May 25th, 2009
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1. THE FLEXIBLE AGENDA
Some readers seem to believe that items are put on the agenda by a genie living in Yemen. In reality, these controversial items get there because the Commissioners signal that it is OK to put them there, and they are removed when something happens and what ever hits the fan is spread over the community. It seems the Dunn property fiasco was taken off the agenda the first time when the Shadow was looking at the file and discovered that the property they were planning to buy for $600,000 had a second appraisal that said it was only worth about $400,000. The City Clerk’s new contract with a 10% pay raise and a golden parachute was removed when the Shadow ran it as a lead story. The Alexander property settlement, where the City Attorney agrees to gut the ordinance limiting beach condos, was pulled it appears because the chief sponsor of the ordinance was organizing a fight against the settlement. He says he spent $300 to get the anti-growth Hill Street crowd (do not build a condo near my house—i.e. Not In My Back Yard --NIMBY) to the meeting and then they pulled it from the agenda. The Commissioners will probably try to sneak the settlement through in all likelihood when they hear he is out of town. Sally put on the agenda the Clerk’s contract, saw the furor it caused, and pulled it. That is how they play the game.
2. The drought is over and it is just the start of the rainy season. We are saturated. So is the water table in Volusia County. Catchment basins are full and the inter coastal is over the seawalls.
“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
Date: 
5/20/2009, 8:34 pm
5/20/2009, 8:34 pmName: Public Information Request
Public Information RequestLast week all of the chief's from the RCC Fire Departments and Volusia County met in NSB to discuss the cities running the County Fire Stations. After requesting the information the city leadership should consider letting the county take their stations over instead.
The County (on average) spends 850,000 per year to staff, equip, and supply a fire station. The Oak Hill station only costs 600,000 per year before the $240,000 payment to Edgewater is included. The cities all proposed it would cost them between $1 million and $1.1 million per station each year to run. If the county can run a station for $200,000 + cheaper than the cities. Why aren't the city councils and manager seeing the savings. This would be at least $800,000 per year for NSB, $400,000 for Edgewater, and $1 million for Port Orange. (Not to mention the costs savings to the cities with the pension systems, facilities cost, and the extremely over priced RCC. Contact your city "leadership" and tell them to give the FD's to the county and save our money or lower our taxes. Don't take on more that will cost us more!!
It does not seem anyone that the meetings thought it worth while to save a million or two dollars.
NOTES
1. Uniforms, meals, and the 25% discount
Well let us use Sergeant Griffith as our poster child for a long established practice of public safety City employees expecting, and getting, a 25% reduction in their food bills at local restaurants. OK, the Sergeant’s pay is $86,077 and his pension and benefits package at 60% of that number yields an annual gross take of about $140,000. He walks into a restaurant that is having a hard time making its nut, read here almost every restaurant in town, and they serve him a meal without any profit. They take 25% off the bill! How about that! You would think these uniformed employees would be ashamed of themselves. Of course, for all the Shadow knows, the Sergeant refuses the gift. Please tell us that he refuses to accept the discount. We would sleep better at night!
2. TAX MONEY TO CLEAN UP
DUNN PROPERTY
It is amazing how they figure out how to spend your tax money. Not only did they buy the Dunn property for more than it was worth, but now they are spending Federal tax money to clean up the contamination which, before they bought the property, was the responsibility of the private owners. Dunn put the arsenic there and it was their obligation to clean it up. Not now. It is the City’s responsibility and they are going to use tax money to do. Does it make it better that it is Federal money and comes out of a Federal grant. It shouldn’t. It is still your money. And whatever it costs should have been deducted from the price paid for the property.
DEAR KHALID
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 Mackay
From: Kahlid Reishdat
Dear Sally,
When interviewing the candidates for City Manager can I tell them that their predecessor was fired without cause by a vengeful Commission. I am not sure they read about it the NSBSHADOW.COM, and they may feel that we are being less than honest if we do not tell them. Please tell me how you feel about this.
Kahlid
TAX MONEY SPENT HOW?
