Financial Workshop Last Night

Deede Weithhorn, a commissioner in Miami Beach and a municipal auditor in her day job, has been contracted by the city to analyze our finances. The city held an audit workshop last night. The workshop was sparsely attended by citizens, only four of us were there. That is not good.

 The short recap of the presentation is that Ms. Weithorn is reviewing the reporting and the organization of our financial statements. This is good news because the issue is not the integrity of the finances but the poor way that the information is communicated. Weithorn's experience could help get the right information at the right time to the commission and to the citizens. I hope so.

 I saw some red flags last night and the commission has to be very clear and insistent on how these recommendations are presented and kept.

 First a joke: The definition of a good accountant is one who always reports 2+2=4. The definition of a great accountant is one who replies, "How much do you want it to be?"

 That's what passes for accounting humor but it has a really clear point. Because finances are complex, it becomes easy to hide behind technical jargon and complex explanations, yet most people understand the concept in basic terms.

 A reserve is commonly understood to be a savings account. It is money that is held aside in the event of something happening. Simple enough. Now just like other savings accounts, there can be specific purposes - rainy day fund, retirement fund, new car fund, Christmas Club (remember those?), education fund. Most people with budgets and income understand that.

 The city reserve is no more complicated. A certain amount of money is set aside for disasters, another amount for capital expenses, another amount for utility issues, and sometimes an amount for unexpected operational issues.

 Ms. Weithorn's explanation was abstruse, unnecessarily complicated, and she should bear that in mind. It's not her job to educate us on complexity but to make the complex understandable. She may not be able to help it. Plain English is a second language for accountants and elected officials but I hope she does better in her final report.

 Beyond the reserve, to me it is very clear that the city commission lacks two things - timely reports on the financial status and lack of information about the impact of financial decisions.

 Let's deal with the first one - timely reports. Much has been made about the need for a new financial software system and we do need one. But that won't fix the problem. A good system will help but the issue is being comfortable with uncertainty.

 It's the job of the finance manager to give best estimate reporting quickly and not wait until every column is balanced and every account is reconciled. Each month, before the commission meeting the finance manager needs to provide a best estimate in simple terms as to the financial condition of the city.

 The second is more complex. What is the cost of buying a service and what is the long cost of ownership? Simple example - a consumer buys a new car in cash. How much should she plan on spending to maintain the new car? You have to plan for that money. Our code should require a financial impact statement for every item before the commission. This has been done by custom in the past but apparently has fallen by the wayside. There's no reason to wait. The city administration should start doing this now and the commission needs to codify it.

 New subject - Cross charging performance reports. Let me zero in on the big one. Our legal bills are out of control. This is not because of greedy lawyers but because of deliberate management decisions to force personnel issues into court. Now this is a bad move and it should stop now, but its effects are hidden when the legal services are kept as a separate budget item in the reports.

 The money that the legal services spend should be charged against the budget of the consuming department. It's only that way that the city can decide what the core issues are and either fix them, avoid them in the future or decide this is worth spending money on.

Finally, the Citizens Budget Oversight Board started with good intentions.  I resigned from it when I could not abide the insistence that the committee meet only during the work day.  They've produced nothing useful anyway.  And any board that contains the strip club developer who owes well over a $1,000,000 in back taxes as a voting member is not worth my time or yours.   It should be  dissolved.

 Kevin Vericker
April 20, 2012

Different Drummer?

When this blog started, it was with the hope that the issues before North Bay Village could be laid out rationally, discussed openly and perhaps heatedly, and that varying viewpoints could be considered. I thought sincerely that the group who call themselves "Citizens for Full Disclosure" had a style problem. I thought that the histrionic, over the top, emails were the result of deep frustration.

I won't go into the long history of contentious relationship with this group. (You can read about it here.) To give credit where credit is due, the CFD has finally stopped sending emails anonymously and now sign them. This is a good thing.

But the quality of the emails remains the same. Witness the one below. It refers to the upcoming community workshop and expresses IN CAPITAL LETTERS the hope that the mayor and one commissioner "listen to the citizens and do what is right." This is of course good advice, but why just for two of the 4.5 commissioners? Why not for all?

Then of course the email does not express any viewpoint on "what is right." A well reasoned, intelligent critique would include the issues before the commission and some perspective. This includes neither. So it is just really a random insult.

The problem with the CFD is not that they are inarticulate or in their bizarre world continue to exist to fight the Alfonso administration, but that they are useful tools of the Lims-Krep and Vogel efforts to transfer large amounts of tax dollars to private hands.

Some quick examples.

City Hall moved to inferior headquarters at a cost around $80,000 for the sole purpose of supporting developer Scott Greenwald's bankrupt Lexi project.

The outsourcing of garbage pickup and the elimination of side yard pickup was so poorly done and the savings so obscured that it should be thrown out and done over to clarify the value, if any, to North Bay Village.

There is no clear version of the budget that shows what savings have been accomplished and how our reserve is doing.

