By Lisa Zahner
VERO BEACH — Council member Bill Fish was shot down at Tuesday’s City Council meeting when he attempted to bring up the controversial transfer of $11 million collected from electric, water and sewer bills to pad the city’s general fund. The funds come from the City’s 33,000 utility customers, about 60 percent of whom live outside city limits.
Fish wanted to open up a debate about the transfers, even though he said broaching the subject would be an attempt to “remake the city.” A brief discussion ensued about whether the City should continue to derive revenue from its so-called enterprise funds, or support city services by raising more revenue money through property taxes. But the Council quickly moved on to other matters.
After the meeting, Fish commented that “you can’t do a sudden change, the next year is fixed. I would like to hear more from the citizens which way they would like to see it go.” At the Tuesday meeting, the Council voted to raise water and sewer rates by 3 percent for residential customers and by 7 percent for commercial customers and the question was asked whether the solid waste department makes a transfer into the general fund. Public Works Director Monte Falls said it does, of about 5 to 6 percent or $150,000.
A citizen asked why the City couldn’t do away with the transfer, or part of it, and keep rates steady and a debate ensued about the concept of the transfers from various enterprise funds.
The general fund is supported in two ways by the electric, water and wastewater utilities. First, there are direct transfers from the utilities, which amount to nearly $7 million. Also, the City charges the utilities a little more than $20,000 in personnel and administrative fees per employee.
That money goes to support City Hall operations and top management, including the City Manager, City Attorney, Finance Director, City Clerk and all their staffers. All the utilities combined have roughly 250 employees, so that’s nearly $5 million in personnel and administrative fees.
Councilwoman Debra Fromang responded to Fish raising the issue by saying, “It’s a policy decision and it’s been our policy. If the citizens want to change it, that’s what we’re here for. That will obviously be a topic of discussion in the future.”
She then re-directed the meeting away from the city’s funding mechanisms and back to the issue at hand, the rate increases. “There’s no way that I’m going to sit up here and not keep the infrastructure of the city,” she said.
Vice Mayor Tom White, who was running the meeting in the absence of Mayor Sabin Abell, commented that the $150,000 the City shifts over from solid waste is “peanuts” compared to the money it takes from the electric, water and sewer utilities.
It was there that the discussion ended, but this was the most extensive public exploration by council members to date on the transfers into the general fund.
When asked about his comments that prompted the discussion, Fish said, “I’m going to keep bringing it up,” but added that “you just can’t do this overnight, if you just eliminate those funds and told (Public Works Director) Monte Falls he’s not going to have that money, you’d have to quit mowing the grass and getting things done.”