The good news is that we are told no City money was given to the promoters of Landshark. The bad news may be that the Southeast Volusia Advertising Authority (SVAA) gave them $5,000. That money is from the bed tax put on every room rented in New Smyrna Beach (12.5%) and is collected as a tax from tourists and is supposed to be used solely to enhance tourism. The question is of course is this money well spent. Measuring that is subjective, it seems, because when we asked for the report required for each grant by the grantee, none had been submitted. In fact, surprisingly, we were told that there was no such requirement. Here is the language in the funding request: LINK See procedures , (7), and section entitled “Requirements For All Events Receiving Partner Money”. According to their own procedures, absent such a report and a determination that the fund had been properly spent, no money could have been given to the sponsors. The Shadow also requested the material for New Smyrna Beach Uncorked and we were told that none had been submitted for that event either.
Putting aside the obvious questionable practice of how the $5,000 was handed out, we asked about how the SVAA determined it was effective. We were supplied with the media reports which we found underwhelming. Every shark bite we bet gets better coverage. Moreover, while the “free” publicity mentioning New Smyrna Beach may be valuable , whether it resulted in any significant increase in hotel occupancy or money in the pockets of local merchants is questionable. There were 85 competitors we are told, short of what they expected, and most we are told were local. We do not believe that this was a very successful event, and there is no statement of how much money was raised for scholarships. If it really received no public money, it is a success whether it brought more tourists to the City (not according to the beach tolls), had more visitors stay in lodgings (not according to the bed taxes collected), or just entertained the youngsters who were already here on Spring Break. Unfortunately for some, it seems Budweiser ran out of free beer a couple of times.
The positive statements from the SVAA about this event are totally anecdotal. The Director had talked to a couple of hotel or condo owners who thought that they benefited. Not good enough. Since this was also billed as an event to have scholarship money, the report if they ever get one, will show whether this was at least profitable for the charitable side. We will wait and see.
Marine Discovery Center rip-off
In your face is the only way to describe the demand for more money for the City to throw away from the failure of the water taxi to operate as a self sustaining business. It now seems it has its own City “Water Tax Fund”. We could not find it in the City 2009 budget. It is not in the 2009 budget and it is a made up name. A fantasy. It is a subsidy to continue a failed business. The City when it supported the grant made it clear that taxpayer money from the City would not be used to keep it going if it was a failure. Well, failure it is to the tune of $10,000 to $20,000 a month. It has already received about $250,000 in City money ( $84,000 a year for “management”) and now it wants another $22,000 to replace motors. It is not run as a business since it has no reserves for repairs.
Both Grasty and Richenberg are on the Board of the Marine Discover Center. They should recues themselves from any vote to subsidize this losing business. But then Richenberg did not recues himself from participating in the fire department negotiations. His wife is the poster child with what is wrong with a pension arrangement which pays her $64,000 annual pay out at age 46. What a mess, and it is your money. We are wondering about the return on the $60,000 kayak fiasco. At 11AM this morning there was not one car at the park where they are cocooned.
Consolidating Overlapping Fire Services.
WHY Silver Sands ?
There have been a number of private, we would call them covert, discussions between Volusia County and the various fire departments maintained by the Cities in Volusia County (see Blog below).There is no question that there is some overlap of coverage, and that substantial savings would be accomplished by some sort of consolidation. Putting aside for the moment the financial savings which clearly seems at this point to lie with the County running the stations and not the bloated operations of the Cities, we are having a hard time understanding the underlying rationale of why the Silver Sands station on A-1-A would be considered as being more effective if run by the City of New Smyrna Beach.
The Silver Sands Station serves effectively Silver Sands and Bethune Beach. Under the current “First Response” agreement with the City of New Smyrna Beach (NSB) it also serves the South end of NSB from we think at least 27th Avenue to the Silver Sands line. Now unlike Edgewater which receives $250,000 a year for First Response into the County, neither the County nor New Smyrna Beach have a pay schedule for reimbursing each other for calls—either the few fires or med/vac. The point is that the service area will not change Beachside regardless of who runs it. The new unneeded fire station that NSB is completing on Third avenue is no closer than the old Columbus Avenue station. So why include this in the stations that the County wants to turn over to the City? No darn reason we can figure other than that the County taxpayers will pay a few hundred thousand dollars more than it currently costs to run the Silver Sands Station. Moreover the first concern of the Union, International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) in the City will demand is that the volunteer fireman be discharged. The IAFF does not like volunteers but have been unsuccessful in making the County agree. (read more)
Questions About a Graphic
We have been criticized about the graphic lampoon of the Chamber Not for Profit two weeks ago as not being clear. Someone even said it was bi-polar. Alright, we will explain the lampoon. W.C. was funny, spent money and put money in banks where he forgot where he put it, and liked an occasional drink. He started his career as a comic juggler. His movie persona was that of a womanizer, drunk , and a buffoon.
