Palm Bay Works 2009 rejected by voters

The $75.2 million Palm Bay Works 2009 bond referendum failed yesterday with 56.5 percent of voters voting against the project. Less than 13 percent of the city’s 60,617 registered voters turned out to cast their ballots.

Some advocates of the referendum, like Palm Bay City Manager Lee Feldman, explained that the program was based on the (Keynesian) premise that government spending on public works projects spurs economic activity, and believe that FDR and the New Deal are what got us out of the Great Depression.
Read more

State Senate and Judiciary Clobber Clerk’s Offices

Political, not Fiscal, Policy Drives 16% Cuts to Clerk’s Offices

The State Senate and the Florida Supreme Court, with the acquiescence of the Florida House, moved to make major cuts in the funding of local Clerk’s Offices during the final days of the Legislative session. In late February, well after the normal filing of bills for the Legislative Session had been completed, certain Legislators in ‘leadership’ positions late filed bills designed to remove the Clerk’s courts employees from the Clerk of Courts to the Judiciary. Along with the employees, current court fees and fines which now fund the Clerks would be diverted to the State to fund the Judiciary and the State general fund.
Read more

City of Palm Bay spends taxpayer money to promote higher taxes

I received the memo below from Palm Bay City Councilwoman Kristine Isnardi, the only Palm Bay City Council member to vote “no” on the Palm Bay Works Referendum.

It seems the City of Palm Bay wasn’t content to have the Greater Palm Bay Chamber of Commerce lead the charge in promoting the referendum. Nope, they actually spent taxpayer dollars and paid staff to put out signs to promote the referendum.
Read more

Ellis responds to DiPatri; facts trump emotion – again

‘Public Education Enemy Number One’ still can’t find the missing $100 million

“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
Th’ eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers.”

The School Board has claimed consistently there has been a $100 million revenue cut over the last two years. My great sin was to ask for the state revenue numbers for the monies received by the BPS from the State over those two years. The property tax information was easily available from the Tax Collector as well as the School Board’s legal advertisement in July, and property tax revenue is up.
Read more

DiPatri weighs in on e-mail exchange; blasts Ellis

The public e-mail exchange between Amy Kneesey and Scott Ellis just got ratcheted up a notch with the following response from Brevard Superintendent of Schools Dr. Richard DiPatri:

< --begin e-mail-->
Subject: Public Education Enemy Number ONE!

Amy,

I am writing to you after just having read the most recent e-mail from our esteemed Clerk of the Court, Scott Ellis. I am amazed and astonished by his one-sided, negative of course, assertions about our budget and spending. This from a man who maintains the second highest budget deficit (more than $3 million) of 67 counties in Florida and a public official who criticizes every other public official, local and county, yet refuses to share his financial information and audits with the public (see Judy Preston’s e-mail of 4/2/09)! Does he actually believe that we have only been reduced by $7 million during the past two years rather than almost $100 million? Read more

Judge orders Clerk to spend non-existent funds

The Chief Judge of the 18th Circuit Court, after accusing me of failing to provide requested financial information and failing to discuss staff and operational changes with the Judges, is issuing an order forbidding the Brevard County Clerk of Courts from implementing cost saving changes in light of a $1.5 million shortfall, 20 layoffs, and the loss of 25 more full-time equivalent employees (out of 330) while we work on reduced work schedules of 36 hour weeks.
Read more

Brevard Clerk questions Tallahassee math on new bill

This article from the Hearald Tribune shows the outright lies being fought out in Tallahassee over the Judicial Pearl Harboring of the Clerks. The 33% increase in budgets is a joke. Our revenue this year is LESS than it was five years ago. Before we would use Recording Fees to help cover the courts, now those are greatly decreased.

Total Clerk Revenue (all functions) 2003/04: $22,214,701
Total Clerk Revenue (projected) 2008/09: $21,136,587
Read more

Where did alleged financial crash of schools originate?

A recent guest column in the Florida Today by Ms. Judy Preston, the Associate Director of Finance, caught my eye in as much as what was not said as what was said. A slew of manipulative ranking numbers were thrown into the column bemoaning the alleged horrible funding of Florida Schools as well as some real numbers of the size of the cuts, but nowhere was it mentioned where all the windfall of the last six or seven years had gone.

“Florida ranked 17 percent below the national average in per-student education funding”. Based on Ms. Preston’s own numbers that a reduction per student of $445 equals a 6% loss, then the other 94% still left means Brevard County gets from State and Local taxes about $7,000 per year, per student. A classroom of 20 students gets $140,000 per year, every year. Considering the teacher’s pay and benefits run about $60,000, that leaves $80,000 per classroom for Administration, Maintenance, and Supplies. If the National Average per student is $8,400, how was the $8,400 derived? Ms. Preston states Florida ranks 42nd in the nation in per student expenditures, and I find it mathematically odd that one could be 17% below the average, have only 8 states below us, yet be spending well over $100,000 per classroom and building hundreds of millions of dollars in new facilities.
Read more

The Year of ‘Mortgage Jubilee’ is Upon Us

I have used the term ‘Year of Mortgage Jubilee’ often in the last year to describe the outcome of the Government’s interventions in the mortgage foreclosure markets. The year is here.

In the Old Testament, all debts are forgiven during the Year of Jubilee.

The Federal Government, in its blind rush to keep people in houses they either overbought or over-re-financed-for cash, will begin making the deal so sweet for those in default that those not in default question why in the world they are working hard to make their payments. As the deal for default sweetens, many will begin to stop paying on houses they really could pay for.
Read more

Court of Law Gone Awry as Court of Feeling

Brevard County is following the lead of certain other Counties in the State of Florida in ordering mediation between the parties in a foreclosure. Normally mediation is ordered when one has parties in a DISPUTE. In the foreclosure, there is no dispute, it is a fact the house payments have not been made. Since there is no dispute of fact, we can only have a court ordered mediation out of a FEELING it is a ‘good thing’ to allow those who owe to stay in their house even if they are not paying.
Read more

Next Page »