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Mayor’s Message

In September, the City Commission kept its promise
to phase out the city’s annual raid on utility funds to
balance the budget.

e will do so over four years to the tune of $5 million each time. We
filled the resulting hole in our annual spending without raising property
Wtax rates or making draconian cuts in services. However, there will need
to be a deep examination of the budget over the next year in order to bring it into
better balance.
The importance of the decision should not be understated. Utility revenue should
stay in the water and sewer funds so it can be used to address our aging
infrastructure needs.

Here is the argument that I made regarding the budget:
In preparing the city’s budget, I believe we must find ways to ensure that city
services are maintained and improved where needed. We must look for ways to
Dean Trantalis pay for the commission’s new goals as well as others that define our city and the
Mayor, expectations people have of their government. This is especially true with regard to
City of Fort Lauderdale
public safety.
As we look to spending for public safety over the past five years for example, the
city spent $141 million in 2013 for salaries and benefits. That has increased every
year with the 2019 budget proposed by the city manager appropriating more than
$180 million. That’s about a 28 percent increase while inflation was 8 percent
over the same period.
Covering these expenses alone has not been easy. The millage rate during this
period remained steady at about 4.11 mills.

But there’s more.
When I returned to the commission in 2013, we had 2,262 full time employees.
Members of the commission asked staff how our operations were running at this
level, and we were told repeatedly year after year that all departments were
performing well with this staffing. Nonetheless, our management continued to hire
at a fairly brisk pace. This year, we have more than 2,600 full-time employees.

Office Contact:
Scott Wyman One can only wonder how are we paying for all of this?
Assistant to the Mayor Even though the increase in real estate values has risen, the payments to our police
Email: swyman@fortlauderdale.gov
Phone: 954.828.5004 and fire departments alone consume all of that increase, and more.
That is why the city has been dipping into the money that was being set aside for
water and sewer needs. That has been to the tune of $20 million a year. In the
meantime, our water and sewer systems have been neglected for so long that, in
some cases, we are on the brink of catastrophe. It was only when the state Health
Department finally stepped in and threatened us with severe sanctions that we
began a more aggressive program of rebuilding our infrastructure.

So you ask, what business philosophy have we been following that allowed us to keep
spending, spending, spending, and not increasing our income to cover these expenses?

8 The Landings & Bay Colony