In our previous blog post, we reported on North Miami City Manager Larry Spring’s projected revenue in his Preliminary Annual Budget FY 2019-20, and pointed out several problems with his estimations.
In today’s installment we’ll discuss his projected expenses.
Get out the popcorn because this is the fun part.
Take a look at the proposed expenditures for the upcoming fiscal year.
While the budgets of seven out of eighteen departments are being cut, eleven of them will increase, two of which are being increased by well over $2.5 million.
Community Planning and Development (CP&D) will get an additional $2,682,844 in FY 2020, and Non-Departmental expenditures will increase nearly $3 million.
Let’s take a close look at those areas that are slated to be increased dramatically.
We’re especially concerned about the steep increases in these areas:
- Contractual Services – an additional $75,000
- Special Department Supplies – an additional $60,000
- Advertising – an additional $33,000
- Rents and Leases – a brand new expense of $70,080
While the Risk Management – General Liability expenses for every city department have literally mushroomed by more than five times last year’s cost (and we are attempting to find out why), the most alarming expenditure by far is the $2,500,000 for Housing Rehabilitation Grants.
This $2.5 million dollars is earmarked for the purpose of giving away taxpayer money to a handful of homeowners for repairs to their own personal residences.
Why?
As far as we can tell, no other city in South Florida literally pays to fix up homes that residents had no problem purchasing in the first place, yet who can’t (or won’t) come up with the money to maintain.
Must be nice.
And as far as we can tell (and hopefully we’re wrong), the city is not expecting any state or federal grants to cover this expense.
In fact, at the upcoming August 26, 2019 meeting, the North Miami Mayor and Council are about to vote on a resolution (see Tab K) to establish a “Pre-Qualified List of General Contractors for the provision of home repair services for the City of North Miami residential Rehabilitation Program, at a cost not to exceed TWO MILLION DOLLARS $2,000,000.00).”
Out of 16 applicants for this bid, 12 contractors were recommended by the Evaluation Committee.
One of those general contractors, Construct Build, Inc., is owned by Louis-Marie Nelson of Miramar, who just happens to be friends with North Miami Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime on Facebook.
Just saying.
Eyebrows should have been raised by two of the other candidates.
Viler Cherisol, the owner of Solutions Capital Group, Inc., declared bankruptcy in 2010. He was also sued in 2013 for the non-payment of a debt to Chase Bank, NA, in the amount of $57,226.40.
The owner of Building & Remodeling, Inc., Jeffrey Beauvoir has quite the colorful history. He was arrested in 2005 for battery, and has been sued twelve times since 2004 for non-payment of personal and business debts, the most recent of which is a foreclosure lawsuit filed in November, 2018 for $216,250.94, and which is still pending.
In addition, Mr. Beauvoir and his wife/business partner declared bankruptcy in 2009.
One of his debtors, JULES PIERRE DIERICKX a/k/a FRANK DIERICKX, filed a Complaint to Deny Dischargeability of Debt, claiming that Beauvoir’s debt to Mr. Dierickx was obtained “under false pretenses and fraud,” and requested the court to allow him to collect his debt “exceeding $700,000.00.”
The lawsuit alleges, “Creditor Dierickx would show that Debtors are guilty of fraud while acting in a fiduciary capacity in that Debtors converted money to their own use although same was rightfully the property of Creditor Dierickx in violation of 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(4).”
We’re not sure if the Evaluation Committee performed background and financial checks on the prospective bidders before recommending them to the Mayor and Council, but maybe they should have.
But, we digress yet again.
Getting back to the proposed budget, Larry Spring’s Non-Departmental expenditures will increase from $4,347,486 to $7,262,623, for an additional $2,915,146 over the current fiscal year.
Using a little budgetary sleight of hand magic, Larry Spring proposed a decrease for Contractual Services by $190,000, only to increase the budget for Miscellaneous Expense by $142,552 to $228,428, with absolutely no explanation of what those expenses are. He will also contribute $855,000 less to the general fund reserve than he did for the current fiscal year.
Although there is no change from this year to the next for Mayor and Council Grants of $115,500 and the Miss North Miami Scholarship Pageant for $95,000, we question the necessity of those expenditures to begin with.
For one thing, the Mayor and Council will be given a very generous Discretionary Fund to spend on whatever they want (more on that in a moment). They certainly don’t need more money to hand out to future voters for the next election season.
