THE POOL AT FLAMINGO PARK SHOULD REMAIN FREE FOR RESIDENTS — ALTHOUGH PARKING METER FEES WILL LIKELY INCREASE. PHOTO BY STAFF

For Free, or For a Fee?
Budget Committee Discusses What Residents Should Expect for Their Tax Dollars

By Lee Molloy

At a meeting of the Miami Beach Budget Advisory Committee on Sept. 7, committee members charged with advising the city commission on the sticky subject of this year’s budget and its $30 million gap ended up in a philosophical debate about what a resident should feel entitled to when paying tax on their property.

To illustrate the issue, one of the benefits that an adult Miami Beach resident currently enjoys is the right to swim for free in public pools — a perk that has been in effect for the past few years.

Assistant City Manager Hilda Fernandez addressed the committee, saying that it was in more fiscally “robust times that the commission decided to eliminate pool fees.”

As reported in The Lead on July 16, city commissioners decided at a finance meeting earlier that month to reinstate the former $3 fee for adult resident swimming. The change would put an estimated $181,000 in city coffers each year. However, at another meeting in August, commissioners changed their minds and decided not to charge residents after all.

“The people that generally show up at pools are not the people that can afford a lot,” said committee chair Marc Gidney.

However, committee member John Gardiner did not agree that that was a good reason not to charge a fee. “You have a free pool at the east end of the island,” Gardiner said. “It’s called the beach.”

Committee member Stephen Hertz further articulated the two schools of thought.

“You take money [i.e. taxes] from everyone in the community and you build services that everyone can use,” Hertz said. “If you live in that community, [those services] should be free to everybody.” Or, as not every resident makes use of all the amenities, “there should be a minimum user fee for services,” he said. “There is no good answer, because both answers are right.”

Kathie Brooks, director of the Office of Budget and Performance Improvement (OBPI), explained some of the other revenue raising ideas that had been agreed upon by the city commission, including raising the fee to play tennis on the city’s clay courts (the concrete courts will remain free) from $4 per hour to $5 per hour for residents, and from $8 to $10 for non-residents.

“As a resident I take offense to having to pay to play on a clay court,” said Miami Beach resident and former Board of Adjustment Chair Larry Herrup. “If we can’t afford [those courts] we should shut them down and not have them available,” he said, adding that the city is “starting to sound like my bank that nickels and dimes me for every little thing that I do.”

One idea that created less controversy for the committee is raising parking meter fees from $1.25 per hour to $1.50 per hour, with parking enforcement extending from midnight to 3 a.m.

“When compared to downtown Miami, our fees are too low,” Brooks said.

Raising the meter fee for parking would allow the city to make use of the current Parking Fund, which, according to Brooks, could be a one-time revenue source of $3.6 million in the overall 2010/11 budget.
The revenues raised by the increase in the parking fee would allow the administration to raise the millage rate on property tax by 0.56 percent per thousand dollars of property value, as opposed to the previously thought 0.76 percent. This means that the owner of an average $280,000 property would see their tax burden increase by around $157 per year.

At least one resident, however, would rather see the burden of increased costs shift away from the Miami Beach resident.

“I don’t care what we charge non-residents,” Herrup said. “I think there should be a toll on the MacArthur Causeway.”

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