Budget Board Reccomendations

The Fort Lauderdale Budget Advisory Board passed their recommendations last week for cutting the city budget.  Since our commissioners have decided the best route is to declare us overtaxed and to tap the rainy day fund, I thought it would be interesting to review what the non-partisan advisory board had to say on the matter.

Unsurprisingly, one of their recommendations was to make modest cuts in city salaries -- reflecting what is going on in private businesses across south Florida.  The advisory board agreed in principle that the rainy day fun should be tapped just this once, but warned the city that it needed to seriously reform its delinquent fiscal ways. Here's a brief overview of their findings:

For the 2009-2010 budget:

• use 10MM from the rainy day fund on a one time only basis
• do NOT tap the fund in the future
• city needs to make better plans to cut the budget for this year
• That 10mm needs to be paid back with reductions during this budget year

For future budgets:

• Eliminate salary and wage increases, potentially reducing them
• City should sell off surplus property
• The city should pursue intergovernmental relationships to reduce costs for overlapping services (ostensibly this means coordinating better with Broward)
• Adopt zero-based budgeting
• Reform the runaway pension costs
• Study the efficiency of manager/employee relationships to see if there can't be some reductions in the total number of managers

The official recommendation motions are attached.

Attachment: babrecommendations.doc