Russell Price: Majority of city commissioners refuse to consider an alternative budget with expense cuts

In 2015, the Tallahassee City Commission was suggesting a 27% increase in property taxes to fund the proposed 2016 city budget which was being marketed ostensibly as a public safety budget.

The Tallahassee Democrat editorial board met with then City Manager Anita Favors Thompson, Mayor Andrew Gillum, Police Chief Michael DeLeo and Raoul Lavin, the city’s director of management and administration, for 90-plus minutes to discuss city revenues and expenses that made up the proposed 2016 city budget.

Later, in a searing indictment of the city’s efforts to control expenses, the editorial board concluded, “We were disappointed at the apparent lack of earnest effort to reduce expenses.”

“City officials talked about all the wish list items that were turned down, but we saw virtually no evidence of nose-to-the-grindstone efforts to find expense savings. This is discouraging because the proposed increases in spending for public safety should not have been a surprise. Why not ask all other agencies to submit budgets with small percentage decreases?”

Fast forward to the 2023 city commission budget workshops held earlier this year.  City commissioners Jeremy Matlow and Jack Porter valiantly fought for the commission to direct city staff to draft an alternative balanced budget for consideration that would reflect decreases in spending instead of raising taxes.

At the June 4, 2023, city workshop, Matlow argued for a department by department, line-by-line review of the proposed budget. Echoing the same sentiments as those expressed in 2015 by the Tallahassee Democrat editorial, Matlow declared,” We are not seeing evidence that true savings were looked for.”

Matlow provided potential department expenses that could be reduced to achieve the overall goal of balancing the budget without raising taxes:

• Reduce pay increases for the top salaried city staff making over $100,000.  He said Tallahassee is paying twice as much as comparable cities for top management.

• Reduce overtime.

• Reduce non-essential travel for staff.

• Reduce operating expenses for city commissioners and the mayor’s office.

• Reduce advertising and special events (e.g., Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce $21,000).

• Eliminate the Department of Strategic Innovation.

But three of the commissioners would have no part of it.

It appears that it would have been easier for Matlow to convince Moms for Liberty to accept a Tennessee Williams novel for a middle school library than to convince Mayor John Dailey and Commissioners Curtis Richardson and Dianne Williams-Cox to consider an alternative draft budget with reduced spending.

And Matlow’s suggestions only scratched the surface of potential savings.

The largest percentage of the city budget is personnel costs.

One area that has escaped scrutiny is the methodology that the city uses to compute the expense of vacant full-time employee (FTE) positions.

According to the city budget office, there are 199 FTEs out of 3,000 total city FTEs that are vacant. The vacancies are funded at 60% of salaries and benefits in the proposed 2024 budget.

Of the 199 positions, 59 positions have been vacant for over one year, with one 2,133 days. In the general fund, 18 of 61 vacant positions have been vacant over one year, with one, 854 days.

The city applies a 3% vacancy factor up front to help mitigate the funded vacancies, but with the high number of budgeted vacancies, one could argue that this methodology could create an inaccurate budget padding error.  If the actual vacancy factor is 4 % to 7 %, then the budgeted vacant FTEs could be seriously exaggerating the actual costs.

As an alternative, all non-essential vacant positions over a year old could be eliminated and positions that are vacant after six months could be extended only under certain circumstances.

The final city commission budget meetings will be held on September 13 and September 27, 2023.

As the 2015 Democrat editorial concluded, “All city departments should be asked to share the burden. September workshops should be intense sessions where every dollar spent is challenged and justified.” We urge city leaders – in the grandest of American traditions – to look for better balance between the services the government provides and the burden on the taxpayers who pay for those services.”

Russell Price is a retired commercial real estate developer and a founding member of Budget Hawks.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Russell Price: No line-by-line review of spending in Tallahassee equals higher taxes