The main issue in the budget process for New Smyrna Beach over the past two years is how to justify the pay in the $100,000 range, paid to high school graduates with a little technical training, against the fact that similar occupations by most taxpayers with a high school education are paid one third of that with little or no pensions and benefits.

The Mayor has started her campaign for re-election. So we thought that when she goes to the meetings that she is hosting (like Minorca on June 13th) she should address the pressing problems that have been put off for the last two years while she has discussed “visioning” and told little anecdotes about growing up in England that are “feel good”. Failure to reform the fire department pay, pensions and benefits is both the short and long term prescription for failure. The City can not count on receiving overdue payment from FEMA to take the edge off large shortfalls in revenue. Address the fire and police pay scale and tell the crowds how you are going to balance the budget without raising taxes.

1. The Commission stated over a year ago that it was going to the “mat” over the fire department contract. Two modest proposals were presented by the then City Manager John Hagood to reduce expenses: eliminate four hours of mandatory overtime and no pay raises. You asked the fire department personnel to “step up to the plate” and help reduce their burdensome pay, pension, and benefits package. You then gave the fire department personnel a contract which included both the four hours of mandatory overtime and the pay raise. We know that you told the fire department that you would support them, but you also told the taxpayers that you would cut expenses. What are you going to tell them this time that is not just the same different messages that you told different groups last time?

2. The Anglers Club and other leases have not been set at market pricing. Will you go on record that you support market value leases for City property as required by common sense and fairness to the taxpayers? Commissioner Plasket wanted to put in place market based leases. For two years you have avoided the subject like the plague. You, as Mayor, should state for the record that you did not tell or write the Angler’s club that you would not change their lease. You know the one for $25 years for the benefit of 85 white rich male members to run a private club on City property worth four of five million dollars. Just deny it. We might be skeptical at the answer but at least you will be on record. Think also of the value of the Chamber of Commerce and its one dollar lease.

3. The fire department pensions have not been modified. The City received, before you voted to fire Hagood, a report from a consultant that specifically gave four options to reduce the pension plan that is currently bankrupting the City. It would be appropriate if you, as Mayor, stated which of these solutions you support. Do it publically so that we know that you did not tell the fire department one thing and the taxpayers something else.

4. Someone, either Ms. Dieson, Clay Henderson or you should tell Grayce Barck to not use the telephone to tell different groups of people different statements of your positions on issues. Mrs. Barck it seems ran the telephone calls for your campaign two years

ago.

5. The anti-growth position of the City government is hurting the City’s tax base. Please look at the development for each of the communities north on I-95. For example, each intersection north of us is growing, even in our current depression, with decent motels, shopping centers, and restaurants. Not here. Your administration has developed an anti-business stink. Given a choice, we are the last place that most businesses would ever invest, and the anti growth mantra which the City has espoused and supported has been a disaster for this community. Wal-Mart and Lowes pay taxes. How about you stating to the community whether this is still your current position. Everyone should know whether your view is that we will remain a “charming” backwater or a thriving community with a decent tax base.

6.Please deny the rumor that the City is still opposing a Wal-Mart superstore no matter where they want to build it on SR.44. A Super Wal-Mart would bring a big boost to the tax base, provide cheaper gasoline, and be an asset to those shoppers from New Smyrna Beach who now have to travel, and do travel, to Port Orange. Please tell the taxpayers where you stand on this business issue of paramount importance to the City. By the way, if you vote, as you did, not to interfere with Clay Henderson’s plan to build 25,000 houses in a wet land in Edgewater, you can not vote in the same decade to oppose Port Orange building a shopping mall!

And last, please, no more questionable stories like discussing “the family farm” in the 1920’s where the donkey died (or was it a mule) that became a part of Wimbledon Tennis Courts (established outside London in 1877). Your father, an MD General Practitioner in Surrey, may have owned a farm near Wimbledon that was later incorporated in the tennis courts, but we doubt it. This story looks a lot like the story of your college degree from Oxford.