March 23rd, 2009
NSBShadow.com....
Published Weekly, Direct from the Web.
Look to Us for the Latest Intrigues and
Tell Your Friends About Us!
Visitor on this Site This Week.
(Nearly 3000 hits last week. Thank you, enjoy your visit and come back to see more.)
You are:
One of our esteemed readers has said it as good as we could. It is like what Groucho Marks said: “I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.”
3/12/2009, 8:03 am NSB Manager?
“Whoever takes this job is going to have to be a real loser. Who in their right mind would take the job as New Smyrna Beach city manager? One of the city commissioners has been on national TV twice talking about being cured of cancer by space aliens. How crazy is that? The mayor got elected by running a smear campaign against her opponent and now she cannot produce her college diploma from a prestigious University in England that her campaign website seemed to imply she had. Three of the city commissioners are tied to the city’s police and fire unions. Half the fire department is earning over $60,000 a year in a community where the median wage is $29,000. The city commission is allowing its firefighters to retire in their 40’s, is giving all its firefighters $60,000+ pensions and has no idea in the world where the money is coming from to pay for the extravagant retirement packages. The city has a Utilities Commission that electric rates for an average homeowner are over $300.00 a year more than Winter Park and Orlando. A quick look at the UC’s W2s published on a local website show that the most common wage at the UC is $70,000 a year. Elections are coming up and even if you take the job, the people who are going to hire you do not appear that they are going to be around very long. The new group of city commissioners will probably fire you because they think only a loser would take a job working for the group that hired you. “
The thought of a sane manager wanting the job is hard to digest.
“Best Blogs of the Week”
(Edited for grammar and punctuation)
A POTPOURRI OF CITIZEN COMMENTS IS
AGAIN PROVIDED THIS WEEK IN ORDER
FOR YOU TO GET IN TUNE WITH THE
MOOD OF OUR READERS
3/17/2009, 11:04 am Indeed
Who uses education every day? Do you count the multitude of kids who can't even make change or name the Secretary of State. How about the 50% of college grads who don't use their degree? How about idiots who think teachers are underpaid along with firemen? Remember in Volusia County the AVERAGE wage is less than $25,000. MOST OF THE WORKERS THESE DAYS HAVE no benefits. Education is worthless unless it makes you able to produce. Words without action are meaningless. People who pretend otherwise damage our society.
3/17/2009, 10:52 am Think
You use your education every day. You could go you entire life and not need to call the fire department. What is more important?
3/17/2009, 10:37 am Gubermint Skool
American Schools may be the crown jewel of democracy in retard land. Teachers start at $28 to $32,000 a year and only work (if you call it that) for 9 months. They also get fantastic benefits. Volusia Co only has 50% of its employees teaching the other sit on their(rumps) in administration. Our skooll childern only rank 17th in the world by educational level and our spending is the highest or second highest on the planet every year.
3/17/2009, 9:53 am IAFF
The president of IAFF was on C-span last night saying the firefighters deserved in his words to earn "their $50,000, $60,000, 70,000, and $80,000 a year salaries "and fat pensions. He said the union was trying to get through as part of the stimulus money to make sure firefighters pay and benefits were not cut off during the recession
3/17/2009, 9:00 am Chuck
427: Either you're trying to make a joke or you are forcefully demonstrating that YOU are a product of "public schools." I am ashamed of our government schools which refute competition and provide our children with, at best, a very poor education.
Has any one looked at the website of the new city manager recruiter? If you look at the Recruiter's Webstite, he sent both of his sons to Brigham Young University. I thought that was kind of an odd thing to put on your website. I thought it was kind of an odd thing to hire (without any discussion) a guy as your recruiter that puts that on your website. The University has a long history with all types of intolerance towards blacks, women and minorities. In recent years the school has cleaned up it act. To me putting it on his website it is a speaking in tongues message intended to go over the heads of most people and communicate a message to right wing conservatives. What is says is I only recruit right wing conservative city managers and I will run off anyone else that applies. It also says I have the social skills to slip this right wing ideologue by the liberals and moderates on the city commission. That is how we ended up with 20 years of Frank Roberts and our current Chief of Police Ron Pagano. It sounds like this guy could find us both a new city manager and a new commodore for the Anglers club. It does not sound like the new city manager is going to be black, jewish, or a woman.
