Despite watching North Miami Beach Criminal Commissioners McKenzie Fleurimond and Daniela Jean clutch their collective pearls whenever the word “deficit” was uttered at the August 17, 2023 Budget Workshop, the numbers don’t lie.

Responsible adults (people who pay their rent, for example) instinctively know that if they spend more money than they earn, they will end up in debt.

In order to avoid going into debt, responsible adults prepare a budget based on calculating how much income they reasonably expect to receive, and then decide how much they can spend to run their households.  At the end of the year, if they spent more money than they received, they will have what is called a “budget deficit.”

And no, McKenzie.  A budget deficit has absolutely nothing to do with your new Word of the Day — “ideology.”

Preparing a fiscal year budget for a city is based on pretty much the same principle — if you don’t spend money that you don’t have, your budget will balance.

At the end of the fiscal year, if the city spends more money than it took in, there will be a budget deficit.

The real irony is that although McKenzie and Daniela are offended by the word “deficit,” they were the worst offenders of all the elected officials for helping create the budget deficit they want to pretend doesn’t exist.

For example, these two were responsible for the most of the abusive Procurement Card (P Card) spending in both Fiscal Year 2022 and 2023.

In his FY 2023-2024 Budget Workshop Message, when City Manager Mario Diaz wrote, “In short, we have a structural deficit, meaning our recurring expenses exceed our recurring revenues,” he meant exactly that.

Words have meaning, regardless of whether or not McKenzie and Daniela like those words.

In preparing a draft of the Proposed FY 2024 Budget, in the first column he added up all the “recurring expenses” that are necessary in order to keep North Miami Beach running for the next fiscal year beginning on October 1, 2023.  These expenses total $188,183,091.00.

In the second column, Mr. Diaz listed all the expected “recurring revenues” the City can reasonably be expected to receive during the following twelve months, which total $177,297,056.00.

Even a fifth grader with a basic understanding of addition and subtraction can clearly see that a larger number subtracted from a smaller number equals a negative number.

In essence, the negative $10,886,035 is what is known as a budget deficit.

Yes, Daniela.  It’s a real thing.

In order for the FY 2024 budget to be balanced, there cannot be a deficit.  So the Manager has two choices:

1. He can try to scare up additional revenue of $10,996,035 in order to pay all the recurring expenses for the year; or
2. He can cut the recurring expenses by $10,996,035 in order to spend only what he’s expecting to receive in revenue.

Here’s the thing.

Unlike the ex-City Manager, Arthur “Duke” Sorey, Mario Diaz is not corrupt.

Unlike Duke, he will not conjure up imaginary revenue out of thin air so he can pretend the City will have enough money to “balance” the budget.

Therefore, budget cuts will be necessary in order to make sure expenses do not exceed revenues.

Try to keep up, Daniela.  We know math is hard for you.

By way of example, let’s take a look at Duke’s FY 2023 Adopted Budget and see how well that worked out.

In his so-called “balanced budget,” Duke originally predicted that all government-wide revenues and government-wide expenses would each total $164,077,545.  On April 27, 2023, the budget was revised by Resolution No. 2023-05 to increase that amount by $662,030, bringing the total up to $164,739,595.

According to the six-page Budget Revenue/Expenditure by Fund FY 2024 attached to the City Manager’s Workshop Message of August 15, 2023 — 10-1/2 months into the fiscal year, the actual revenues received to date is only $125,193,120.54.

At an average monthly revenue of $13,728,297.98, the actual revenue realized by August 15, 2023 should have totaled $144,147,128.12.

In other words, Duke’s imaginary FY 2023 budget has a current working budget deficit of $18,954,007.58.

And that’s even with the $10.3 million in federal ARPA funds he received during the year.

Which should surprise no one.

This is exactly how Duke Sorey mismanaged the City of North Miami when he was in charge.

Right about this time of the year in 2019, Duke had a budget deficit of “only” $7,501,792.61.

It’s hard to believe, but by the time Duke got to North Miami Beach, he was more than twice as incompetent as he was in North Miami.

Needless to say, whether or not McKenzie and Daniela want to hear the word “deficit,” that’s the reality of the state of North Miami Beach’s financial condition right now.

Budget cuts are coming.

Stephanie