Budget Fumble: Council Holds Special Workshop After Complaints

Key Biscayne Mayor Mike Davey, left, speaks to residents about a wide range of issues facing the Village during a town hall meeting, Aug. 22, 2019. Davey discussed the Village budget, environmental resiliency, and other items raised by residents and businesses. (Key News/Tony Winton)

Following complaints that a draft $35.9 million dollar budget was not specific enough, Key Biscayne’s Village Council will hold a previously-unscheduled, second budget workshop on Sept. 3. 

“I’m the most disappointed person with that work product and it won’t happen again,” said Manager Andrea Agha, acknowledging the document sent to council members Aug. 17 didn’t contain breakdowns for important funds like transportation, stormwater, and solid waste.

Mayor Mike Davey said he “wasn’t thrilled” with the spending plan and said the idea of a zero-based budgeting approach, which literally asks departments to justify their operations from scratch, was overambitious for Agha’s first budget. 

“She didn’t have time,” said Davey, who praised Agha for her work on finding savings with numerous contracts such as health insurance for employees. The zero-based approach was sought by council members at a strategic retreat in May. 

The budget included many structural changes to various line items, making year-to-year comparisons difficult. Agha said she is working on a new budget layout more in line with previous formats. 

Resiliency

The draft budget projected a 1% property tax decrease, but Davey told a gathering of residents this week his goal is to keep taxes flat and maintain excellent services while planning for needed resiliency projects.

“We are not in austerity mode. We are doing well,” Davey told the crowd at Village Hall.

Several residents told the mayor they are concerned increasing news coverage of sea level rise will start harming  island property values. Davey said the right response is to show the market that Key Biscayne is being proactive.

“We have to get more aggressive with our approach to resiliency. Miami Beach, the County, are ahead of us. We’re lagging.” 

Pension Plan

One big budgetary unknown, according to Agha, the Village manager, is setting the funding of the pension plan covering public safety workers. Agha says the officials have been waiting for the plan’s actuary to advise on the fund’s status and the size of the Village’s contribution. 

The pension portion of the budget is being watched closely by members of the Village’s public employee unions, who have been trying to recover some benefit provisions that were lost in 2014 bargaining. The most recent contract restored some benefits, but it is up for renewal in 2020. Decisions made in this budget could have a ripple effect for those negotiations.

“What we need is to improve the benefit so that we can retain employees,” said Jose Marti, the president of the Key Biscayne firefighters’ union. 

“We have a retention problem. Every time the Village loses a firefighter, it takes them $200,000 to get a new employee to that level” he said, noting there are four vacancies in the department that is costing the Village a lot in overtime pay.

Community Foundation, Freebee

Also on Tuesday, the council will consider a new contract with the Key Biscayne Community Foundation, which was the subject of superheated discussion at a June 18 workshop. Agha says the spending plan keeps funding for a number of popular programs and groups at current levels, many of which are administered by the Community Foundation, a charity. 

Agha says she wants to continue the relationship, despite criticism of the relationship from Council Member Ignacio Segurola.

“I’m glad it came to closure,” the manager said. “On the Village’s side, we never had a break in that relationship.” 

One aspect of the Community Foundation’s services will change, however: the Freebee transportation system. Agha expects the Village to take over the financial aspects of the service while the customer service aspects will be managed by the charity. 

“I don’t have the staff to take that on,” she said.