NOTES
1. Apparently Volusia County Echo has agreed to put up $340,000 and the CRA will pony up about $200,000 to fix up the Chamber of Commerce Building owned by the City, repaired by the City, and currently rented to the Chamber for $1 dollar a year. Not only is the Echo money taxpayer money from the County, but half of the CRA money is contributed by the County. In other words the County is contributing about $450,000 to repair a facility where the lessees have not spent a dime and pay no rent. Both the County and the City are in a credit crunch and the City is intending to raise the millage rate to pay for its failure to address any of the serious budget issues concerning civil service employment, particularly pensions and benefits. Why should the overburdened taxpayer pay for this? Would it not be better if every nickel was spent in augmenting unemployment benefits for the 10% of Volusia County workers who have been laid off. Or how about sending the money to all of the Church food banks that are currently running out of food. Tell the Chamber to hit up their own members to pay for the repairs.
2. The City will not tell the Shadow who is in the DROP (Deferred Retirement Options Program) program or when they entered. The amount paid in for the 16 individuals who they say are in the program currently and it totals $750,000. The City’s answer:
[There are 16] The dates of entry into drop are 1/1/05, 9/1/05, 3/1/06, 3/1/06, 6/1/06, 1/1/07, 5/1/07, 6/1/07, 8/1/07,9/1/07, 11/1/07, 4/1/08, 6/1/08, 7/1/08, 7/1/08, 1/1/09. The aggregate amount of funds is $749,440.
They will not attach names to these dates, but the Shadow estimates that they represent between a $70,000 and $80,000 monthly double pay deal for the highest paid employees who should be retired immediately.
“That is about what you pay each month on your car.”
Go to the link and start at pg 9. Rodi loves Venetion Bay
The Utilities Commission is now considering a garbage burning generating plan at the site of the Fire Station at I-95 and SR 44. Yep, truck the garbage out there, transfer it to a generating plant, and sort of burn it. Well you do not burn it. You cook it at a high temperature and it stinks. It stinks for miles. It really stinks and there is nothing you can do about it other than hope a stiff breeze comes up and blows the stench on your neighbor. Transferring garbage is a lot less of a nuisance than the stink, but the occasional leaking truck on the way and the blowing papers off the trash are a constant. It belongs maybe fifty miles from the nearest habitation, not near Venetian Bay.
ELECTED OFFICIAL DYSFUNCTIONAL AWARD
Nominees:
1. Dennis Mulder, Mayor of Deltona, Florida
Basis of nomination:
Proposal to have City of Deltona pay for civil law suits against critics of public officials (subsequent public apology withdrawing effort); using City funds and publications to try and get referendum passed to create his very own police force (lost overwhelmingly); support of City Attorney whose advice seems more off the wall than most lawyers: support of a City Manger who seems to have a vocabulary that includes racial and religious slurs.
2. Sally Mackay, Mayor of New Smyrna Beach, Florida
Basis of Nomination:
Firing the City Manager two weeks before she was to evaluate his performance on reaching goals she gave him; stating she was for open government and then instructing her City Clerk to withhold as much information as the City could for as long as it could; stating she did not want to quibble over the value of the Dunn Lumber property value so “just pay the price”; never questioning the Utilities Commission’s year after year of high rates and funny bond issues; refusal to address the violations of the Anger’s Yacht Club in discriminating against woman, blacks, Hispanics, and every religion they denigrate we believe almost daily in the US built Club House erected in WW II by the Navy when thousands of US heroes died defending these shores against the Nazi; hiring a labor lawyer to find that “racial slurs” only exist if the person who sees it thinks it is a racial slur.
No other nominee would even come close to the dysfunctionality of these two Mayors so we closed the nomination process. Understand, being dishonest, stupid, or delusional is different from being dysfunctional. If you have a view on the above two nominees please contact the Shadow.
