Green: Is the Code Affordable?
At their last workshop, the Town Commission considered the request by the Town Manager, the Town Attorney and the Planning Director to replace at least one of the three code enforcement officers that the Town had employed in the past.
If it were possible, I would have all of you simply go to your computer, go to the Town website, click on minutes of meetings and go to item 14. If you could all do that, I wouldn’t have to write a word but I warn you, it aint pretty. If you have any feelings for Longboat Key and its future, you would be so appalled by some of the statements of Commissioners Jaleski, Siekmann and Spoll, you would be flooding the papers with your letters.
Monica Simpson, the Planning Director and head of the department that has the responsibility for code enforcement stated as baldly as possible that she has not the resources to do the job. She said that the problem had reached a “critical mass”. She pointed out that the Town no longer was proactive in the code enforcement business. In other words, if a citizen doesn’t call up and complain nothing is being done. This involves every code from turtle nesting to health and sanitation problems. Trash barrels overflowing are allowed to fester, signs can proliferate and the Town stands helpless.
The Town Manager stated that the idea promulgated by Vice Mayor Bob Siekmann and Commissioner Jaleski of contracting out the work was not a rational approach. It exposed the Town to legal problems as well as lack of continuity of enforcement. This even if they were able to secure the services of a competent person who understood what Longboat Key was about. This is on top of the fact that it isn’t even proven that it would save any money.
Commissioner Hal Lenobel said it best when he said “if we are going to have a code, you must enforce it”
Mayor Rothenberg pleaded without effect with his fellow commissioners to not let Longboat Key degenerate to a second class community. He pointed out that the money for the new hire was already in the budget.
Commissioner Jaleski who on almost every issue seems to find someplace else that does something better than Longboat Key. praised the towns north of here and spoke as to how happy he was with the look of Bradenton Beach.
Vice Mayor Siekmann has been acting as if he were the CFO of a company who’s sole responsibility was to show a profit, the future be damned. His ideas of going ‘off shore’ for employees, left me thinking; when will he find some company in China to do all of the Town’s clerical and financial reporting work?”
When you combine this session with the one on the pension problem, you sense that whatever the financial problems of the Town might have, it is all going to have to be born on the backs of the employees.
They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing but expect a different outcome. In the late seventies, the Town in their desire to keep taxes low paid their employees very poorly. As a result, the Town had a fifty percent turnover in personnel every year. Firemen were employed who then went at Town expense to get their EMT and even Paramedic qualifications and then soon after left for a better paying post in an adjoining town. It was the same in the Police Department. The Town was in the on the line training business without enjoying any of the benefits.
Finally, led by the Mayor at the time Jim Brown (the elder); the Town totally reversed their direction. It became the policy of the Town to be in the top quintile of pay scale of all of the surrounding communities. This also included a better pension plan.
We then not only retained good people but were able to eventually require all potential firefighters to be licensed as paramedics. If you haven’t had the experience, let me assure you, a qualified paramedic is a better person to have on the scene of a trauma than most physicians. For example, when I was on the Commission, we received a letter from a cardiologist who had had a heart attack when visiting. He wrote he received better medical care from our people than he would have expected in his own ICU back home.
It is having employees like this that made Longboat Key the Town it is. It has been twenty years since I have heard of anyone wanted to move so they could be closer to the hospital and this is one we used to hear often in the bad old days.
The sad part of all of this is this small group of commissioners is throwing all of this out the window just to save the taxpayers peanuts. As a matter of fact, if the Commission raised their tax rate .3 mils they would get 1.8 million dollars in return, be able to work out the pension mess and hire the needed personnel. I picked this figure because at this rate, a homeowner would still probably be paying less than he or she was paying five years ago. This however, is not the issue, the issue is if you live on Longboat Key, you expect Longboat Key type of quality. You didn’t vote to be driven into a ditch by a group of scared bunny rabbits who don’t have the guts to raise your taxes so they dump it all on the employees.
It didn’t work before and hopefully it won’t work this time. If citizens speak up, you won’t have to wait for the second coming of the first Jim Brown.
