Key West Commissioner Sam Kaufman joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the city.
Trash collection fees were discussed at a recent commission meeting.
Kaufman said, “I was pleased that the city commission did not agree to a cap of fees that are around 11%. I have thought that we really need more attention placed on the compliance with regard to waste collection to garbage collection, and so the cap went down to 5%. So I think that was a win for our taxpayers, our residents, and our business owners. So that was some good news. I think that the city was paying attention to the rising costs that are hitting everybody, and so I think that was the responsible way to go.”
Budget talks are coming up in the city.
Kaufman said, “First thing is something that happened at the city commission meeting that I was very happy about was the city withdrew the idea of a new tax, and that was for the fire assessment, and the reason why I was the lone vote against that previously, but the reason that’s a good thing is that that could really end up to be a double tax, and I am historically against increased taxes, I am of the belief that we should have reduction in taxes, and I’ve been arguing that and advocating that for years, and it’s coming to fruition, and I’m happy about that, but at the same time we have to be very careful, because we don’t want to shift the burden, in other words, the taxes have to be paid by somebody, and so when we were going to have a reduction, we know coming, maybe not in this fiscal year, but the next fiscal year, we’re going to have a reduction in payment of tax by homestead owners, by people who own their homes, like myself, and I think that’s great too. I love the idea of paying less taxes, believe me, that’s awesome, but at the same time, we don’t want a shift, and we don’t want double taxation, and this whole idea of assessments, I mean, look, the taxes are going to have to be paid by somebody. The costs for paying for our first responders, our police, our ambulance service, our fire department, those are not going down. So, what we’re going to see, and we have to figure out is how not to have this be a bad thing for people who rent, our workforce, because all landlords are going to do is pass on these higher taxes that are going to have to shift to them, and business owners shift to them. We have to figure out how to be fair and balanced in that, and that’s to me the key thing is again reducing the cost of government, reducing inefficiencies, and reducing the budget in the government. I’ve been arguing that for many years. Well, how are you going to do that, right? Well, when the city of Key West is in a very advantageous position, because we have $52 million in reserves, $52 million when all of property tax collection is $23 million, we’re in a very good position, we’re poised to be able to do it, and the city of Key West will be fine going forward. The question is, is it going to be to the benefit of the business owners, small business owners, and our working people?”
Does it look like the property tax reform in the state will pass?
Kaufman said, “I think without question it’s going to pass. Those of us who own homes, which is the majority of people in Florida, who own property, the majority of voters are probably going to pass this thing, and that’s okay. I don’t have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the details of how it will be implemented in terms of our budgets at the city, county and state level, and what the focus really should be on is reducing government. We should be reducing government, and you might think that’s odd for me to be saying that, right? I’m in the government, but I’ve been arguing this, I’ve been arguing this consistently for the last 10 years, and it’s so doable. It is so doable, but government, oftentimes, wants more government, and I come from the private sector, right? I’ve had a business – I started my own business. No one helped me start my own business 25 years ago, and I have to pay payroll, and I have to reduce staff when the market tells me I have to reduce staff, right? But the government doesn’t have to do that. The government can just raise taxes, and they don’t have to worry about the market, right? So, what we need to do is use common sense, hit our efficiencies as best as we can. We’re going to have to reduce staff. Let’s face it, we’re going to have to do that. Hopefully, we could do that through attrition, but we should focus on eliminating duplication of services and duplication of staff, and we can do it, but we need a government willing to do that.”
Are there places that cuts could happen?
Kaufman said, “Oh, absolutely. The grand jury report, we have a city which received its second grand jury report with recommendations within a year, which is extremely unusual in the whole of Monroe County, we have had, I think, three three such reports. One was targeting the county, and now we have two, with reference to the city of Key West. In the latest grand jury report, they asked the city to look at eliminating inefficiencies and too many layers of management, which they say after the grand jury took a testimony from many witnesses, including subject matter experts, experts in city government, our city government, and they came to the conclusion that our government has too many managers, too many layers of management, and it creates inefficiencies, and why is that? Because in order to get approval, you have to go to this person, then that person has to go to this person, and then that person has to go to the next person, and it creates a scenario where one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing, and that happens a lot, by the way, and it creates frustration for our residents who go to city hall and get one answer, and then they get a different answer, and I hear that all the time. I’ve heard that many times over the years. So, I give one example, the city, for the majority of my last 10 years involved in city government, had one assistant city manager. Now we have three, and if you look at the salaries, it’ll be like, whoa, what’s going on here? That’s just one example of many, many more, and so what we need to do, really, is as people retire, especially in a higher levels of management, through attrition, not firing people, I’m not advocating for firing people, but what we need to do is eliminate positions, because when you’re at 70, 80% of your budget being personnel cost, what else can you cut? There’s nothing else to cut, really. I mean, and then we have cost of living adjustments, and we want to pay our people a living wage. Don’t get me wrong, I’m for having the salaries that allow people to live here and live here comfortably. We know how expensive it is here, but it’s about the number of positions. The city has about 550 employees, and experts too, I’m sure, testified. I don’t have personal information, but I’m sure the grand jury heard that a city of like size in Florida doesn’t compare to having that number of employees. So we have to take a real deep dive in this, look at it, and at the same time, we really have to make sure that we’re continuing to provide the essential services for our residents and our business owners.”
The city commission talked about the grand jury report at the last meeting.
Kaufman said, “I brought this resolution because I thought it was important for the city commission to have the opportunity to vote on to pursue and move forward with the recommendations from the grand jury. This has arisen from the misconduct and the indictments, the arrests of three public officials, our former city attorney, our former code enforcement director, and our former city building official. That’s how we arrived at receiving the first grand jury report. So, my view is that the second grand jury, this is a brand new group of people in a second grand jury that came out about a month ago. This new report, and my interpretation is that basically they said, well, look, city, you didn’t really do what we said in the first report, you really didn’t go far enough, you really didn’t address the inefficiency in government, the inconsistencies in your own regulations and your own laws and codes, and you didn’t really address the conflicts of interest that are pervasive in your planning process and your planning board. So, please address them. That’s really what it said, and it said address them as you deem fit. That’s what it said. It didn’t say you have to do x, y, and z. It just said create a process to address these problems, and I was very disappointed at the last city commission meeting, for two main reasons. Number one, the city commission, the city decided not to pursue any of the recommendations made by the grand jury, which is really disappointing and not good, but two, I really thought that the tone was really negative and very much disrespectful. I heard multiple city commissioners say that the members of the grand jury were unqualified. That’s a dangerous thing. That’s a very dangerous thing. You don’t want to talk about the criminal justice system and say that people who are involved in the criminal justice system are unqualified. We shouldn’t be doing that. That undermines the credibility of our criminal justice system. I would never do that. I don’t care if I agree or I disagree with the outcome, but to personally attack these 18 people who are good citizens, who are doing their job, who were seated by a judge, and deemed qualified for multiple city commissioners to say they’re unqualified and use that type of language is inappropriate, so I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this. I’m sure that investigations are going forward, and I’m thankful for that. I’m very thankful for the state attorney. I think Dennis Ward and his team has done a great job, and I think we’re going to hear a lot more from this, and rightfully so.”
Will all this be discussed again?
Kaufman said, “I don’t think so. I think it’s done. I did what I could. I brought it forward as a discussion item in April, and then I brought it forward as a voting item, and in the June meeting, which we just had last week, I brought it forward first as a discussion item in May, and look, the current commission has decided its take on this, and we’ll see the outcome of the election. Don’t get me wrong, this is not dead, because we need to do it. We can’t just ignore the problems, and that’s what we’re doing so far.”