It's Your Money

Presented by the MCTA

This is a very important but frustrating time of the year for your Taxpayers’ Association. The annual budgets that are the main interest item in our primary effort of promoting effective and efficient local governments are all in flux. Trying to keep up with the near daily changes in politician’s priorities and the reflective decisions by administrators make it difficult to accurately report what is occurring in a timely manner.

The School District budget is the most complete. It is approaching final approval since Florida’s fiscal school year begins 1 July. We are encouraged that the Superintendent has formulated a balanced budget that largely precludes layoffs or other drastic changes in our school programs. However, this was largely accomplished by the State allowing previously precluded use of capital funds to cover operations, and other short-term State and Federal subsidies. Unless our local economy makes a miraculous recovery this year, the next and succeeding years’ Schools budgets will be even more difficult.

The County Administration, Sheriff, and Constitutional Officer’s budgets are being messaged into their final configuration for Commission approval. As our elected officials react to the various pressures being put on them by their constituents, rumors and questions abound:

• How large will the County’s revenue shortfalls really be?
• Will the Fire/Rescue Union voluntarily give up some or all of their contract mandated 5% + negotiated cost-of-living pay raise as they add 50 new personnel in the face of County layoffs in all other departments?
• Will these additional new Fire – Rescue personnel actually reduce the outrageous overtime racked up even by their senior management personnel?
• Will the Sheriff and other Constitutional officers offer-up any cuts to help offset the County’s financial problems?
• Will the County’s human resource office find the political support necessary to begin the long needed restructuring of benefit programs?
• Is the proposed FP&L surcharge on our electric bills for the next 30 years still being considered as a revenue option?
• How much will our property taxes have to go up and user fees instituted/raised to maintain essential County services?

Most of these and other questions will be answered in the next few weeks. Our all-volunteer staff is trying hard to get ahead of and, where possible, help shape these and other decisions. We will report and offer our assessment as soon as possible.

At this time we are disappointed in what appears to be happening. That is that the County is going to make little or no changes to address the basic problem: out of control personnel costs. We were hoping that the current fiscal crisis would provide the opportunity to begin a concerted long-term effort to structure a comprehensive, cost effective compensation program. It now appears that there is no stomach for real changes and victory will be declared by using a patchwork of short-term fixes that will just perpetuate the problem. The administration seems to be satisfied that if they make token pay cuts, furlough people and eliminate vacant jobs they have done their duty.  This is not the way to efficiently provide for the County’s needs. We certainly hope that this is not the case and our new Commission will step up and begin fixing that real problem – especially for highly compensated employees

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Sometimes when we are researching a subject we come across an unrelated matter that needs to be explored and publicized. It happened again this week as your MCTA Board delved into Martin County’s 911 emergency call service. Of immediate interest were rumored efforts to incorporate some 911 operators into the Fire Rescue Union and the City of Stuart contemplating adding a third separate 911 call-center location. We are still investigating these and other call center issues and will provide additional data and our perspective in the coming weeks.

What was brought to our attention by Board members visiting the joint Sheriff / Fire-Rescue 911 call center was the large number of extraneous non-emergency calls received by the local emergency system. These calls add an extra-unwarranted load on the operators and can even be dangerous when they interfere with their response to real emergencies. As the discussion proceed to how many of Martin County’s 270,000+ 911 calls are not real emergencies we were informed about the Treasure Coast’s 211 Information Hot Line. Among the dozen or so reasonably astute MCTA Board members present, only one or two had ever heard of the 211 service and none were aware of how it worked or the services available. Spreading this knowledge could be extremely helpful to many of our residents, improve the operation of our emergency services and perhaps even save a few taxpayer dollars. With that in mind we decided to immediately include the following in this week’s article.

Dialing 211 from any phone can and should be used for virtually any type of help a resident requires that is not a true time sensitive emergency. The person answering the 211 call will be an operator representing what is officially referred to as the Alliance of Information & Referral Systems or “AIRS”. The services or help available range from suicide/depression/elder care counselors to a yellow page telephone service for youth related activities or just the need for general local information. According to the organization’s website: http://www.211palmbeach.org/ResourceCenter there are over 1,300 agencies offering 3,300 community related programs just by calling 211.

We strongly encourage our readers to visit the web site and make as may of their friends, neighbors and family members as possible aware of this 211 service. The caller will get better, faster and more comprehensive non-emergency service and take some strain off the overworked 911 system at the same time. Better yet, while on the web site volunteer your time as an operator and play a vital role in helping 211 deliver effective and quality services to those in need in our community.