It appears that everyone running for city office was under two mandates. The first, to get the city budget into balance without raising taxes and the second, to make the city more business friendly.
The one thing the city shouldn’t do is sit back and wait for economic improvement or “money from heaven” to bail them out. Mayor-Elect Adam Barringer understands this, which is why he pledged as part of his campaign to devise an economic development plan within the first 100 days of office, if elected.
To put things in perspective, the economic slowdown that is gripping the country is likely to continue for some time. The problem is caused by the fact that our leaders are implementing many of the same failed policies that presidents Hoover and Roosevelt used to create the great depression. That is high taxes, excessive regulation, inflation, and maybe tariffs along with some original bad ideas. Thus, the recession or depression will go on for as long as these policies are followed.
The first order of business should be to refrain from any unnecessary spending. Hiring should probably be frozen except when absolutely necessary. Contracts must be negotiated in a more hard-nosed way. The most painless way to bring salaries into line is to do it over time. The bad inflation coming our way could be an ally in solving our salary problem. It will have the effect of shrinking our real salary structure.
City hall will have to be hard nosed about promising health care out to the end of time for our retirees. On approach that should be considered for shrinking health costs is to incorporate the health savings accounts into the system.
Retirement plans should be transferred from pension plans (defined benefit) to investment plans (defined contribution). Using investment plans there is no way today’s politicians can make big promises that tomorrows politicians must meet with some future generation’s tax money. Furthermore, no one cares economically when you retire because your retirement is by definition fully funded> Furthermore, you could easily end up with much more retirement money than with a pension.
The city functions must be looked at carefully to see which ones can be done more economically and maybe which ones can be eliminated. As an example, Commissioner-Elect Judy Reikert has said that the city golf course can be run on a profitable basis. This will be quite a challenge but the city will benefit from any move in that direction even if not totally successful..
The city has several functions that should be looked at for efficiency or elimination.
New Smyrna has been notoriously unfriendly to business. This problem is addressed in three ways. First, we look at the rules and regulations with the intention of making them simpler and easier to comply with including total elimination for some of them.
Second, we look in the same way at the people implementing these rules and regulations.
And third, we might institute an ombudsman function. An ombudsman is a person whose function it is to shepherd the businessmen and women through the remaining minefield of rules and regulations.
The citizens of this city will have to be patient because all of these steps will take time to implement and no doubt face a lot of opposition. Some of these changes may take years to implement.
Change always makes people fearful and uncooperative. It will be like turning a giant cruise liner around.