A Very Serious Dilemma for This Village

There was a time when we had plenty of money.  From what I hear, there was waste, and no one worried about it.  If we didn't have all the maintenance and improvements we should have, it's because those in charge at the time didn't care that much.

Then, two things happened.  The first was that we decided (duh) that we weren't doing a good enough job managing ourselves, and we decided to entrust the job of municipal management to a professional municipal manager.  The new position cost us money, but the right person could save us more, maybe much more, than he or she cost.  That has turned out to be true.  We have done a LOT of trimming of fat, and streamlining of services and administration.

The second thing that happened was 2007, and 2008, and 2009.  The economy crashed, property assessments crashed, and ad valorem tax revenues crashed.  Those revenues are mostly what we live on.

The result is that we do not support ourselves in a reasonable way.  With continued attrition, and doing without, we get everyone paid, and we pay our basic daily bills, like electricity, telephones, etc.   But there are no frills.  We have outsourced some public services, and we're thinking of outsourcing more.  Our medians are not properly kept, never mind that necessary improvements are not made.  We finally got some tree-trimming done, because we lucked into piggybacking ourselves onto a large project for an unrelated municipality.  At that, we can't get the job done in one year, because we can't afford the measly $40 per tree (next to nothing for this kind of work) that we're being charged.  So we'll do most of it this year, and the rest will have to wait until next year.  We're saving up.  To be able to afford tree-trimming that is almost free.

We also can't attend to the much more financially taxing project of fixing the log cabin.  We can't touch it.  And it's both essential and relatively urgent.  Our police, who represent over half of our budget, are operating out of a trailer, which we rent.  Few of their activities are in the log cabin any more, because it's not workable.

So we need money.  The fact is, we can't really survive without more money, unless we want to continue to underfunction.  We have five choices.  The first is that we can keep doing what we're doing.  Our medians will continue to look terrible, and the log cabin will eventually deteriorate until it's a tear-down.  There will be nothing we can do about it, since we can't afford to do anything about it.  Second, we can beg for money.  We've already been doing that, and it isn't working, but we can keep doing it.  What's that definition of insanity?  Third, we can get ourselves annexed by someone else, like Miami Shores.  Yes, it's been mentioned.  Fourth, we can annex some other area, like the one east of the tracks.  It changes the character of the Village, and it brings in voters who do not want what the typical BP homeowner wants, but it's a source of revenue, which we need.  And fifth, we can get serious about supporting ourselves.  The fact is, we can actually do this.  We were doing it before property values crashed, leading to the crash in ad valorem tax revenues.  It wasn't obvious, because we were wasting so much, but we were paying enough to support ourselves in a reasonable style.  We could choose to return to doing that.  The hard pill to swallow is that supporting ourselves this way would require us to pay more taxes than the government will force us to pay.  No one likes doing that.  If we did it, it would be because we thought there was a good reason.  The good reason is that we like BP as it is, and we're willing to return to paying to keep it that way.

So in reality, our choices are 1) continuing to decline, 2) annexing territory to the east of the tracks, or 3) voluntarily increasing our taxes.  No tooth fairy is going to give us money, just because we're so cute, and Miami Shores is not likely to want to annex us.  Nor are we likely to want to dissolve ourselves.  I really hope choice #1 is out of the question.  But if we keep our heads buried, or stay under the covers, and take the shortest possible view, it may not be.  I've already said I would not like to see us agree to choice #2, but the fact is, I do get it.  We do have a big problem, and that does solve it.  We're quoted an anticipated revenue increase from annexing the area in question.  But we have to spend money, in police and related services, to make money.  And the windfall promoted is only on condition that we keep our tax rate at 9.5 mills.  If we breathe a sigh of fiscal relief, and give ourselves a break on the millage, then we get less from "over there," too.  In fact, if we drop all the way down to 5.5 mills, we actually lose money on the annexation.

Please comment about this topic.  It's important, it makes a really big difference to what the Village of Biscayne Park is, and who its residents are.  And it's now, or nearly so.  It will impact all of us, one way or another.