Now for the REAL news!  As I’ve mentioned here a few times, the City of Hollywood just to our north had to resort to a referendum to determine whether or not to institute pension reform in that city.  Like North Miami Beach, Hollywood is facing severe budget cuts and have to take drastic measures not to go belly up.  That special election was today, and the results are finally in and it looks like Hollywood voters are a lot smarter and more savvy than the city’s UNIONS would have you believe.  Just posted on the Sun-Sentinel’s website, Hollywood voters give go-ahead to pension reform (http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-hollywood-vote-tuesday-20110913,0,6342217.story), states, “With all 70 precincts reporting, only about 11,800 of the city’s 84,521 eligible voters (14 percent) cast ballots in this divisive and contentious special election. They favored reform by nearly 58 percent for general employees; and nearly 55 percent for both firefighters and police.”

Despite the hard campaigning by the employees, police and fire UNIONS, the residents of Hollywood, who are already facing an 11% increase in their taxes, decided that they’ve had enough.  If the voters had said no to pension reform, they would have been looking at even higher taxes with non-homestead properties increasing by 27%.  In this economy, that’s just nuts.  Think about how many of those properties would have gone into foreclosure if owners couldn’t afford those increases, thus leaving the city with an even bigger loss of revenue.  DUH!

The article goes on to state that, “Residents said taxpayers simply could not afford to continue to be as generous as they once were.”

“I appreciate what they do, but their benefits are far too lucrative,” said retired businessman Fred Dueller, 67. “I know that the city has done a horrible job with our money, but in the end, we’re the ones who are paying for everyone’s mistakes. I couldn’t support (the unions).”

According to the report, if the voters turned down pension reform, the city’s employees would also have faced not only cuts in pay but many of them would have been laid off.  Instead of negotiating employee pensions, which is money the workers haven’t even earned yet, the UNIONS chose to fight any reform and in the process, lose jobs for their members.  How does that even make sense?  It still blows my mind that any sane person would choose to be in a UNION if they didn’t have to be.  Note to UNION members:  Florida is a Right to Work State.  GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!

To the residents of the City of Hollywood, I say:  You have restored my faith in humanity and renewed my hope that voters aren’t so stupid after all.  Mazel Tov and WOO HOO!

Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”