VERO BEACH — The Vero Beach City Council has revised its budget workshop schedule, moving Thursday’s discussion items to Tuesday and Friday’s wrap-up to Thursday, concluding the budget talks one day early. Tuesday’s lineup is scheduled to include budgets for police, planning, water-sewer utility, the marina and airport, solid waste and the cemetery. The city’s electric utility and risk management fund are set to be discussed on Wednesday.
Due to a 4.14 percent increase in property values for the coming year’s tax bills and some reduced staffing, the City of Vero Beach plans to keep the tax rate the same, despite hikes to employee health premiums and a 16 percent increase in pension costs.
The draft budget released last week is based on maintaining a property tax rate of $2.03 for every $1,000 of taxable value. That rate is expected to bring in $4.28 million in revenues, an increase of $164,604 over the current year.
As City Manager Jim O’Connor, based on his more than three decades in city management, always says about budget time, there are winners and there are losers in the budget process. This time around, the losers would be the city’s beachgoers and lifeguards.
The budget does not include any funds for extending lifeguard hours to 5 p.m. at Humiston Park beach or to place lifeguards at Sexton Plaza beach – two goals that the Vero Beach Lifeguard Association pushed for in recent months as a way to enhance the safety of tourists and local residents alike.
The fact that those things are not in the budget, O’Connor said, “may be a point of discussion.”
In his executive summary of the $20.7 million general fund budget plus the $114 million budgets of the city’s utilities, airport, marina and other enterprise funds, O’Connor told the council that nine jobs would be eliminated – five in the electric utility and four in the water-sewer utility. But with one position each being added in the city clerk’s office and the warehouse, that means a net loss of seven, taking the total employee count at the city from 403 to 396.
“This proposed budget reflects the city administration’s attempt to maintain existing levels of service while, at the same time, controlling the ad valorem tax rate and keeping consistency in transfers from enterprise funds,” O’Connor wrote. “The Council directed the City Manager to present a budget that reflects discussions with council members and the community at large regarding setting budget priorities.”
In previous discussions about the budget, Mayor Dick Winger said he would leave it to management to recommend a budget based on needs priorities, while Councilwoman Pilar Turner made it clear that she did not want to see taxes go up.
Councilwoman Amelia Graves, rather than to give direction on what she wanted to see, said the council could make changes during workshops if the budget wasn’t what the public wanted. Vice Mayor Jay Kramer said he would prefer to get an indication of where staff was going with the budget as soon as possible so the council could get budget talks down to one or two days, like Indian River County does.
It was decided to keep the full week of budget workshops, which begins today, and not release a draft until a week prior.
Budget workshops open at 9 a.m. Monday in council chambers at City Hall and are scheduled to run all week, televised on Channel 13 and live streamed on the internet at www.covb.org.
