The abuse of flesh and blood cash machines – a Miami-Dade story

Al’s Loupe

The abuse of flesh and blood cash machines – a Miami-Dade story

Today I write as an angry citizen. A fed-up taxpayer who may be getting to the end of his rope. Why? Simple answer: the Miami-Dade County Commission and our illustrious mayor – 14 eggheads who seem to live in a parallel world. Or maybe, they just don’t care…

Another angry taxpayer who attended the public hearing on the upcoming county budget this past Monday night best depicted my feelings. He wore a sign that read: “Mr. Mayor, we are not an ATM machine.”

The fact is that in Miami-Dade, like most everywhere else, most of us have had to cut back, tighten our belts. And if that’s all we’ve done, we are the lucky ones. Take for example a single mother I know named Maria. She works for one the biggest private sector employers in town. For years she earned a six-figure salary, the result of hard work, professionalism, persistence. Today, she feels fortunate to still have her job. And although she works as hard or even harder than when she was making her six-figure salary, the economy being what it is, she’s had to accept huge pay-cuts. What was once 120 thousand dollars has been reduced to under 75. Mind you, she feels blessed – like I said, she still has a job. And 75K is nothing to sneer at. Still, she is working harder than ever and being compensated drastically less than what she’s used to.

Maria’s story is just one of many. Most of us in the real world have had to learn to live with less. Except, of course, if you work for one of our local government entities. Heck, government jobs, especially local government jobs, may be the best deal in town. Think about it. Firefighters in Miami, for example — more than half the force make over $100,000 a year, and that’s working one day on and two days off. Then long weekends every three to four weeks to help relieve the stress. But the best is yet to come, work 25 to 30 years and retire with 90% of your highest earning years.

And you know who pays? Us, the taxpayers.

Then there’s our former chief of police now mayor, Carlos Alvarez, who doles out raises while asking taxpayers to bite the bullet. He tells us (the idiots who voted for him and now represent flesh and blood ATM machines the mentioned angry taxpayer was referring to) times are tough, the county coffers have been reduced — drastically. Yet, mysteriously, our home values plummet but our property tax bills go up.

Thank goodness that the mayor’s flesh and blood cash machines will assure raises for county employees. And of course, the county commissioners will keep their perks – luxury cars to ride, at our expense, plus the $800,000 slush fund each receives to do with as they see fit. That’s 13 times 800,000. Do the math. More than 10 million dollars commissioners get to waste.

Stop whining, the politicians then tell us, it represents as little as $40 or $50 dollars more a year in property taxes.

Mayor’s budget passes at 1:30 Tuesday morning

Still not convinced that the Mayor and his acolytes consider us money machines to abuse. This is the same mayor who pays employees in his office north of 200,000 dollars and then is not bothered by the fact that the employee(s) are hardly ever seen in the office. It turns out they were former cops who were traveling to Central America to train officers in neighboring countries – making very good money on the side while still collecting dollars provided by their flesh and blood cash machines.

Oh! Lest we forget. It’s the same mayor and commission who pushed hard to assure that their flesh and blood ATMs paid for a brand new baseball stadium for a cheapskate team owner who we later found out milked his team (and the taxpayer) to the tune of almost $50 million last year. The commission now tells us they’re outraged! Really? I ask. How come you OK’d the deal without demanding to see the owner’s books in the first place?

There’s a final public hearing on Thursday, September 23. I don’t really know if it’s even worth the time to attend. Because the master manipulators they’ve become, the mayor and commissioners have figured out that dividing really leads to conquering. Notice how many social services and arts groups in Miami-Dade want taxes to be raised. For them, it’s a matter of survival — meager budgets severely slashed by lack of county funds. Then there’s the case of the taxpayers on fixed incomes who are rightfully fighting against the higher tax rates that may lead many of them to lose their homes.

Reminds me of the old cartoon where a cat and dog would end up in a huge brawl. Seconds later you’d see the cat sneak out of the scrap leaving the dog to fight with itself. Same story here. In the end the politicians will put the voters to fight among themselves for scraps, while the only winners will turn out to be the mayor, 13 commissioners and a handful of county employees – many (not all) who have yet to find out there’s a major recession going on.