Friday, August 28, 2015

Lake Worth Beach Fund Budget for 2016

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Beach Fund Analysis using 12 year pay-back
The scenario kept parking rates the same at $2.00 an hour and the same loan term of 12 years. By using this scenario, there would have been a deficit in the beach fund of $410,321.
This scenario was approved by Mayor Pam Triolo and Vice Mayor Scott Maxwell.

Beach Fund Analysis using 14 year pay-back
This scenario raised parking to seasonal rates of $2.25 June-Sep and $2.50 Oct-May. This scenario got consensus and would show only a $29,965 deficit.
This was approved by Commissioners McVoy, Amoroso and Maier to be evaluated after one year ending September 30, 2016.

It is always unfortunate when you have to raise fees but this entire commission did not have any compunction  just a few weeks ago when it voted in 27 pages of increases to Business Tax Receipts by 5%. It also did it when it had consensus to not use the roll-back rate in ad-valorem. The "Visionary" tried to do it when it wanted the General Obligation Bond to succeed at the polls by raising taxes for 34 years and spent a fortune of taxpayer money to win.

With the beach decision, we will not be robbing our positive fund balance and taking nearly half of our account in order to pay back the loan to ourselves sooner. By raising the parking fees, it is expected to generate $300,658. McVoy, Amororo and Maier took the business approach and voted correctly.

In this case, there was an urgency to hire more lifeguards because of the numbers of people who use our beach and the numbers of saves by our guards. Hopefully the $185,280 that the city will spend will be made up in parking revenue rather than in closing the beach at 5pm. Many people use our beach after working hours.

2 comments:

John said...

I have concluded that Scott is nuts. That explains his bizarre behavior.

Anonymous said...

This is really bad politics. What were you thinking Pam and Scott? Are you all still backing Szerdi? You want this beach to fail?