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The City Council for Marco Island has received the staff recommendation for a balanced budget for Fiscal Year 2009, and again this year the budget is presented in full compliance with our spending cap. This budget document covers budgets for all services and funds, and a full copy of the proposed budget is available under hot topics on the on the city’s Web site at http://www.cityofmarcoisland.com.

The Marco Island City Council has continued to support the development of quality services for city residents and businesses: These services, in turn, support quality neighborhoods and an exciting and energetic business community. Our hope and expectation is that this budget will continue to move this city forward under the council’s policy direction, while maintaining strict attention to stewardship of public funds and resources.

The proposed budget is not similar to the budget for other cities and counties in the state, as Marco Island is unique in Florida with a charter provision for a spending cap. The city charter emphasizes stewardship and control of spending through this cap, which limits the annual growth in non-enterprise fund budgets, and was created to and has successfully forced us to be prudent in providing services to the community.

Having the spending cap in place has provided for tax rate decreases every year since 2001. While other communities rapidly expanded services fueled by a growing tax base earlier this decade, they are now faced with layoffs and service cuts in the current struggling economy. A resident of Marco Island today pays less in property taxes than they did before the city was incorporated, and in a very real sense, we have all received our property tax rollback over the past 10 years that other cities and counties are working to achieve this year.

I’ll provide just a brief overview of the budget, and encourage everyone to read the budget highlights, participate in the budget process, and stay engaged with the process of providing services to Marco Island. The proposed budget conservatively continues the emphasis on maintenance, planning and improvement, and allows us – always – to be better tomorrow than we are today:

At least three different options for the property tax rate have been presented to fund the services and bridge projects proposed:

– The first option maintains property taxes at the current rate of 1.2048 mills and balances expenditures with a combination of both the fire service assessment and the PILOT charges.

– Under the second option property taxes are held at the rate of rollback plus 4.15 percent to reflect growth in personal income, bringing the property tax rate to 1.3847. This option will require either a fire assessment district, estimated at 15 percent of maximum, or the revenues generated from an equivalent PILOT fee.

– A third option funds services using only an increase in property taxes to fund the budget plus infrastructure, and brings the property tax rate to 1.4138 mils.

Selection of one of these three options will reflect the council’s philosophy on property taxes as the primary source of revenue for City services – many cities are emphasizing the use of fire assessment districts and other ways to diversify the City’s revenues to decrease reliance on property taxes. An alternative is to emphasize reliance on property taxes, as a stable and deductible form of taxation, with little diversity in revenues. This is a fundamental discussion for City Council’s consideration.

We are recommending new revenues, staffing and expenditure changes:

– Consideration of a fire assessment fee or district.

– Development of a storm drainage enterprise fund, funded by a monthly charge on each customer’s utility bill, based on impervious surface area.

– Decreased city funding in support of civic events, such as fireworks and contributions to local activities, with reliance on fundraising and sponsorships.

– Increasing the number of firefighters by three. We do have residential towers with limited or no sprinkler systems, and this creates the potential for horrific problems in fire response. Last year we also relied on off-island fire companies more than 550 separate times to provide service on the island, and although this has advantages this also can result in delayed response.

– Adding a Human Resources coordinator, an accountant and an information technology specialist (in utilities). We have traditionally operated the administrative functions of the city with limited staffing, dedicating new financial resources to those functions directly providing services to our community. Workload has now reached the point where we need to supplement existing staffing to handle the demands of the organization

This year’s Capital Improvements Program (CIP) budget reflects a number of significant changes from the current capital program.

– Storm Drainage Improvements.

– Bridge replacements.

– Parks and Recreation projects.

The City Council will evaluate the budget at 8:30 a.m., on Aug. 4, in the Community Room. The balanced budget echoes the sentiments of the community and provides services and infrastructure improvements for the community while focusing on ways to improve the interactions with the community. The meeting will also be broadcast live on Comcast Channel 12, Marco Cable Channel 9 and Web cast on the city’s Web site at cityofmarcoisland.com.