Dear North Miami residents,

Your brand new Mayor and Council will tell you they’re all about fiscal responsibility even as they drop tens of thousands of your tax dollars on two coronations inductions and three parties to congratulate themselves for dying with the most toys getting the most votes.

Some of them even legit.

And now that you put them in office, your job is done.  They’d love nothing more than for you to shut up and go home.

We can’t tell you just yet the actual dollar amount your city wasted since the invoices are still being received and tabulated.

What we can tell you, however, is that the logical thing would have been to hold one ceremony for all the inductees after the election was actually over.

We can also tell you that if they really wanted to be fiscally responsible, the logical place to start would be to slash their own unheard of $1,168,129 budget.

But, this is North Miami, where logic simply does not exist.  It’s like they live on another planet altogether.

So for fun, let’s compare the salaries of North Miami officials to their counterparts in the real world.

In January of 2018, the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust published its second report on the “Compensation of Elected Officials in Miami-Dade County.”  This is a service the Commission undertakes every ten years for the purpose of “providing Miami-Dade County residents with a way to easily understand how their local leaders are paid and how that compensation compares to other local municipalities.”

The Commission described the salaries and benefits, including expense allowances and taxable fringe benefits, of each municipality’s elected officials.  In the case of a council/manager form of government, the salary of the manager is also listed.  In cities that have a strong mayor form of government, the mayor is its chief administrator and is compensated accordingly.

The report also notes the difference between an “accountable” expense plan, which requires officials to produce a receipt in order to be reimbursed, and a “non-accountable” plan, in which an elected official “is not required to account for how he spent the money, or even if he spent it at all.”  According the report, this type of expense allowance “increases the overall compensation of their elected officials while keeping their official salaries technically low.”

Furthermore, the Commission warns [emphasis ours]:

As the Commission on Ethics noted in the last report, non-accountable expense allowances are objectionable for public employees.  They do not provide the transparency and accountability that should exist in government because they do not require elected officials to account for how money is spent, or even if it is spent with a public purpose.  Non-accountable expense plans also allow elected officials to circumvent charter restrictions on raising their own salaries without voter approval.

In order to get a more complete understanding of this compensation report, we first reviewed the data for Miami-Dade County provided by statisticalatlas.com, which provides an in depth analyses of all the county’s municipalities.

After reviewing the Commission’s compensation report, we noted that for the most part, the elected public servants of the wealthiest cities receive the smallest compensation.  Ditto with the poorest cities, but that’s because they can’t afford to pay any more than they already do.

The cities where most of the residents are middle class, however, vary greatly in the compensation of their public officials.

There are six wealthy Miami-Dade County municipalities where more than 50% of its residents have a median household income above $100,000.00.  And yet, these cities spend the bare minimum on their elected public servants, to-wit:

• Golden Beach: Mayor and Council are paid $1.00 a year, do not receive any allowance or retirement.  The City Manager earns $182,973 a year.
• Indian Creek:  Elected officials receive absolutely no compensation whatsoever.  The Village Manager earns $107,936 a year.
• Pinecrest:  Village officials receive no compensation.  Travel related expenses are budgeted at $20,000 a year for the the entire 5-member Mayor and Council, and the Manager earns $201,650 a year.
• Key Biscayne:  The Village’s 7-member Mayor and Council receive no salary, allowances or retirement, and the Manager earns $199,335 year.
• Palmetto Bay:  The Mayor’s annual salary is $24,000 a year, and each of the six Council Members receive $12,000.  They also receive taxable fringe benefits for cell phone and health insurance, but not all of them take all of the allowances.  The Village also budgeted $7,925 to contribute to their retirement plans.  The Manager’s salary, including a $550 monthly car allowance, is $190,996 a year.
• Miami Shores:  The Mayor and Council Members receive a token salary of $1.00 a year, and do not receive any retirement benefits.  They are reimbursed for travel to seminars at the Florida League of Cities or the Chamber of Commerce annual dinner.  The Village Manager’s salary and fringe benefits package is a total of $173,576 a year.

In the poorest city in the County, Opa-locka, where the median household income is $17,900, the compensation has been reduced “due to the current financial emergency and oversight.”  All expense allowances were eliminated.  The Mayor and Vice Mayor, however, still receive a total compensation package of $32,341 each, and the remaining three Commissioners each receive $15,521 a year.  The City Manager earns $112,500 a year.

In Florida City, where the median household income is $26,800 a year, the strong mayor earns $165,155 a year, plus a non-accountable expense allowance of $6,510.  The four Commissioners each earn an annual salary of $10,400, as well as $48 a month as a cell phone allowance.  The Mayor and Commissioners are reimbursed for city related travel.  There is also a communal car that the elected officials are permitted to use for official city business.  The city does, however, budget $500,000 a year to fund their pensions.

