A S S E S S M E N T

a newsletter published by the Martin County Taxpayers Association
Volume III Issue III FALL 1995

The MCTA is a group of individual taxpayers who inform the Martin County community, without bias, to serve our community, as well as, our elected officials and their professional staff.

Dear Martin County Taxpayer;

At the October board meeting, the Board of Directors voted unanimously to continue to encourage local government officials and their departmental directors to utilize the zero-based budgeting format in order to create a more precise tool for use in the budget process. The Library System, Sheriffs Office, Engineering/Public Works, and Public Safety departments will be targeted for this process soon. The Budget Review committee plans to complete these findings in ample time for evaluation prior to preliminary 1996-97 budgets.
The Board of Directors and several Budget Review committee members have been meeting with county commissioners, departmental managers, and professional staff to study and comment on budgets. Peter Cheney, County Administrator; Randy Reid, Assistant County Administrator; and Sue Adams, Director of Growth Management attended the October board meeting to discuss the rapidly increasing staff of the Growth Management Department, as well as the constant turnover of personnel. Ms. Adams addressed the MCTA concerns of duplication of efforts within the Engineering/Public Works, and Growth Management departments. A plan to centralize Development Review is being developed to eliminate any redundancy in tasks. Mr. Cheney will attend our January board meeting with Public Safety personnel to review those budget increases

The School Board Budget Review committee continues to meet monthly with Superintendent, Sara Wilcox and/or Noah Powers, Executive Director for Operational Services for the School District. These meetings have focused on zero-based budgeting, cost containment, employee insurance and benefits and overall policy. The School Board continues to borrow money from the capital improvement fund to support the operating budget after repeated encouragement to eliminate this practice. School board members will be interviewed individually in the next few months to determine their financial policies and future plans for budgeting. Mr. Powers will attend the December MCTA board meeting to discuss zero-based budgeting at the School District.

The MCTA and the Stuart News will join forces to develop and distribute a questionnaire for local taxpayers to determine which programs the public wants and are willing to fund. The MCTA will be formulating questions towards this community dialogue over the next several months.

A new Public Employee Benefit Review committee has been formed to review city and county employee benefit packages. This committee organized by our vice-president Jim Dragseth, will research the benefits awarded to public employees as compared to several large employers in the area such as Martin Memorial, FPL, and Pratt Whitney.