Lauderdale commission may take ax to budget

Fort Lauderdale will kick into budget-cutting mode for the first time in years. On the potential chopping block: vacant city jobs, financial support for nonprofit organizations and park improvements.

A majority of commissioners agreed informally Monday that the city should stop balthe ancing the budget using money siphoned from the watersewer fund but shouldn’t raise property taxes to make up for the loss. Those decisions, if finalized in September, would put the city on a spending diet. Over a period of four years, commissioners said the city would be weaned off of the $20-million-a-year transfers.

For the budget that’s in the works now, $5.1 million must be removed, commissioners said. Only police and fire services are off limits for the cuts, they said.

“This is some serious stuff,” Commissioner Robert McKinzie warned his colleagues. McKinzie said he would support what his colleagues wanted to do, but he suggested they be upfront about exactly what they want cut.

“Next year we can’t blame previous commission,” he said, alluding to the fact that Mayor Dean Trantalis and Commissioners Steve Glassman and Ben Sorensen won their seats in the spring elections, after campaigning in part on complaints about their predecessors’ decisions.

The discussion Monday put a firmer resolve on an issue the

city has been grappling with all year. A potential property tax increase was discussed several months ago, but Monday, that idea fell flat. The workshop was the last scheduled budget discussion before final hearings in September.

The city for years has been balancing the budget using money from the water-sewer fund. But as the city’s sewer pipes burst all over town, that practice became controversial.

City Manager Lee Feldman has warned in the past that cutting $5.1 million would prevent the city from moving forward on some of its priorities, like helping the homeless or looking into creating an aviation-focused city charter school. The $5.1 million would be about 1.4 percent of the $363 million general fund budget. Feldman said about 60 percent of it is salaries and benefits, making cuts difficult.

Next year, the city would go through a similar exercise, removing an additional $5 million from the budget. That would repeat the following two years so that five years from now, no money from the water-sewer fund would be propping up the city’s general budget.

The city has had the same property tax rate for 12 years. The city will glean an extra $10.5 million in the coming budget by keeping the tax rate the same, because rising property values will cause tax bills to increase. So even with the $5 million “cut,” the city will take in more property tax money. But Feldman noted that the cost of running the city — and paying its employees — rises each year.

The potential budget cuts would cut from these areas:

■ NONPROFITS: The city was proposing to contribute $1.2 million to nonprofit organizations through grants. The money goes to the Winterfest Inc. boat parade, Summer Youth Employment Program, Riverwalk Fort Lauderdale Inc., and the Downtown Development Authority security program, among other things. Some or all of that could be cut.

■ OPEN JOBS: The city budget advisory board suggested that jobs that have gone unfilled for several months be eliminated from the budget. The city manager said some of those openings, like for police officers or beach lifeguards, shouldn’t be cut. Some other jobs were created to follow commissioners’ recently stated goals, he said. For example, he created a position for an education expert to help the city consider creation of a school. He created one full-time and one part-time position people to coordinate a “food repatriation” program to get food from restaurants or other food providers to homeless people. Feldman said he thinks he could cut six open positions from the proposed budget.

■ PROJECTS: With $9 million in parks and roadway improvements proposed, much of the $5 million could be reached by cutting from that list, commissioners said. Most of the projects are in city parks. For example, $497,250 is programmed for citywide playground replacements. The city could ask voters in a potential spring special election to approve a parks bond issue that could pick up some of the killed projects, commissioners said.

■ EXTRAS: New items that weren’t in last year’s budget could be examined for cuts, according to commissioners. A $3.1 million list provided by the city manager to the budget board showed vehicle purchases, a new computer software program, an audit of city purchasing cards and enhanced median maintenance, among other things.

Feldman said he’s still developing his list of proposed cuts.

The first budget hearing for the total $790.3 million budget is Sept. 6 in City Hall at 6 p.m. The second and final hearing is Sept. 12, same time, same place. The budget year starts Oct. 1.