Residents to foot Tamarac’s $80K travel bill

Commissioners say it’s worth it; others disagree

Tamarac city commissioners are taking more than 30 trips this year across Florida and beyond, and taxpayers will pick up the estimated $80,000 tab.

The five elected officials are representing the city at civic meetings, classes and seminars in cities including San Diego, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and Charlotte, N.C.

Their growing itinerary this year — unrivaled by other cities in South Florida — recently drew attention from city administrators, who proposed raising the budget after seeing travel costs more than triple what originally had been planned.

One of the pricier trips is the mayor’s scheduled $14,000 trek to Harvard University in Massachusetts, where he’ll attend a 10-day series of classes.

Harry Dressler will be flying from Tamarac in August in an upgraded first-row seat

on a JetBlue plane.

He’ll be staying on campus in a dorm, plus an extra night in a deluxe room at a four-star hotel and taking classes by day to learn about tax policy, records show.

Another commissioner, Marlon Bolton, had planned 11 trips in a nine-month span. His travel was budgeted to cost more than $19,000. Bolton, a minister, kicked off his sixth trip of the year, to a civic leadership event in Orlando, on Thursday.

Commissioners say their trips for meetings and classes are worth it. They say it gives them ideas to improve the city while making them more effective leaders.

Still, some residents think elected officials don’t need to attend out-of-town seminars when they could be picking up the same information locally.

“I didn’t do it,” said Diane Glasser, a former Tamarac commissioner who, according to city records, rebuffed travel opportunities while in office last year. “I didn’t think it was worth the money.”

The commissioners’ travel was addressed at a public meeting recently when city officials brought it up.

This fiscal year, Tamarac had set out to have a $25,000 overall budget for travel and related expenses, including for food and the cost of conferences. But city records show the costs went far above that.

To accommodate the extra spending, the city first upped the commissioners’ travel budget to $35,000 this past spring.

Then city officials determined the bills were on track to top $80,000.

Some seemed surprised at the figure.

“Wow, that’s a lot of money,” said Vice Mayor Debra Placko, whose travel for the fiscal year is projected to cost about $6,600.

She has traveled to Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., and later this year will head to Charlotte, N.C., for a National League of Cities event.

Dressler, president of his own company that advises attorneys in security-fraud lawsuits, said his classes at the prestigious John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard will be helpful to learn about tax policy “and what the implications are ethically and practically to the people being taxed.”

He said he’ll receive a certificate after the session. He calls it hard work. “It’s two weeks away from my family,” he said.

He said cities like Tamarac are “going to be facing stiff hits to our revenues” if Florida voters sign off next year on an additional $25,000 homestead exemption, which could cost the city $1 million a year.

“My goal is to come away with even one idea to save money and find a different way to tax people,” Dressler said. “It makes me a better mayor, it helps me talk to the staff about what the strategic and tactical goals are.”

He also took the $14,000 Harvard trip last year, but for a different series of classes. He only has two trips planned this year, because he’s interested in quality over quantity, he said. “Traveling sucks,” he said. “I’ll only go when it’s meaningful.”

Bolton said some of his travel fees came unexpectedly.

On Monday, he canceled a $1,955 trip to a conference in Manhattan, one of the 11 planned, because of flight delays and cancellations, he said. The city still must pay $578 for nonrefundable conference registration and car service. “I would have gotten into New York perhaps by daybreak and would have been without 24 hours’ sleep,” he said.

In another case, he booked two sets of roundtrip flights from Tamarac to the same event: a conference in Washington, D.C., city records show.

Bolton told the Sun Sentinel that after his arrival in Washington, he had to book an emergency flight back to Tamarac to be with his son who “was getting sick.”

After the Sun Sentinel reviewed his flight receipt, he acknowledged instead booking the extra flight ahead of time. It was a precaution, he said, in case his son’s condition worsened.

The Washington trip cost the city more than $3,500, including for the second ticket ($310) and two hotel stays in Washington ($616) while Bolton was in Tamarac for the weekend, records show.

Commissioner Michelle Gomez, an attorney, planned to spend more than $11,000 in travel in Florida and out of state, including for meetings on behalf of the Florida League of Cities.

Commissioner Julie Fishman, a social media consultant, budgeted more than $16,000 in travel, including a trip to San Diego in October for a National League of Cities leadership summit.

City Manager Michael Cernech said he has encouraged officials of his 64,000-resident city to “get more involved, get more educated.”

City staff said there are benefits to taxpayers for leaders to attend courses on subjects about tax policy or ethics. Still, the city can’t say which classes they’ve paid for because Tamarac commissioners don’t have to submit an itinerary or account for their time.

For the upcoming year, city staff suggested the budget be raised to $100,000 to account for all the travel.

But the commissioners balked at that idea, saying the number appeared excessive. “[I’m] highly opposed … too much,” Gomez said. “Our job is not to gallivant across the country or the state, even in the name of good business for our city.”

Instead, for next year, they decided they’ll cap themselves at $55,000 — It’ll be $10,000 for each commissioner and $15,000 for the mayor.