Then there’s Hialeah, where just about anything goes.

Although the median household income is only $29,800 a year in Hialeah, the sheer size (22.82 square miles) and number of residents (pop. 236,387) account for its $321,855,704 2018-2019 annual budget.  Even with all that revenue at its disposal, the city’s strong mayor receives an annual salary of $150,000, plus expenses of $40,000 a year.  There are also seven elected Council Members.  According to the Ethics Commission’s compensation report, “It is unclear from the budget how much the Council Members are paid. The clerk’s office has a line item in its budget for $291,800 for ‘Council Expenses.’  Presumably the Council Members’ salaries are part of the expenses.”

Then there’s North Miami.

Sketchy budget or not, Hialeah only sets aside a total of $481,800 for its Mayor (who is also the manager), its entire Council, and its City Clerk.

North Miami’s budget for those same three departments, on the other hand, is an outrageous $4,768,493!

Keep in mind that Hialeah is more than twice the size of North Miami and has nearly four times NoMi’s population of 62,225.

Yet, for some mysterious reason, North Miami spends almost TEN TIMES THE TAX DOLLARS on its elected officials and top administrators!

Once again, it all boils down to two simple words:  FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY.

Or, in North Miami’s case, the lack thereof.

There is absolutely no excuse in the world why North Miami’s Mayor and Council deserves a budget of $1,168,129 for five elected officials when Hialeah’s 8-member Mayor and Council, and it’s City Clerk get by on one quarter of that amount.

But, this is North Miami, where systematically wasting your tax dollars has been elevated to an art form.

The Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics and Public Trust reported that in North Miami:

The Mayor made a base salary of $59,880 and received taxable fringe benefits of $17,640 that are classified as an expense allowance, an auto allowance and a cell phone allowance from non-accountable funds. Additionally, the Mayor has a $10,000 budget to cover travel.  The Council Members were paid a salary of $47,910 and received $17,400 in taxable fringe benefits to cover expenses, car and mobile phone. Additionally, each Council Member had a $5,000 travel budget and a $7,000 discretionary fund.

According to the report, in addition to their base salaries totaling $251,520, the North Miami Mayor and Council receive a total of $152,240 in non-accountable expense allowances.

What the Ethics Commission did not mention were all the additional expenses listed on their total salary and benefits package worksheets, such as:

• The additional $6,270 that the Mayor receives to attend the US Conference of Mayors and the Florida League of Mayors.
• Or the employer’s portion of their Social Security Tax, for a total of $39,389 a year.
• Or the astronomical 48.7% of their salaries that the city contributes to the Florida Retirement System, for a total of $122,490 a year.
• Or the group insurance coverage they receive, for a total of $42,271 a year (including Bien-Aime’s dependent’s coverage for an additional $1,800).
• Or the additional $28,230 a piece, or a total of $141,150, for a Constituent Service Aid.

All of which amounts to $312,181 in additional non-accountable expense allowances.

All of which costs North Miami taxpayers a whopping $755,330 for the care and feeding of five elected officials.

Or, to put it bluntly, five ordinary people who act like they’re royalty.

The Ethics Commission’s final word on North Miami [emphasis ours]:

North Miami reformed its use of non-accountable expense allowances back in 2007, in response to an inquiry from the Ethics Commission.  At the time the Mayor made a salary of only $4,200 per year and the Council Members were paid just $3,600 annually.  When the City decided to take away their taxable expense allowances, their salaries were raised to make up the difference.  Those salaries have remained in place – with $12,000 a year raises handed out this year.  At the same time, at some point between 2007 and last year, the City Council added back the expense allowances. This has amounted to a significant increase in the total compensation package for the City’s elected officials.  The Mayor and the Council Members have each received what amounts to a 284 percent raise.

The City Manager makes an annual $240,000.

More than the administrators of the six richest municipalities in Miami-Dade County.

More than the manager of the City of Miami, who makes $231,401.

More, in fact, than the strong mayor of Miami-Dade County, who makes $150,000!

Then again, it’s North Miami, where the newly elected Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime had the audacity to publicly defend the costly events hosted by the city on a near daily basis.

At the Tuesday night Council meeting, Bien-Aime chastised concerned residents by saying,

Events have nothing to do with fiscal responsibility and taking care of the budget.

WATCH!

Wait, WHAT???

North Miami’s myriad of events, which literally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, have nothing to do with fiscal responsibility?

REALLY???

Not only did the new Mayor get away with saying something so patently false and so outrageously stupid, but not one of his colleagues called him out on it.

North Miami began this fiscal year with a $9.7 million deficit, and they’re already almost $4 million in the hole so far this year.

And yet, city officials continue their drunken spending spree as if there was a money tree behind City Hall.

Seriously, what planet to do these people live on?

Certainly not the real world.

Sincerely,

Stephanie