Orlando-Downtown Vacation Help (Jacksonville, Tampa: condos, home, resort)

[bdpop]

Originally Posted by Metallisteve

Due to Jeb Bush's dying effort to make a name for himself by "reforming" property tax (aka: covering everyone's over-zealous real estate purchases) in the state (picked up and carried to fruition by Mr. Crist) and the public not listening to fire fighters, police offciers, and public works officials warn of public service and response time woes if it goes through, municipalities across the state are feeling the crunch. Orlando has already eliminated retirement health care for officers (retro-actively effective for all new hires starting about a week before my brother's start date in Fall '07). On top of that, now they're toying with the idea of selling off half of the patrol car fleet and making day and night shifts share a car! No more take home car for officers.

If cities would stop usiing tax money for ridiculous things (ie in Winter Park, they tear up paved roads to put down bricks to make it pretty. What a waste of money!) they would have more money for fire and police. How did the municipalities get by before the housing bubble, when you could get a decent house for $75-$80k. Sorry to get off topic.

[Metallisteve]

I saw the same thing happen in Ocoee (bricks paved over with new pavement, then the new pavement removed to replace bricks). Wanna know where it came from? Council demanded it. Very rarely do you come across a good ole boy who spends money frivilously (sp?) on their own will. Mindless spending comes from two primary sources: idiotic council/mayor/political directions and poor planning between departments (i.e. utilities tearing up new pavement to lay a waterline weeks after the new pavement was laid).

Sure, there are small things that can always be trimmed out of a budget like ordering too many pens or making too many copies on the copy machine. These are incomparable to public safety and public service items such as patrol cars, new fire hose, or new construction equipment for the road crews.

I'll give you some numbers:
Ocoee's total operating budget for 2006 was in the $110-115 million range. The (at the time) proposed tax reform was going to shave $25 million from that budget. Nearly a quarter! I left the city before the tax crap actually took effect, so I don't know how it's actually played out in the budget. I do know they still haven't filled my spot as one of two staff engineers. Not a good sign.

To answer "how did cities operate back when houses were only $80k":
Easy...two main reasons...one, those house prices are reflective of the costs of everything back then, so cities didn't need a $100M budget. Two, there were no where near as many people living in those cities back then. As everyone knows, Florida has grown exponentially since the 80's. With that came an exponential demand for public service. Taxes did what they're supposed to do and they funded a growing government and allowed that service to be established. Then, under the "tax reform," municipalities lost a huge chunk of the budget they had grown to run on AND were forced (in some cases) to roll back local tax rates to pre-2001 rates!

If your salary were reduced by 20-25% and rolled back to what you were making 5-10 years ago, would you not have to drop some things out of your life?

People are so quick to try to call out government "wasteful" speanding...but they're even quicker to demand service and improvements. NASA learned this lesson and summed it very well: Quicker, Better, Cheaper: Pick Two. You want cheaper? Which one are you going to give up...quicker or better?

[bdpop]

This is a very interesting topic and we should start a new thread to discuss it.

[Metallisteve]

...just got off the phone with my brother...having a few laughs that I used him as an example on here. He says to add this to the mix:

As a result of budget crunching to meet the glorious "tax reform," their supply desk has become ultra strict and he's no longer able to get the bare necessities to do his job. For instance, only one set of batteries for his flash light (remember, he's on night shifts). Only one drug test kit per month (only 5 tests in one kit, non-reusable). Because of this, he's had to let two people go that had crack rocks on them simply because he didn't have a test kit and no one was available to bring him one...so you gotta let them go due to no positive ID.

Isn't that grand?

[bdpop]

Originally Posted by Metallisteve

I saw the same thing happen in Ocoee (bricks paved over with new pavement, then the new pavement removed to replace bricks). Wanna know where it came from? Council demanded it. Very rarely do you come across a good ole boy who spends money frivilously (sp?) on their own will. Mindless spending comes from two primary sources: idiotic council/mayor/political directions and poor planning between departments (i.e. utilities tearing up new pavement to lay a waterline weeks after the new pavement was laid).

