About
South Dade Matters concentrates mostly on my musings about that lovely territory bounded by Kendall Drive to the North, Biscayne Bay to the East, Florida Bay and the Florida Keys to the South and the Everglades to the West. Most particularly, this blog will look at politics, real estate, some legal issues, and whatever related topic that affects my home and its environs.
SDM focuses on local municipalities, including Palmetto Bay, Cutler Bay, Pinecrest, and South Miami. Miami-Dade County politics is also a topic of interest, especially as such affects South Dade.
Dont worry there’s a new true conservative running for council in November. There will be an announcement about it soon. Hint: former Hurricanes Baseball Champ
Great blog!! Keep up the good work!!
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You are way off on this Palmetto Bay Garden Club attack. The group is nowhere near what you paint it out to be. The fact you do not know what you are talking about regarding the PB Garden Club suggests to me you likely do not know what you are talking about on other matters/issues. Your credibility is going down fast among those who know. Too bad. A few months ago, I thought you really had something to offer our PB community.
Excuse the delayed response – SDM was tending our own garden using SDM’s own money. What a concept.
Cutler Bay Town Council (2nd hearing budget recommendations)
Overall Recommendation: The Council should reject the 9.46 % proposed property tax increase for FY 12-13.
Mayor and Town Council (Health and Life benefits)
Although the charter allows for these types of expenditures, Council sets the policy on whether life and health insurance should be paid to elected officials. There are examples of municipal govts that elect and do not elect to pay these expenditures. I have a very difficult time accepting that the Town has budgeted $45,000 to pay for benefits when there are Cutler Bay citizens that can’t even afford life and health benefits, yet you are asking citizens to tax themselves to provide these benefits to you all. The Mayor owns a real estate company, another Council member owns a nursery, one is retired and another is employed by the YMCA of Greater Miami. All have the ability to purchase personal life and health insurance, if wanted.
Dues and Subscriptions
Although all appear to be important organizations that would benefit a municipal govt, the Council during these difficult economic times needs to consider a reduction in the number of dues and subscriptions totaling $13,300.00. This could be accomplished by reviewing dues and subscriptions to determine if there is a duplication of services and where one organization may give the Cutler Bay citizens the biggest bang for their buck over others.
Town Attorney
The information requested is simply to ensure full transparency related to expenditures paid out. An increase of litigation to $75K requires a detailed response on what ongoing litigation the Town of Cutler Bay is involved in and anticipated litigation in the coming year. The Town Attorney should be rebid every couple of years as a matter of policy to ensure the Town of Cutler Bay is getting the lowest competitive price for quality legal services.
General Government (personal reduction)
Can the Town of Cutler Bay decrease personnel by eliminating the Admin Services Director for a saving of over 100k including benefits? Maybe revisit filling this position during brighter economic times.
Finance Department
Again, the Council throws out the word transparency a lot; you would reach full transparency by allowing read only access to all financial budgets and operating databases.
Police Services (Overtime Pay)
I would like to recommend a reduction in police overtime from the budgeted amount of $660,000 to $300,000. This is not a request for a reduction in the 50 police officers and 6 non-sworn personnel positions. I have attached a 2006-2007 report on police overtime for your perusal. Note: I appreciate the saving in police vehicles that has been realized for FY12-13.
Cutler Bay Town Building (Yearly expenditures far exceeds rental income collected.)
In FY 11-12, Cutler Bay budgeted $1, 897,407 in expenditures, with $479,000 in rental income as of Sept 18, 2012. This provides some insight on the financial challenge of a municipal government owning and managing a 6 floor and 75K sq. ft. commercial building. The Town of Cutler Bay for FY 11-12 needs to make up a difference of approx. $1.4M. Even if you subtract the capital outlay for this FY, it still is around a $668K difference that the Town will need fund through general revenues. FY 12-13 ldoesn’t look any different financially and dismal at best.
While postponing payments for B, C and E series bonds by extending them for two years may save money in the short term, isn’t the Council just kicking the can down the road and leaving the burden for citizens later on. The favorable conditions that allows for a decrease in the debt service of $882K in FY 12-13, will likely be at a cost later on. Question: Does the restructuring of the bond series and modification of the debt service end up as a larger long term cost to Cutler Bay citizens? What is that cost?
Of the 61% occupancy the Town of Cutler Bay occupies 25% of the commercial space. Does the Town of Cutler Bay itemize rental payments in the budget for the space that the local government occupies? If it doesn’t this would mean that the Town only realizes rental income form 36% of the total office rental space.
Although I commend the Ralph for stating that they will begin an aggressive campaign for marketing the building, I would recommend that the Town of Cutler Bay set timelines to bring the Town hall building into to a positive cash flow and review the feasibility of selling the building by beginning that process as a safeguard.
Cutler Bay High School
The Mayor’s initial vote was to support a 14.9% increase in your taxes to support the new high school. After debate the consensus of the Town Council voted to raise your taxes 9.4% in order to pay for school improvements. The Town will borrow $2,578,000.00 @2.18 per annum at a cost of $358,173 in interest for total payments of $2,936,173.
The Town of Cutler Bay has approx. $13-14 M in reserves that it can absorb the cost of the school improvements without borrowing money and saves the Cutler Bay citizens $358,172 in interest payments.
I do believe that the Council needs to rethink their proposal of raising citizens property taxes 9.46% in order repay the reserve funds that were used to pay for the current school improvements.
Jaime Reyes
Please delete the comment I submitted. It is in the wrong place and this site is all Palmetto Bay from what I can see.
Thank you
SDM hasn’t covered Cutler Bay too much since the Alexander issue was resolved. Palmetto Bay has a lot of nonsense going on while Cutler Bay is an oasis of sanity by comparison. SDM promises to look at Cutler Bay again soon.
While you may value our ideas and not our identity, one of the current problems facing our society today is anonymous bloggers such as yourself. You may have some valid points, but by refusing to stand by your arguments I can not give you credence.
Before you go retaliating by arguing that I posted anonymously, I did it first and foremost to prove a point, and second, because I did not choose this forum, you did, and it is the only place that I have found to respond to your blog.
That’s ok with SDM. Live and let live.
Who are you? Who writes the responses in SDM?
SDM is anonymous. Comments to SDM are written by persons other than SDM.
Miami-Dade residents were given the opportunity to vote on a straw poll which would impose a miniscule tax to fund animal services. Regrettably, we were not given the same opportunity to opine on the billion dollar Marlins stadium deal’. Every commissioner who voted for this should be thrown out of office!