Monday, January 19, 2009

I get a kick out of you

I got a kick out of reading about Lois Frankel’s problem with a budget shortfall of $8.2 million for 2010! Poor Lois. I wonder if she thought about the ever increasing housing market and its values plunging down, down, down when she went around her citizens and built her new city center anyway. She didn’t care about what the residents of West Palm Beach wanted. It was all about Lois. Now she says everyone must make sacrifices.

It seems, the only people working for the City of West Palm Beach who are not in jeopardy (if they negotiate like Lake Worth) are those Union workers whose contracts come up this year and negotiations begin December 2009. Personnel costs are estimated to rise by 9% with the police and fire taking one-half of their budget right off the top.

I wonder if our Mayor here in Lake Worth is thinking about ad valorem when he keeps talking about building a new city center here which would include a new library in one of the highest millage rate cities in PB County and certainly one of the poorest. I wonder if the CRA thought it out when they committed over $13 million to the Gateways to attract development.