Sure, there are small things that can always be trimmed out of a budget like ordering too many pens or making too many copies on the copy machine. These are incomparable to public safety and public service items such as patrol cars, new fire hose, or new construction equipment for the road crews.

I'll give you some numbers:
Ocoee's total operating budget for 2006 was in the $110-115 million range. The (at the time) proposed tax reform was going to shave $25 million from that budget. Nearly a quarter! I left the city before the tax crap actually took effect, so I don't know how it's actually played out in the budget. I do know they still haven't filled my spot as one of two staff engineers. Not a good sign.

To answer "how did cities operate back when houses were only $80k":
Easy...two main reasons...one, those house prices are reflective of the costs of everything back then, so cities didn't need a $100M budget. Two, there were no where near as many people living in those cities back then. As everyone knows, Florida has grown exponentially since the 80's. With that came an exponential demand for public service. Taxes did what they're supposed to do and they funded a growing government and allowed that service to be established. Then, under the "tax reform," municipalities lost a huge chunk of the budget they had grown to run on AND were forced (in some cases) to roll back local tax rates to pre-2001 rates!

If your salary were reduced by 20-25% and rolled back to what you were making 5-10 years ago, would you not have to drop some things out of your life?

People are so quick to try to call out government "wasteful" speanding...but they're even quicker to demand service and improvements. NASA learned this lesson and summed it very well: Quicker, Better, Cheaper: Pick Two. You want cheaper? Which one are you going to give up...quicker or better?

I don't think you understood what I was saying. What I was saying is that they are removing pavement to put down bricks to beautify the roads. In other words, they are turning asphalt roads into brick roads. In my opinion, this is a total waste of money. This money needs to go to law enforcement and the fire departments.

[Metallisteve]

Again, direction of the council and/or the people who live there. Public Works doesn't just wake up and say "let's brick over the whole town." There are some parts of Central Florida that actually have ordinances written to protect and even expand brick roads for heritage and beautification. Not to mention, they're an indirect for of speed control.

[DailyJournalist]

This post reminds me of when I had family from a foreign country that came and visited me and insisted I take them to downtown Orlando so they could see how city living was in the US. They were expecting what you typically would find in a downtown and could not believe that this was the actual city. They said they had travelled all over the world and had never seen a city that was not actually a city at all,lol. Downtown is truly pathetic.

[Alphaman]

Originally Posted by DailyJournalist

This post reminds me of when I had family from a foreign country that came and visited me and insisted I take them to downtown Orlando so they could see how city living was in the US. They were expecting what you typically would find in a downtown and could not believe that this was the actual city. They said they had travelled all over the world and had never seen a city that was not actually a city at all,lol. Downtown is truly pathetic.

True they really need to do something and it`s not because downtown is small because cities like providence are the same size and is a much better downtown.

[DailyJournalist]

Originally Posted by Alphaman

True they really need to do something and it`s not because downtown is small because cities like providence are the same size and is a much better downtown.

Exactly, they keep building condos but no corporate buildings that actually bring people to Orlando. Orlando may be the only major city without a true city center. They may aswell just make Downtown Disney the Orlando city center, I dont see much difference.

[Crane's Rooster]

I think people are overlooking the fact that most people moved to Florida during it's boom phase to escape the urban hustle. That has always been one of the big allures to Florida, the sunbelt and places like phoenix. Now all of the sudden people are realizing there are alot of benefits to having an urbanized core but the problem remains that for the past 2 decades they have allowed, in and some instances, encouraged suburban sprawl. Central Florida is a region of 2 million plus but over a distance of nearly 5 counties. South Florida has over 5 million but the stretch from West Palm Beach County to southern Dade is over 90 miles. The truth is we have to change the mindset in Florida before we can see any of the benefits people complain that we lack in our city cores. There needs to be incentives to move out of the suburbs, out of our vehicles and back into the cities. It doesn't matter how many new skyscrapers you build downtown or how many newstands you open there so that you can get newspapers from Timbuktoo as long we keep building further and further out and developing more and more asphalt to connect us no city in Florida will ever have a respectable downtown.