WEB SITE?
Attached as a LINK is the interim invoice for the new Web-Site for the City of New Smyrna Beach---$20,000 big ones. It is under a contract where the contractor does city and community web sites. The question is since there was already a depression on the horizon and they were spending reserves, why do it? That is the question. WHY?! It would have represented a savings, and given the budget short fall this year it will be your money because they will increase taxes. Of course it is always your money, but they spend it. The old web-site was adequate.
DEAR SALLY
As we have stated in the past, we realize that the City Manager is limited in the resources available to him for pursuing cost reduction projects, so we have decided to help him out and provide draft letters for his review. As we have said this will free him up for important things, like dealing with all the serious problems of the police and fire department pensions.
TO: Mayor Sally Mackay
From: Kahlid Reshiedat, City Manager
Here is the Foster and Foster analysis of the options that are available to fix the out of hand pension program currently in place for our fire department personnel. It was going to be submitted to you last month as the plan to meet the goals given to this office, but you removed the City Manager two weeks before he planned to give it to you. Do you want to trash it or should I put it on the agenda?
Kahlid Reshiedat
“Randy Richenberg has suggested the City "invest" in the old High School Building, and build a City Commission Room in there, with "state of the art" communications equipment....JUST LIKE PORT ORANGE has!”(from a posting on the blog).
The City did not get any money from the Feds so far for the losing projects at the Old High School site, the County has indicated it will not give them a dime for this project, and the City’s own consultant study says it is a lousy use of the property. Representative Kosmas in the past agreed with ex-Congressman Feeny that it was not a good idea and neither was willing to support it before the election last November. Randy is now wooing Representative Kosmas’ staff for money, but the Ponce Inlet Marine Center is also in her territory and it has both funding and County support. Remember too, all but one of the districts in New Smyrna Beach voted for Feeny. Maybe she will support this waste of government money, but we hope that she will continue to see it for the loser it is and does not offer them money. We know that they are lobbying her for money but think she has more to lose by putting money into a totally losing venture. Better the City use any money from the Federal government to repair roads and conserve rain water run off. Those are projects that should be funded if the Feds want to help the City.
So what does Richenberg want to do? Spend City money that he does not have on an unneeded New City Hall which they do not need and ruin the use of the most valuable raw left in Volusia County. Ask the tax appraiser, Morqan Gilreath, who said that the Old High School site would be appraised on a square foot price. That is your money. Richenberg already said he will raise taxes this year and he was sorry he voted against the tax increase last year.
The City is spending your money on toys for Richenberg. The water taxi continues to operate even though the Federal grant funds have been expended. They had spent $733,000 of the $750,000 grant as of last month, and are or will be using City money if they do not stop running immediately. Both Richenberg and Grasty, are on the Marine Discover Center Board, and they shortly will be spending your tax money if the City Commission does not stop them.
Remember, when they approved accepting this grant money for the water taxi the Commission did so with the specific proviso that not one dime of City money would be spent on this project. We need an audit, because they are out of Federal money (which is your money), and, as we said above, somebody is paying for it to operate. So now he wants you to bail out their failure to convince anyone that the old High School site can operate as a self funded tourist attraction. We can just hear the kid in Columbus, Ohio saying: “Please mommy let’s go to NSB and look at the new City hall. No, let’s go look at the new Marine Police building.”
UNIFICATION OF COUNTY FIRE DEPARTMENTS
Unification of fire and police service—county wide. Now that “Unification” is on the table, the Shadow thought it wise to repeat an article we punished a year or so ago. It is reprinted below (minor editing):
“In order to understand the issues of what is at stake if unification of the all Volusia County Fire Departments into the Volusia County fire department makes sense requires a history lesson or two in several subjects. We will try and address them as separate issues and show how we got to the present predicament of having a number of small over paid and over managed departments.