There's a lot more and I will be covering these, but suffice it to say that there is reasonable doubt as to the motivations of these commissioners, especially given the large campaign contributions by Waste Management and Greenwald to one side.

Well, anyway, here's the CFD email. Judge for yourself if it adds anything to the conversation.

From: Citizens for Full Disclosure of North Bay Village Inc. cfd_nbv@hotmail.com
Sent: Sat, March 19, 2011 9:18:30 AM
Subject: PUBLIC WORKSHOP ON TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2011 AT 8:00 P.M

THE CITY COMMISSION OF THE CITY OF NORTH BAY VILLAGE, FLORIDA, WILL HOLD A PUBLIC WORKSHOP ON TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2011 AT 8:00 P.M. IN THE CITY COMMISSION CHAMBERS AT 1700 KENNEDY CAUSEWAY, #132, NORTH BAY VILLAGE, FLORIDA. CLICK ON ATTACHMENT TO VIEW/PRINT AGENDA.

WE ENCOURAGE MAYOR ESQUIJAROSA AND COMMISSIONER RODRIGUEZ TO LISTEN TO THE CITIZENS AND DO WHAT IS RIGHT INSTEAD OF ACTING TO THE BEAT OF THEIR OWN DRUMMER.

This information was sent to you by Citizens for Full Disclosure of North Bay Village, Inc., whose purpose is to help the citizens of North Bay Village obtain full and complete disclosure in all matters of government of the city of North Bay Village.

President - Richard Chervony
V. President - Alvin Blake
Secretary - James Carter
Treasurer - Flo Clein
Director - Jane Blake
Director - Gloria Carter

Kevin Vericker
March 20, 2011

Community Meeting Tuesday March 22, 2011

Next Tuesday night, the mayor is convening what will probably be the first in a series of community discussions about getting North Bay Village back on track, and we need to. There's a lot broken. The agenda is attached and the first item is the most interesting.

It talks about the commission procedures and is an attempt to restore sanity to our meetings. The meetings are broken. The meetings continue to be dominated by the loudest ranters, they do not allow citizens to discuss fluidly and calmly the issues facing the city. The simple procedures of speaking are out of whack, with people not respecting decorum and it seems we can't get through a month without a special commission meeting, so we might as well go back to the way it was when Dr. Vogel was mayor and have two per month.

I hope the RFP process comes up. We have to professionalize that. The Waste Management deal was done so badly and unprofessionally that it never should have passed. In a city, county and region fraught with mismanagement and corruption, the commission need to clearly lay out procedures that will guide the city manager in how open processes work.

My suggestion is that for each RFP to be evaluated, an ad hoc group comprising one elected official, city staff as deemed necessary and at least one citizen chosen by the commission do the evaluation.

So far, the commission has not been particularly amenable to any changes. The twins, Vice Commissioner Lim-Kreps, have made tentative statements of disapproval but I hope they will see their way to allowing the adults to make the necessary changes. I am truly hopeful that Dr. Vogel will support the effort to fix the broken processes. Commissioner Rodriguez seems to be pretty open to doing things right. So maybe we'll get it right this time.

Here's the agenda. 3-22-2011 City Commission Workshop

Kevin Vericker
March 18, 2011

A Civil Conversation At The Community Forum

Dr. Dario Moreno, head of the Metropolitan Center at Florida International University, facilitated a city presentation and community discussion last night. The subject was the budget and the ongoing revenue shortfall. More to the point, the subject was looking at options for increased revenue and getting community input on what are considered essential services.

The turnout was disappointingly low - my count was around 40 citizens - and most were the usual attendees. That's a shame because the discussion bears directly on our future as a city and our present operations.

Nevertheless, the thing that struck me was the civility of the conversation. Our commission meetings have been sorely lacking in decent behavior. I don't need to revisit that.

This meeting had a different tone. Citizens put forward their ideas, defended their viewpoints, stated disagreements, asked questions and made suggestions. These are being compiled and will be distributed by the city. There was very little new or radical in the conversation and I won't review these in this post.

What continues to strike me was the civil tone among the same group that always seems to be in a near frenzy of rage. That rage was not on display last night.

I asked some of the residents about why they thought this meeting was calmer than usual and the answer back was all a variation on, "The police weren't there." The acting police chief, Lt. Brian Collins, was and I was impressed at how well prepared he was, considering the short time he has held the interim position.

But the police who have packed the commission meetings, pressured our commissioners, and intimidated the citizens, did not show up at the meeting last night. One resident told me that for the first time of attending these meetings, he was not intimidated by the phalanx of police in front of the building. I saw it myself.

I wish there were more people. I hope this forum is repeated in other venues with other groups, maybe at some condo meetings, maybe in the park, and that we continue this. We need more people involved, particularly the younger homeowners, the ones who bought the houses at $500,000 or more and saw their value drop right away.

Last night was a good start to creating a civil, civic discourse. As we go through the next choppy months, I hope this tone continues.

Kevin Vericker