Budget Savings in Florida Local Governments

A couple of articles I read in the papers today confirm my ongoing campaign to promote efficiency in the management of their recourses by counties and cities, as the only effective solution to bulging property tax bills.

I read that Hollywood and Hallandale Beach will discuss sharing some of their recourses and employees, combine 4^th of July celebrations, establish new combined public transportation, and explore more of this kind of measures to save and compensate for budget shortfalls.

That is music to my ears. It means that, confronted with citizens' determination to cut down on unnecessary expenses, our local governments will find solutions which will not only help their finances, but might even result in environmental and energy-savings accomplishments.

Some modest rollbacks were recently mandated by recent citizens' and legislature's actions. Local governments screamed and yelled and threatened with chaos and disarray, but the facts are clear. They need to clean up their act because tax relief is essential and high property taxes are deeply hurting our population and our state.

The second announcement was that Miramar is ending retiree health benefits for new hires.

While I cannot acclaim cutting essential benefits to some employees and promoting inequality, I would suggest that cities could better cut back their budget by reducing their personnel through attrition, i.e. not hiring until their personnel budget is reduced by for example 10%.

In all cases, these are good signs, and it is my hope that it will only be the beginning.

Henry B. Nathan is a Florida Realtor at United Realty Group Inc.
Visit my website: http://www.condo-southflorida.com/
where you can search for Aventura Condos, Florida Condos,