work require low Supervisor to worker ratio 1:5
The mayor was unaware that suppression vehicles respond to ALS medical calls.
This is all retribution for the state raising the Co. Fiscal responsibility to the pension unnecessarily. FRS was +13B, the Mayor wants the $ coming from the workers salaries.
Wow, let's just beat up county employees because its easy to do. Lets deal with facts: the only reason people in the past took a county job was because of benefits and a promised retirement. The PRIVATE sector has always been way ahead of the public sector in income and has not bitched about it then but finally it has now found some kind of balance and people are complaining. And, the county employee has given up salary and benefits over the last several years. Why not stop and realize that the cost of gas, milk, bread, clothing and everything else has gone up since 2008 EXCEPT county employee pay. Most have seen the reduction. I can guarantee that if your boss said " I'm going to use your pay to take care of all the expenses of his business ", you would have a major problem with it. The mayor and county commission put us in this situation so BLAME them, not the county employees. It's time to put your big boy pants on and do what's right. Stop the blame game and suggest solutions, something I'm sure most of you are not willing to do.
What is the average compensation for Miami Dade County employees, couple of years ago City of Miami's average was $102,000 or $104,000. Screw free enterprise.
Let's see pay ~$20 increase YEARLY in tax to pay ALL 3 (Library, Fire and Anmal shelter)
OR
Home insurance increases due to Fire truck response delayed.
Long term lowering in educational benefits of library.
Increased amount of animals on the street due to people not dropping them off to avoid kill shelter.
Solution= Move all budgets under general fund, slash commissioner budgets, curtail spending, recoup Marlins debacle thru courts.
I have never seen so many uninformed opinions in one place. Has anyone here looked at the budget of the county. Or compared it with the salaries of other public agencies. Do you really want an untrained person overseeing the design of our roads and bridges or managing our police department? How about a klutz taking care of your water supply? Really people go read the budget! I bet there are no county employees in Golden Beach, Cocoplum,Star Island or Fisher island and very few live in The Gables. Let's be real about what public service is. The best people in the county give up much to serve!
Bigfoot
He won't be re-elected again. He's shown his colors and identified his support.
He will not survive the current controversies. Another bad election choice. One day we'll learn. Alvarez doesn't look so bad now.
Anon above I think you are right about a strong mayor form of govt. We wanted a strong mayor, but we don't have strong mayor material here. We have a bunch of little people who want to be big, but have no conception of how to run a government of this size. A professional manager would have solved this problem. Why would the county charge rent to the county's library? Why charge rent to yourself? And then of all things evict the library? We have to go back to the charter drawing board.
Median income in the City of Miami is $29,000. Median income in Overtown is $8,000. The average employee at the City of Miami costs the taxpayers $104,000 per year in pay and benefits. Only 15% of City employees even live within the City. Taxpayers get screwed.
1. Even if the tax is increased the funds will be misused as usual.
2. There are too many high level employees being paid huge salaries, and their function is not clearly defined.
3. Many of the commission staff switch to the other side office of management and budget so the lines are blurry and there is no independence. There are favors all the time.
4. The positions are filled with a friend not with the person more capable to do the job. Only the positions who pay very low salaries are filled without vested interest (in most of the cases).
5. Look the new budget and you will see increases for services all over the place, museums, water and sewer, every service is being increased up to 50 percent in many cases.
6. Many employees have not received an increase in 4 or 5 years, but the big guys still have their executive benefits. It is just plain sad.
To the last anon, every county employee received a 5% increase last when they eliminated the mandatory 5% deduction. What the hell are you talking about?
Everybody at the county makes much more than they should. We not only have the highest paid executives, we have the highest paid IT employees, librarians, fire fighters, police officers, bus drivers, sewer workers, correctional officers, Headstart teachers, HR employees, budget analysts, etc., etc.
The county hasn't conducted a third party salary survey in more than 10 years because the last one showed Miami-Dade was number one in the nation in nearly every category.
Carlos Gimenez is a huge disappointment. But after being paid by the taxpayers for almost 40 years Gimenez does not even know how disappointing he is. Everyone in the private sector knows that public sector employees get paid 25% to 100% more than they would get in the private sector. And the benefits in the public sector are much better too. Recently the County had 10 employees listed as "parking lot attendants" making $50,000 per year plus benefits.
Miami Dade is larger than many countries and states. We are 2000 square miles in size. If you smaller government then dived the county into Miami county and Dade county.
I, for one, DO want professional people working for me in the county. I want educated thoughtful people who have experience and understanding of the correct way to do their jobs.
My child just started a job. First job out of college and is getting paid 60k with benefits. I made 50k at the county with 35 years of experience and a BA from a university. I don't think I was overpaid. I was on call 24/7. The private market for the kids get jobs isn't starting at 20k a year.
One of the major issues here is that the County Admin had actually closed the gap before they received the very late word from the State that the modifications to the FRS and Medicaid regulations were going to lead to a $100 million dollar budget impact for Miami-Dade. Actually, that information came in two weeks before the initial release of the proposed budget. The reality is that a lot of the problems have been generated by another unfunded mandate from Tallahassee.