We also can’t help but wonder what is the public purpose of spending $95,000 on a pageant. But maybe that’s just us.
The City Manager is increasing his own budget by $213,449 from $2,967,542 to $3,180,991, which includes an increase in salaries and outside wages (part-time contract employees) by $191,520. Even though he cut his $30,000 special events expenditure from his current budget, he is giving himself an additional $17,408 for Special Departmental Supplies. In addition, Spring is increasing his advertising budget from $76,000 to $191,000 for Advertising.
Why?
Larry Spring is cutting the City Attorney’s budget by $156,084 from $1,288,010 this year to $1,131,926, mainly due to a decrease in salaries of $41,584 and reduced pension costs.
But don’t cry for Jeff Cazeau.
This negligible budget cut won’t even make a dent in the $677,696.04 Spring had to shell out to outside legal counsel to defend the 42 lawsuits filed against the city since he became the City Manager in 2016.
So far, anyway.
The last 5 pages of Larry Spring’s 79 page Preliminary Annual Budget FY 2019-20 is a list of Special Events he plans for the upcoming fiscal year to the tune of $700,000, which “Does not include $200,000 of Police overtime.”
Nor does it include, we’re sure, overtime costs for all the other North Miami employees who have to work those special events.
We saved the “best” for last – the proposed unsustainable budget for the Mayor and Council’s office.
Have a look.
The North Miami Mayor and Council are getting yet another undeserved raise. Salaries in this department will go up a whopping $71,670 from $189,585 to an outrageous $261,255! Outside wages will increase by another $66,712.
And despite a July 10, 2019 letter from a Coalition of the eight North Miami Homeowners Associations to the Mayor and Council demanding the “immediate elimination of discretionary funding,” the City Manager is budgeting an unheard of $225,000 to North Miami’s five elected officials.
An excerpt from the Coalition’s letter:
Larry Spring’s inclusion of the $225,000 Discretionary Fund shows a complete lack of regard and total disrespect for the taxpayers of North Miami who pay his bloated salary.
Don’t think for one minute that the City Manager prepared the Mayor and Council’s budget without any input from his five bosses. We guarantee they gave him explicit direction and he is simply doing their bidding at the risk of getting fired.
The North Miami elected officials continue to act like privileged Kings and Queens who believe they can do whatever they want and not have to answer to anyone.
Especially those who put them in office.
We urge all residents to attend Tuesday night’s Council meeting and let all of them know that THEY WORK FOR YOU, not the other way around.
North Miami residents deserve better.
Stephanie
We miss you during your absences, Stephanie. What a monumental mess that is going on. Excellent investigation and presentation, as always, and a roadmap for all other municipality watchdogs in the state of Florida. Thank you, as always, for taking your time to put this information out.
Stephanie .. You are terrific asset to several NE Miami Dade County cities and SE Broward County cities especially North Miami, NMB, and Hallandale Beach with your exceptional reporting of the facts. Once again, our city council has given the middle finger to North Miami’s citizens and taxpayers with their proposed budget priorities for our city during next fiscal year. With their wasteful spending of $ 20M dollars from the sale of 50 acres to SoLeMia from five years ago at bargain basement prices, our city has blown the whole wad on excessive public displays of parties, special events, junkets, failed bond issues with their expensive educational campaign, ghost written articles for trade journals, etc. We could have allocated the $ 20M dollars from this discounted land sale toward the replacement of our oldest water and sewer pipes in our system between NE 121 Street as the south boundary, Biscayne Canal as the western boundary, NE 131 Street as the northern boundary; and NE 14 Avenue as the eastern boundary. However, our city council is hell bent on milking our cow (i.e. water & sewer system) dry until she/he breaks down and collapses as our city council will not give any good & clean grass and feed to the cow because it will cost too money.
I took the time to Google “Miss North Miami” as well as on our City website. I was unable to find a thing about this scholarship. I will keep looking. Do you have anymore details on this? Who puts this on? When is the pageant?
I can either have my old prom dress flown into miami, or I will more likely show you a sewage pipe to fix. Odds are on the second part of that sentence.
Many cities in Browars have house rehabilitation programs. Some are called minor home repair, neighborhood improvement, and they’re usually CRA funded to remove slum and blight.
CRAs were created to do just that – remove slum and blight. North Miami, however, is doling out millions of dollars (not just CRA money) to simply repair homes so residents don’t have to. This system is called “buying votes.”