Our View

Here’s an interesting contrast:

Two Mondays ago, the Longboat Key Town Commission voted 6-1 on first reading to approve a 25.8% increase in the town’s property-tax rate, to 1.8872 mills for the town operating budget. Overall, the total approved budget is expected to increase 4.6%. Commissioner Bob Siekmann was the only commissioner to vote against the increase.

Across the bay, the Sarasota City Commission voted this past Monday night to hold its operating-budget tax rate steady at 2.7771 mills. The commission raised its debt-service millage rate 10%, to .42 mills, and that was to help cover the financing of the city’s new police station. Overall, the city of Sarasota’s total budget will decline 3.3% to $163 million from $168.6 million.

Sure, circumstances are different. Longboat Key has big pension problems, costing taxpayers an additional $1.7 million to cover its statutory requirements in the new fiscal year. But the contrast is palpable. At the Sarasota City Commission meeting Monday, that city’s five commissioners whittled another $600,000 in spending out of the budget to avoid an operating-budget tax increase.

Contrast that with what occurred in Longboat. If you recall, at the start of the budget cycle, Commissioner David Brenner essentially urged Town Manager Bruce St. Denis to examine the town’s spending and departments like the famous corporate budget cutter, “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap of Sunbeam.

Nothing happened. Well, sort of nothing. Instead of aggressive cost cutting, St. Denis demurred. And now we have a Brenner creation: an efficiency subcommittee assigned, essentially, to do what St. Denis was asked to do — find ways to do more with less.

The town’s pending tax increase now puts six commissioners in an unenviable position — they voted to raise taxes.

They will contend they had no choice, thanks to the town’s pension shortfalls. But you could also argue they let themselves get backed into this corner.

+ Town Hall job protection
Longboat Key Town Manager Bruce St. Denis revealed a lot about his mindset recently when he provided testimony to a special magistrate over the town’s impasse with the firefighters union. Check out St. Denis’ comments:

“We have always been a good employer and will continue to do that. We don’t charge employees for medical, and we have only laid off employees in the building department because demand for those services are lower now.

“I am looking out for all the employees. I will not lay off an employee in another department to give more to the firefighters. My goal in every budget is not to lay anyone off. Our goal is to hold salaries. I won’t recommend to the commission that we guarantee raises for firefighters when I can’t give them to my police officers and general employees.”
— Town Manager Bruce St. Denis

Respected is the boss who is indeed “looking out for all the employees” and strives to be a good employer. But we couldn’t help but stumble over: 1) “We don’t charge employees for medical.” There’s nary a private-sector employer today who can afford that. 2) “My goal in every budget is not to lay anyone off.” Ask a private-sector employer what comes first: more efficiency to improve shareholder return or not laying anyone off?

Labor is a cost. Successful enterprises always look to increase productivity (do more with less). Perhaps St. Denis’ comments help explain that 25.8% tax increase coming next year.

+ Park the trolleys
Let’s take a poll:

Who thinks a trolley bus service that operates from downtown Sarasota, through St. Armands Circle, up and down Longboat Key and all the way to the tip of Anna Maria Island and back is a good amenity for tourists?

We all do, of course.

But at what price? And who wants to pay for it?

It’s remarkable how some Sarasota County, Longboat Key and Manatee County elected officials are looking for magic wands as fast as they can to pull tax dollars from one source or another to keep the bus service going — in spite of the anemic ridership data. A spot check of the ridership shows about 10 riders a day this past August and about 16 riders a day during March, the height of tourist season.

Longboat Key Commissioner Bob Siekmann appears to be one of the few pragmatic elected officials in this discussion. He told his fellow commissioners: “The demand for this route just doesn’t exist. If this route were run as a business, it would have been shut down two years ago.”

If tourists want a trolley (and apparently not many of them do), they should pay. They should not be given an unearned benefit.

But hoteliers, restaurateurs, tourist attraction operators, retailers and others who benefit from tourism say a low-cost trolley helps keep our area attractive, which draws more tourists, which generates more business, jobs and a stronger economy.

Suggestion: If the trolley is so important to tourism, should it be funded from tourist development taxes, such as the hotel bed tax?

If running a trolley is such a good idea, it would be a business. Listen to Siekmann.