Florida Today Wins, Brevard Taxpayers Lose

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The Brevard County Commission failed to support Commissioner Trudie Infantini’s request for a change in the County Manager, instead voting to ‘discuss’ the issue again in two months on January 27th, as if waiting an extra two months will enable the worm-ridden issues of Brevard County to metamorphosize into butterflies.

In just the day (the day) before the new Commissioners were sworn in Brevard County awarded the external auditing contract to their long time auditors despite recommendations from their own selection committee for a new firm. The change in award was done in violation of the State rules on procuring services by allowing the former firm to enter into a bidding war right at the Commission Meeting, unchecked by either the County Manager or the County Attorney.

The Brevard County Fire Department, allegedly so poor it could not (with the County Manager) find a way to remove the onerous Fire Fee Tax, spent $600,000 on a system to track 60 (sixty) vehicles, of which at any one time only a few have left their stations.

The day of the meeting to discuss the changing of upper management Consent Agenda items included a plan to blow the $5 million in free money from the Federal Government (from our illustrious Fannie/Freddie bailout) by giving it away to ‘non-profits’ to buy housing if they agree to rent it out cheap.

Another item was the complete rebuilding of five homes allegedly destroyed by the weak Hurricane Wilma, no questions asked about the extent of said destruction, if the owners had collected on insurance, what happened to the insurance money if they did, and how these owners were selected out of all of Brevard County to get a free new house.

I digress, we will be following up on these as best we can.

Commissioner Infantini opened with her reasons for changing upper County Management. Contrary to the Florida Today assertions about her not “having got her feet wet” Ms. Infantini has up front and personal seen the absolute ineptitude of the financial planning and expenditures of Brevard County and knows more about the County than either of the two new Commissioners and at least one sitting Commissioner. After her initial comments NOT ONE Commissioner made any effort to back up the blatantly obvious facts presented. Comments even were ludicrously made that perhaps the best thing to do would be to go and spend large sums of money to hire a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to ‘assist’ the County Manager!

Besides the fact we would be paying virtually double for the same job, the County Manager has had an opening FOR MONTHS to hire a new Budget Director and has failed to do so, and had two opportunities in the last few years to hire new Assistant County Managers (ACMs) and again failed to hire anyone with extensive Finance and Budget experience. The public gets it, and I think the Florida Today as well, (although the County Commissioners may not), Brevard County does NOT WANT to hire a strong individual with strong budget experience because that person would tell them the freewheeling tax and spend and borrow merry-go-round needed to end!

I do not fault Commissioners Fisher and Bolin for the fiasco to keep the present management team in place. Mr. Fisher is truly new to County Government and may have been heavily influenced by those otuside of the County. Commissioner Bolin has no idea how the County operates and genuinely must think you keep people in high paying jobs because you like them, regardless of merits. Their votes were not needed anyway in this situation as we had two new Commissioners who knew better and one sitting Commissioner who not only knew better, but had actually voted just a few months ago for removal.

Evidently while I must have been out on Neptune, Brevard County somehow witnessed a miraculous turnaround in the last few months to justify the about-face to keep the County Manager and County Management intact. Evidently the two people who should have voted for removal have changed their opinion on County Management, because they just voted to spend another $30,000 in salary for the County Manager and delay their ability to get a new County Manager and qualified Budget Dorector on board BEFORE the new year so they would have the ability to further dissect the deteriorating budget situation this year (same situation in Tallahassee) and hit the ground running in preparing a tough budget for the next fiscal year.

This year’s County Budget depends heavily on spending reserves to break even, a policy at least four Commissiones must agree with (although Commissioner Bolin voted against the budget but for the person who prepared it). Insurance reserves, savings, and cash carry forwards are budgeted to be tapped because the prior County Commission, under the leadership of the current County Manager, refused to make cuts even remotely matching the minor declines in revenue experienced to date. Now as even deeper declines appear in this recession amidst plunging house values, the reserves will have been eaten. But, as the Florida Today says, Ms. Infantini who understands the county budget and is a CPA is a neophyte and we are to trust the government professionals without financial backgrounds who got us into this predicament.

January 27th will simply become Groundhog Day, where the events of yesterday will be repeated. We will hear there is no time to get a new County Manager on board to prepare for the budget, that the County Manager got the mesage from the Board and has changed appropriately, that things are just not really that bad and we should not change horses in midstream. Behind the scenes various markers will continue to be called in, promises made, deals cut, maybe a few resignations, but like County Manager Tom Jenkins before her, Ms. Busacca will have survived her moment of truth and will continue in office. If there is any eventual justice it is every sitting County Commissioner who has served with Ms. Busacca has been defeated in any attempt to subsequently run again for public office.

Various political reasons for the vote may now be given after the fact by those who should have known better, but the facts are if you believed someone needed to be removed before nothing has happened to justify extending that person’s tenure and the vote has just extended their reign. The vote eliminated the perfect window to do the search for a replacement (conveniently) and will more likely be used to leverage various other political favors rather than do what is best for the citizens of Brevard County. With everything said at the meeting, the ONLY person who said a new County Manager was needed was Commissioner Infantini, the ONLY one.

The continuation of the current County Management means the continuation of the Fire Fee Tax. It means that after all of the SECOND Parks bonds to pay for what the FIRST bonds should have covered we will still not get the projects completed, parks operations will be deep in the hole, no one will be responsible, and the same County Manager who decided NOT to get a follow-up to the Parks Audit TWO YEARS AGO by an outside firm will continue to sandbag any further outside audit of the fiasco. The budget next year will again be a complete cluster but worse as now most of the savings have been spent and cannot be spent twice. The animal issues we have dealt with will remain as always, and the County Policy of “Stay Low on the RADAR” and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” about problems will be perpetuated. EELS would blow another $25 or more million in gross overpayments for land but they have already pretty much blown their $60 million. I guess it is not possible to build another empty and unused million dollar horse stable, although we will keep building tens of millions of dollars of empty and almost unused Community and Senior Centers because there is not enough money to operate them once they are completed. A County Government devoid of individual responsibilty will continue to stagger along passing those bills to the taxpayers and claiming “there is not other way” else ‘services’ and ‘quality of life’ will suffer greatly.

Lower level employees will be cut loose thanks to the pathetically poor budget planning but you can bet upper management will stay and will keep the huge increases passed on in the bogus Cody Study, another County Management fiasco. Rather than digress even further all I ask is for people to go to the Clerk’s website (www.brevardclerk.us) and review the numerous reports we have written, many by the alleged neophyte Commissioner who beats the pants off the other four allegedly experienced individuals serving with her.

Thank you, Trudie Infantini, for being the only County Commissioner to publicly recognize the Emperor has No Clothes and try to do something about it. Others will soon find that denying reality does not make it go away, and when reality comes back mightily to bite the County hard only Ms. Infantini can truthfully say “I told you so”.