That being said, and people need to remember this, he cut more than a BILLION dollars from the County Budget when he fist came into office. That is a huge percentage of the overall County Budget which stands at $6.3 Billion or so, down from a $7.5 Billion high during Alvarez.
The BS arguments about his friends, etc., are just that. He took 17 positions and merged them into 5 people... 5.. Saving a few million dollars there. The Mayors office is smaller now than in the 20 year history of the office. The number of department directors are down to 26 (out of 62 during Alvarez)....
And the net of it, he provided the worst case scenario for Library and Fire (the reality is if there were not two separate taxing districts, he probably could have made it work, without reducing any street level services, great example is the $2.4 million that the Library District has to pay to Internal Services for rent for the storage area for the main library).
All this being said, the library closure number is down from 22 to 4!!!! May be zero before it comes back to the Commission.
Fire is down from 6 units to 3.. Something tells me he might be able to find a way to close it even more.... He is the last person on earth that wants to affect fire services..
Long term, we have to consider merging both Library and Fire under the Countywide, or UMSA to allow for more flexibility.
As for salaries, I totally agree. The fire union is not playing this smart at all. When people figure out that they are the best paid fire fighters in the State, they are going to have a lot of outside pressure on themselves when the CBA opens up again to step down the salaries.. Short term thinking does them in all the time.. Wake up and smell the roses boys, there is a reason that seasoned, senior officers leave other departments to start all over at METRO... Its not because you guys are the best, it is because you guys pay the best... Be warned.
The Fire Unions are too powerful. The City of Miami firefighters make 10% to 15% more than Miami-Dade firefighters. Carlos Gimenez was Fire Chief in Miami. Then Carlos was the City Manager. It was under Carlos's reign that the City of Miami Fire Union got the contracts that provided 30 firemen (almost all with desk jobs) pay that exceeded $300,000 per year. 100's of firemen would receive pension benefits of $2 Mil to $6 Mil. One Fire Chief (who was promoted by Gimenez) got arrested for committing mortgage fraud WHILE USING A CITY FAX MACHINE. She gets a $140,000 pension WHILE IN PRISON. Gimenez needs to do more to reduce pay and benefits.
Carlos Gimenez needs smarter staffers. He still keeps Osterholt who only knows Broward County and who obviously hates residents and taxpayers. And Carlos's CFO type Martinez was a huge supporter and number cruncher on the Marlins fiasco. Yup. the guy pushed elected officials to vote Yes on that fiasco. Gimenez
needs to fire 800+ employees.
Mayor Gimenez has handpicked every highly paid executive in the county government-- every assistant mayor, every department director, and every deputy department director -- without a competitive recruitment. We call that a "worst practice" in the business sector. No job postings. No selection panels. No interviews. No competition. No applicant screening. No reference checking. No verifying job history. No verifying education.
There is a reason that patronage hiring and the spoils system went out of favor more than 100 years ago: it leads to bad government.
Gimenez has shown nothing but contempt for the taxpayers in his hiring practices and is managing county personnel like Boss Tweed. Not only does he believe the taxpayers don't deserve the best qualified people in public administration positions, he does not believe the best and brightest among us should be able to compete for a high level public service position. If you are not a Gimenez insider with "the hookup," you are out of luck when it comes to a high level position. Disgusting and corrupt.
Miami-Dade county budget fiascoes also occurred under disgraced ex-Manager George Burgess and disgraced ex-Mayor Carlos Alvarez. So what's the common denominator? COUNTY BUDGET DIRECTOR JENNIFER GLAZER-MOON.
Jennifer Glazer-Moon is the same incompetent budget director who ran the Burgess/Alvarez administration into ground. She was the budget director who recommended the infamous tax increase coupled with fat union pay raises in Sept 2010 that led to Alvarez being recalled by an overwhelming margin in 2011. She was also the budget director during the 2006 house of lies housing agency scandal and the budget director responsible for "shoddy oversight" when the feds froze all federal grants to the county transit department in 2011. Glazer-Moon was also the budget director who recommended buying the Marlins a new stadium with taxpayer funds without asking the team to provide the financials that we now know would have showed the Marlins to be very profitable and undeserving of any subsidies.
Amazingly, despite pulling down a $212,365.54 salary last year, Glazer-Moon has no background in finance or accounting (she was an English major in college) and has never gone through a competitive recruitment process since the day she arrived at the county as an intern in 1994. I am still shocked that she wasn’t fired the day Mayor Carlos Gimenez took office. Gimenez kept Glazer-Moon and all of the rest of the incompetent Burgess/Alvarez cronies and broke his promise to reform county government.
Gimenez deserves this budget crisis because of his poor choice of advisers, especially Glazer-Moon. With the same incompetent cast of characters making the county’s budget decisions year after year, don’t expect any improvement in the future.
Two Anons prior, what are you smoking? When Gimenez was manager at the city, he was making less than 150k. How on god's green earth did he provide 30 firefighters with salaries twice his?????
Also, the current chief at the city was promoted by Joe Arriola or Pete Hernandez, not Gimenez. Bill Bryson was fire chief when Gimenez left the City..
Facts people, get it straight!!!
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