2012 / 2013

July 30, 2012
City Hall
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This is the tenth budget address I have given as Mayor of the great City of Orlando.

As we have said many times before; deciding where to allocate our resources to best serve residents is never easy, even in the best of times.

But, the budget challenges we have faced over the last four years have been unprecedented.

I am incredibly proud of this City Council’s ability to rise to those challenges.

In the midst of the worst economic conditions since the great depression… with revenues plummeting and expenses outside our control like fuel and healthcare escalating rapidly…we have kept taxes low…

• While continuing to deliver superior City services
• While shrinking the size of our government with the only new spending going toward police and fire protection
• While building our reserves
• While also keeping our commitments to our pension funds

It has not been easy.

We’ve made many difficult, but necessary decisions about where to cut back, and where to invest our increasingly limited resources.

The result of these decisions is that Orlando is in the best financial shape of any major city in Florida.

The budget we are presenting for the fiscal year ahead maintains that financial strength and standing, while continuing to deliver superior city services and keep the tax rate low.

This budget is another step in leading our city through recession… and into recovery.

It’s a budget that minimizes taxes and delivers the highest levels of services possible, so that our government can support the private sector and Orlando’s residents to continue to fuel our economic recovery.

This budget maintains our superior police and fire protection and public works services.

It continues our investment in neighborhoods.

It contains no new spending, with two relatively small exceptions:

The purchase of new land to expand the footprint of our City’s signature park, Lake Eola Park
And, a three percent cost of living increase for City staff. As you know, our employees voluntarily gave up salary increases to help us reduce costs over the past two years. This year, we are honoring our commitment to return those cost of living increases.
Your Tax Dollars: The Value of Orlando City Services

In most budget speeches, this is the part where the elected official might talk about what major new projects or programs tax dollars are funding.

As our budget for the fiscal year ahead is the continuation of what we have called a “basics budget” for the last few years — one might conclude that we don’t have much to talk about… or maybe that what we’re doing is unremarkable.

I submit to you this is anything but the case.

To illustrate this point, I want to do something a little different.

Rather than focus solely on the specific services or programs this budget maintains, I want to talk about the value of those services to Orlando residents.

The average City household pays 38 dollars and 86 cents per month in City property taxes.

In return for those 39 dollars, we get police protection and safe neighborhoods.

• We get fire protection at a level that’s better than 99 percent of cities in America.
• We get Parks, ball fields, green space.
• We get our streets cleaned more often — and our potholes fixed faster than any major City in Florida.
• We are able to maintain our roads and sidewalks.
• And, we get a multitude of other City services.

Now, think about that 39 dollar figure in comparison to other monthly bills we might have.

• A basic cable TV package runs about 70 dollars.
• The average electric bill is 110 dollars.
• The average car insurance is 125 dollars.
• A home alarm system is about 40 dollars.

What that means is you actually pay the same price for the alarm system… as you do for the police officers and first responders that show up to your house in an emergency.

Or, you pay three times as much money per month to safeguard your car as you do your neighborhood.

The other important point to make is that if we passed along the full cost to provide these services to taxpayers; their bill would easily be more than twice as much.

We make these comparisons not to brag about our City services, but to show our residents exactly what they’re getting in return for their hard-earned property tax dollars and illustrate the relative bargain those services represent.

Future Budgets

The budget we have brought forward ensures that we are able to provide taxpayers with that bargain, once again, in the year ahead.

In a few minutes, Rebecca Sutton is going to show us how we’ve managed to do this.

She will also spend some time talking about future budgets.

Commissioners, the choices made by our City Council over the past few years were made with the aim of not “rocking the boat” when it came to our economic recovery.

Every year since 2008 we’ve said that our government did not want to put more pressure on a family that’s about to lose its home… or someone who just lost a job.

Our strategy has been to give as much time as possible for our local and national economy to recover.

To make that happen, we took the necessary steps to slash our budget amid an economic climate where we expected revenues to continue to shrink… and costs continue to rise.

From the beginning, we made it very clear that our City government was up to the task of taking on this burden and living within its means.

But, we also said that this scenario could not be continued forever.

State lawmakers, through mechanisms like property tax reform and the impending passage of Amendment 4 this fall, have ensured that we are going continue to see revenues decline.

What this means is that at some point, if your revenues are declining and your expenses continue to increase, you are going to reach point where there’s essentially nothing left to cut besides police and fire.

So, you must make adjustments or generate more revenue.

We have time and options available to us as a City Council, but we are going to have to address this imbalance beginning next year.

I am confident this City Council is up to the task of doing what’s necessary to continue to provide strong, efficient, fiscally-responsible government.

Closing and Thank You

In closing, I want to thank Rebecca Sutton, Ray Elwell, City CAO Byron Brooks and all of our department directors for their work to craft a balanced budget this year… and every year.

I also want to thank every single member of our City family.

I am proud to work alongside so many hard working public servants.

Your dedication and passion for serving Orlando’s residents is one of the reasons I’m excited to come to work every day.

I also want to thank our residents, our business community, and our civic and faith-based leaders for being part of the annual process to balance our resources to provide the services we all depend on every day.

We look forward to your input at our public budget hearings in September.

Finally, I want to thank our City Commissioners.

A decade ago when I became mayor, this City Council made a commitment that we would show our residents where their money goes… we would illustrate why that spending is important to our City… and we would demonstrate the benefits those services provided.

This council has kept that promise, and the result is that our City in the best financial shape of any major City in Florida.

That concludes my formal remarks on the budget.

I would now like to call on Rebecca Sutton.

Thank you.