2008 0925 Special City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Special City Commission Meeting September 25,2008 Second Budget Hearing Sunny Isles Beach, Florida Compensation, and also having a reduction in an Experience Modification Factor was about $120,000, and so the annual personnel savings of $120,000 a year in Workers' Compensation, more than offset the extra $40,000 cost for the increase in salaries. Doing so resulted in a net reduction of about $78,000 in the surplus that we have to use to balance the budget which is reflected in the memorandum from Assistant City Manager/Finance Douglas Haag, dated today. Everything else remained the same, there are a couple of errata sheets as we are always proof reading the Budget. He thanked the Commission for their time, patience, and direction. Public Speakers: Harvey Busch Vice Mayor Thaler said he wants to go on record that he has no objection on the 4% to 5%, but he does have an objection on the way the City Manager went about it. If you have a set amount of dollars that you come out to that set amount and not add on top of the monies that we have appropriated to increase salaries. We were talking about $35,000 and you now have $40,000 _ $45,000 based on what you just said. He believes it was the wrong way to do it by adding on to the number, yes the Mayor gave you a challenge, and yes we accepted that challenge but he won't do it again. Harvey Busch was concerned about the budget because of what he read in the newspaper and saw that it will cause an additional tax burden for the people in the City, and he also objects to giving employees a blanket increase of 4%. Mayor Edelcup said the actual amount of taxes that we are collecting from existing units that were on the tax rolls in the prior year is unchanged, so we are collecting the same amount of dollars from our existing base before new construction. He said the only increase that the City has in tax revenues coming in is as a result of the roughly $300 Million of new construction that came on the tax rolls last year, if there was no new construction the taxes would have remained the same. The way the newspaper picked it up was that it was a tax increase and that is the problem. There are 35 cities in Miami-Dade County, and there are only five (5) cities below us in tax millage rate, and 29 cities above us in the County, and so we have always been at the very low spectrum, and as a Commission we try to never climb above that 6th lowest rate in the County, and when the economy improves, maybe we can make strides to get even below being the 6th from the very bottom. Vice Mayor Thaler said that there were some homes and apartments that were valued higher this year than they were last year because of the timing involved, and so you will find some people in the City that will pay a few more dollars this year but that was based on the value of the apartment not the mill rate. City Manager Szerlag explained that we have a merit based system for performance evaluations, when he asked for 4% of payroll for raises for this coming Fiscal Year, it doesn't mean that everybody is going to get 4%. Mayor Edelcup said what we tried to do last year was to put everything on a merit system rather than an automatic increase. We changed the philosophy that you have to earn your increases, which can be as low as 2% up to 6% or 7%, but the overall average is 4% plus the $40,000 that got added afterwards. Commissioner Goodman pointed out that the people that are not homesteaded are getting hurt more than the people that are homesteaded. The value of the apartment went up, and the 2