Citizens must object

Title: Citizens must object

The City of Miami Springs is projected to have a deficit next year of at least 1.5 MILLION dollars. You may wonder where will the City Council get the money to cover these debts? They will take it out of our Reserve Fund. They have already taken 500k out to help pay for the new gym project and our reserves are dangerously low. We are a bad hurricane or two from being insolvent, bankrupt.

Who is responsible for putting us in this precarious predicament? The City Manager and his $400-600+ a square foot construction fiascos deserves a LOT of the blame. With the exception of Councilman Dotson, who is making the good effort toward fiscal common sense, the rest of the Council should also shoulder considerable responsibility for not providing any significant oversight, accountability, or common sense on those projects and basically rubber-stamping whatever the City Manager says it costs.

How will they pay for their latest debacle? Once they have drained the Reserve Fund they will raise our taxes to cover their butts. At a time where residents are tightening their belts and struggling to put gas in their car, food on the table, and make their mortgage payments, the Council will raise our taxes to cover for the 3.5 million in additional debt for the new, and unnecessary, gym project.



It is yet another demonstration of the unbelievable ongoing lack of economic awareness, fiscal irresponsibility, and rational management by City officials with respect to each and every significant construction project in recent memory. Instead of tax relief or tightening their municipal belt buckles, the Council offers an ordinance that will give us more chances to sell off our possessions at garage sales, as if that will put food on our tables or gas in our cars for more than a couple weeks, or stave off foreclosures on some of our houses. THAT is all the Council has to offer to help us avoid personal bankruptcy.

Their idea to avoid municipal bankruptcy is to raise our debt by millions and increase our taxes. That is, of course, contrary to any known sound and credible economic theory and policy known to Man. They are so focused on their legacies that it doesnt faze them that they have no common sense or logical rationale to explain their actions. When you are in a hole the FIRST thing you do is stop digging. They stopped listening to the residents long ago.



They really aren't concerned with the plight of the residents because, as those HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of dollars keep disappearing, they can, and will, just keep raising our taxes to cover it! To them (again, with one exception) we are a deep-pocketed and never-ending ATM that just keeps on giving and giving, no matter HOW horribly mismanaged and/or corrupt (take your pick) the City is.



Without voicing your objection, this ongoing and unacceptable pattern of incompetence, waste, and/or corruption (your choice) will simply continue until we are broke. Silence and apathy are as much the enemies of democracy as dictators. Stay tuned.