Commentary about the February 12 Key Colony Beach Town Hall meeting:
Volunteers needed!
Mayor Raspe reported on his inspection of City Hall with a civil engineer, an electrician, and an a/c contractor. The engineer said the post office and Marble Hall are fine. The (two-story) building department and storage are fine. The administration area in between is just what we expected. The electrical system is operational and safe. The post office a/c needs replacement. And there has been no degradation since the building was closed up. Read about the citizen generated City Hall proposals here.
People are Asking about the truthfulness and purpose of all the contrary claims made by Commissioners Harding and Vickrey, Attorney Smits, and other city officials.
Vice Mayor Foster started a dialogue about code enforcement and citizen education. The code officer has violated literally hundreds of property owners for trash can lids, "egress windows," and claims of building code and rental license errors. Many of those claims rested on his unsupported allegations. Two people praised code enforcement for promoting their private agendas. All the other speakers complained about how his actions were hurting our community. Email your code enforcement experiences to Vice Mayor Foster and to Concerned in KCB.
Last year Commissioner Harding told us "it's in the budget." This year he tells us "the sky is falling (but no problem with the multimillion dollar city hall scheme)." He reported that the 17% increase in city expenses this year totaled about $500,000. Next year it will be more. "Do we cut services or increase taxes," he asked.
He also reported that rent for the trailers is about $95,000/year but that the big item this year is a huge increase in employee benefits such as insurance and pensions. He didn't address the cost of our mushrooming staff size but rather how much paying their benefit costs has risen. One long-time and very knowledgeable KCBer reminded us, "Don't trust Harding's financial reports ever! He is consistently off and compares apples to oranges."
People have asked, how many "assistants" do we need?
In 2015, KCB had no city administrator, no code enforcement officer, no building department scheduler and just one "assistant" anything. In 2015, office employees didn't "work from home" or have "take home cars."
KCB's 2023 payroll includes as many as five commissioners, ten office employees (including vacancies), five police officers, four public works employees, three or more attorneys at meetings, and two indirect employees--one contractor at the sewer plant and the golf course manager. KCB's 2015 payroll was five commissioners and just five office employees, four police officers, four public works employees, one attorney, and the same two indirect employees. Here's a comparison with another small city:
We can't go back to 2015. Looking forward, people should not ask what services do we want to give up but rather do we get more services from all the extra employees we pay for? Here's a look at our index of some of the city staff issues.
People are Asking why we give the USPS free rent for the building but we all have to pay box rent. On the one hand, the USPS requires all offices and substations to make a "profit." KCBers pay around $200K in total box rent to assure that (it would be good to know how big a profit center 33051 is, though). On the other hand, we really don't want to lose our zip code and office. Some KCBers are meeting now to find an approach that keeps the USPS and all the people here happy. Email Concerned in KCB to join that discussion.
Commissioner DiFransico asked for KCBers to volunteer to help with a city charter review. We hope the commission will consider that Commissioner Harding intends to disenfranchise KCBers by eliminating our right to petition for referendum. Email Commissioner DiFransico and Concerned in KCB to volunteer.
The complete, searchable list of the KCB Charter and Code of Ordinances is online: library.municode.com/fl/key_colony_beach/codes/code_of_ordinances.