The current CEO of the Chamber Not For Commerce, Steve Dennis, is in the middle.
The third figure is Rip Van Winkle who is described by Brander Matthews (1852–1929).
The Short-Story. (1907) as:
“The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor”….. “The women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them; in a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, it was impossible.”
We thought it appropriate to describe Steve Dennis as either W.C. Fields (a stand up comic, a juggler or by his movie persona) or as Rip (who was “available to everybody but could not do his own job”). We thought of Steve Dennis as one or the other. We guess we were too subtle.
Not a Red Herring
We continue to follow the refusal of the City Commission to decide the issues of principle surrounding the Angler’s Yacht Club. The issues that have been raised by the failure of the Commission to address the Angler’s Club lease is not a red herring. It is just one more indication of why the current Commissioner’s are incapable of making decisions. We believe the Mayor promised she would not touch this lease. But we are also having trouble that the City is leasing property to a discriminatory club. The failure to address the pay, pensions, and benefits of the fire department is another major issue. So is the proposed contract for the City Clerk, and it is part and parcel of the mind set that motivated all five of them to give the police department personnel a 2% pay raise in the middle of a recession sliding into a depression. Hiding the water taxi subsidy, buying kayaks, lying about the future costs to the City of supporting the lousy proposals for the old High School site, and cooking the books at the golf course to hide losses is part of the mix, the Shadow believes. Red herrings are phony issues raised to distract attention from real issues. The leadership’s failure to address the Angler’s Club lease is a real issue. So are the others.
THE ONE ISSUE THAT COUNTS--TAXES
There should be only one issue in the next election: the taxpayer being forced (1) to pay to keep a bloated and overpaid city work force in place, particularly the fire and police department personnel, and (2) the continued payout for unneeded facilities and cost of badly run businesses. So far the NSB Commissioners have refused to cut one nickel in spending by cutting pay, pensions, and benefits. That Is the main issue and between now and the election there will be nothing but diversion after diversion to take your attention away from the fact that 44% of the City employees make over $45,000 and have benefits that would make a Wall Street banker blush. The Shadow’s list of positions that should be cut was set last week (see archives).Last week we also printed the list of the over 50% of the Utilities Commission who made over $45,000. Eliminating or furloughing employees at both the City and the Utilities Commission would save a few million dollars and lower the utilities rates. These measures avoid raising taxes. Rather than ever discuss the issue of the wasted taxes, both on City employees and badly run businesses, they raise diversion after diversion. The diversions are everywhere. The Shadow has spent a good deal of time, in fact, explaining these misspent dollars. Some are discovered by pulling the issues from the dark crevices in which they have been hidden, but most are raised by the Commission. Firing the City Manager and the “search” for a replacement is to be their summer diversion when you should be looking at the budget. They want the diversion.
While unseemly, these diversions do not represent the key issue. Of course the City Commissioners do not even resolve the diversions. Reality for Grasty is suspended, for example, when he stands up and justifies the theft of public money under the current lease at the Angler’s Club. It is awful seeing the contempt they display for the taxpayers by what is more and more looking like lackey Commissioners who are the only ones who defend these grifters. Then Sally is busy pandering at the airport for those who complain about non-noisy air traffic and defending subsidies to her friends and supporters to play golf. Richenberg defends his rich white friends at the expense of colored and Hispanic fisherman. And Commissioner Plaskett, who is married to an African American, will not open her mouth publically for black men and Hispanics to enjoy fishing in a white neighborhood. (read more)