First, the issue of the number of fireman at each station and how the Cities in Volusia County got to three per shift is more of an exercise in adroit politics by the IAFF (the fire department union) than any real need. There is no difference in response time whether a station has two or twenty holding down the lounge chairs. The “boots on the ground”---the time it takes when the alarm sounds in the fire house until the truck leaves the station, is not dependent on the number that inhabit the station. In a fire, three is hardly better than two, and, anyway, the second truck is there in minutes. In med/EVAC one of the two would be a trained EMS and if the person weighed more than 300 pounds the County EVAC personnel would be on the scene also in minutes along with a second fire truck. Keep in mind, the fire chief in Port Orange stated that for a real structural house fire he wanted at least 16 personnel on the scene and 23 for a business fire.
Now statistics are available because the county operates seven stations with two per shift and fifteen with three per shift (more on why later.) There is no difference between any of these stations in response time attributable to the number of fireman on the truck. Nor is there any discernible loss in service to the residents and deterioration of public safety. Remember it almost always takes only one EMS person on a fire truck or EVAC response vehicle to attend to a med/evac situation, and there is one whether there are two or three persons in the fire house who go to an accident or medical call.
Forget house fires. In a County fire last year, the County fire department got to the fire in a timely fashion there was the question of why they might have decided not to hose it down from a distance. The top floor was engulfed in flames and the house was already, we are told, a loss. The position of our local fire department seems to be that it would be better if three fireman watched it burn rather than two. There were more than four fireman on the scene it seems in less than nine minutes and all four or five determined there was nothing that could be done. Maybe they should have shot water on it from 50 yards away, but the unoccupied house was still a loss no matter what they would have done.
So why Mr. Professor does the County have two-thirds of its stations manned with three fireman per shift? Because my son, when the County insisted on establishing a “first response” program, the Cities insisted that the contiguous County stations have the same number of personnel per shift as the territory they abutted. Voila, 100 more fireman hired in the County not because they were needed but that was the price the IAFF demanded if it were to cooperate in protecting the taxpayers by having the nearest truck dispatched first. Politics, my son, not real need.
Several weeks ago we also punctured the myth that was sold that you needed the third person if there was a serious injury and the EMS fire person had to go with the two EVAC personnel in the ambulance to the nearest hospital. One of the ex mayors of Edgewater said this was the principal reason for three to a truck. Wrong! Maybe once a month, and the fire truck could follow the EVAC to the hospital, and the non existent risk of only one on the truck would not be a reality. Total risk time even if it were real would be a cumulative six hours a year! Yes, dear, at most six hours a year! For which every one of these jurisdictions have one third more personnel that you pay for to the tune of millions of dollars a year.
The fall back position for those opposing unification is taxes. The tax districts run by the County are part of the property tax component in your tax bill. The cost in the City is not separately billed but is in the overall City millage rate. There is no question that your tax bill will go up if:
1. The City sets up a fire tax district with no consolidation, or
2. Consolidation occurs, the County levies a tax district on the territory that was in the City, AND the City does not cut its other property tax millage rate by the same amount that it used to spend on its fire department.
The taxpayer comes out ahead if there is consolidation AND the City reduces its property tax take by the full amount previously allocated in the budget to run the fire department. By the way, setting up a fire tax district would require a referendum. Would you vote for such a new tax proposal?
Now if you accept the second option you are a sucker. But then if Ormond Beach and Port Orange voters accept that their Cities will keep the City millage rate AND VOTE TO set up a fire tax district in addition they are suckers. No cut in spending, just figuring out how to raise more money and get around Constitutional Amendment 1 in the last election cycle. Hey, it is only 18 months before you can tell more than half of the elected officials here that you approve their continued abuse of the property tax authority. As the ad man's slogan goes, in eight months “you can have it your way.”
Consolidation, or now “Unification”, has the promise of significant savings in the current management excesses and personnel. There is no assurance of reform, but there is certainly no expectation that any thing would change locally. We think that the likelihood is that staff would be reduced to levels that are consistent with the limited level of house fires and a more realistic understanding of what is needed for med/evac. Millions of your tax dollars are at stake. What is not at stake is any loss in public safety.
