INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Several dozen members of Indian River County’s business community gathered at the Heritage Center in Vero Beach Friday to get the latest status report on the county’s health.
“I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version,” County Commission Chairman Joe Flescher told the audience. “Things are absolutely wonderful,” adding that things got bad and then worse and now they’re better and will get even more so in the future.
His brief analysis garnered chuckles from the crowd.
Flescher continued with his comments for the Indian River County Chamber of Commerce Annual State of the County address, giving kudos to his fellow commissioners who were on the board with him in 2006 for putting the county on the path to keep the county afloat.
“We saw the storm coming,” Flescher said of Commissioners Wesley Davis, Peter O’Bryan, and Bob Solari, and then-Commissioner Gary Wheeler.
Now, the county is beginning to see that financial storm wobble, waiver and dissipate.
Flescher credited County Administrator Joe Baird and County Finance Director Jason Brown with the county’s weathering the storm that is the economic bust.
Baird has been called a “tightwad,” a “miser,” and a “cheapskate,” Flescher said – and he embraces it. “We truly appreciate your cheapness,” Flescher said directly to Baird.
Flescher told the audience that the County Commission this week voted to increase the property tax rate, which will result in more monies coming into the county’s coffers.
“There is a cost to doing business,” he said, explaining that – for years – the Commission has held the tax rate steady or lowered it. “We are now in recovery mode.”
Safety and security were two main reasons for a tax rate increase this upcoming fiscal year.
Baird told the audience that increases to the state’s retirement program accounted for an $800,000 increase to the Sheriff’s Office budget. Sheriff Deryl Loar, too, wanted to give his patrol a raise, something the deputies haven’t had in a number of years.
Indian River County government employees, for the first time in six years, will also get a modest raise as a result of the increased taxes, Baird said, which garnered applause from the audience.
Baird explained that the county’s budget ran a deficit by design last year, pulling monies from the general fund reserve, in an effort to keep the tax rate down.
“We can’t go down forever,” Baird said.