Can services be maintained without raising taxes?
To save our rescue station, city officials were urged to accept a higher county property tax rate for the coming fiscal year. This tax increase, we were told, would offset the deficit in the county’s fire-rescue operations which are funded by a separate, dedicated property tax assessed on all properties that rely on Miami-Dade Fire Rescue.
We need to take a long, hard look at the finances and operations of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. We need to know if we can maintain existing services — or even enhance them — without raising taxes, and within the department’s existing budget.
It’s been widely reported that the department is top heavy. Roughly one in three personnel holds the rank of lieutenant, captain or chief. There also are questions on why we keep roughly the same number of four-person fire trucks and three-person rescue trucks when the overwhelming majority of calls for service are for medical emergencies.
Finally, it’s been suggested that we can save considerable money by cutting costs for the county’s rarely used fire boat. All of these are valid areas of inquiry and debate.
We’re undergoing just such a process in my city with our police department.
We are evaluating and analyzing the services we provide, the true cost of those services, and how they compare to similar municipalities.
Our goal is to provide the highest level of policing at a cost that is both reasonable and sustainable.
I implore Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and the Board of County Commissioners to do the same with the Fire Rescue Department. My colleagues and I, in municipalities dependent on Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue, need to feel a lot more comfortable knowing the county thoroughly and carefully explored all available options. Only then can we give serious consideration to accepting a choice of raising taxes or cutting services.
George Vallejo, mayor,
North Miami Beach
http://www.miamiherald.com
Mayor Vallejo,
Since getting elected, you’ve overseen the firing of 17 of 113 of your police officers. That was a 15% reduction of the size of the city’s police force. That reduced the police force to just 96 officers, and the morale of the officers is so poor because of your “leadership” that several more have either left to take jobs elsewhere or chosen to retire early. Through attrition, we now have only 92 police officers on our department. Two more are set to take jobs elsewhere in the near future. The firing of those 17 officers required the elimination (not “evaluation” or “analysis”) of several units within the police department. Because you chose to fire 17 of your police officers you were forced to eliminate your gang unit, your traffic unit and your community police unit. You’ve also been forced to shrink the size of your detective bureau. The residents of NMB now have far fewer services than at any time in the last three decades.
How do you have the nerve to suggest to the public that you are “maintaining” services in your city? I mean, I have heard some political fairy tales in my life, but that one takes the cake!
If you keep “analyzing and evaluating” the police department…at this rate, we will be able to fit the entire agency in a broom closet.
How many highly trained personnel would our highly trained (not) mayor like on scene were his house or business to go up in flames? Or if he or a loved one goes down in cardiac arrest or traumatic injury, would 2 paramedics do? Lets not re-invent the wheel. There’s no doubt the more people on scene the better for everybody. The problem in the county is that the fire dept. responds to everything that is asked of it. And that takes money. Dispatchers are trained to never so no to any request, no matter how ridicules, send a unit out and let them evaluate or mitigate. As far as all the management, we live in a highly litigious society and it takes a lot of oversight to make sure everything is done right. It better be or there’s an army of lawyers ready to clean the county coffers out. I was surprised to learn that the mayor of a Miami-Dade County waterfront city doesn’t know that the FireBoat has been shut down! Embarrassing. I’m sure if he doesn’t know that, he wont know the county constantly raids the “separate dedicated property tax” to prop up shortfalls in the general fund. Get out and get some real facts mayor, it will help you overcome some of your pre-conceived notions.