2007 0315 Regular City Commission Meeting

Home Browse Search

Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting March 15, 2007 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida built five new parks and created free shuttle service for our residents, and the reasons we became a City was because our residents wanted to see a higher quality oflife here and they chose not to be put under the standard that one size fits all because we had that standard with the County Government and found that wasn't satisfactory for the way we wanted to conduct our lives. Mayor Edelcup said that he and the City Manager are proposing that we pass a resolution to tell the Florida Legislature that before you act hastily and then we spend years trying to correct a problem, that some deep study be put into this. He said we all admit that tax reform needs to be made and there have been inequities in the system and that we all recognize that those inequities have grown throughout the years, particularly the "Save our Homes" amendment that has separated the dollars that are paid by either homesteaded people or non- homesteaded people to a point where there is no rational relationship any longer there. He said that some need in that area needs to be corrected but he said he doesn't believe imposing a sales tax is the answer to trying to fix a problem that can be handled by just adjusting on how property taxes are more fairly distributed amongst our people. He said that this resolution basically is asking the State Legislature to slow down the process a bit, create a Blue Ribbon Panel if they need to, and think through the problem and all the ramifications that their suggestions or new ideas may cause in trying to implement it. Mayor Edelcup said one of the major problems with the sales tax is that would be collected at the State level and no one has figured out how those sales taxes would find their way down to the City, and sitting at the tail end of that funnel, he said he suspects greatly by the time the amount of tax money that trickles down to the bottom of the funnel that there would be so much siphoned off that we would not see a fair representation or replacement of the dollars that we have given up by giving up property taxes. He asked the City Manager if the proposed suggestion that has been put in by the House Committee regarding sales tax, what it would do to the staffing levels here in our City. City Manager Szerlag said with an $8 Million Dollar reduction in our General Fund which is over a third, would equate to having to layoff over 100 employees and we just could not function in that respect. Mayor Edelcup said we would find our City with half of the Police, half of the Parks and Recreation people, half the staff, but more importantly we would probably find that those that were left would be looking to find jobs elsewhere and quality people would disappear from local government because they would find that they could not be adequately compensated, and we would have to hire people with lesser skills, and fewer of them to deliver services, so this is an important decision. He said we need to send a strong message and that he would hope our sister cities throughout the State would do likewise because if you don't have your vote counted it would happen without your input and the next thing you know you have inherited a situation that you got by default for not speaking up. Vice Mayor Thaler noted on item 9, if taxes are rolled back for all properties, we are dealing with businesses and non-homesteaded also, he just wanted that noted, that it is for all and not just for homesteaded. Commissioner Goodman said we are not saying what we should do to solve these problems, and Mayor Edelcup said that we are giving some broad general direction as to what they should do and one of the things that we are suggesting is a Blue Ribbon Panel to study this, and in the alternative that we are suggesting that we may follow the lines of what Governor Crist has said in doubling the homestead and trying to set some 16