On February 27, 2007, Melbourne City Council unanimously approved the new $8.6 million city hall building which will require the razing of the old city hall. T he past few weeks have seen the city employees begin the move out of the annex building into the old Kmart at Apollo and Sarno to allow the annex to be razed. Brevard Outlook’s newest correspondent weighs on the massive cost and excess of this project.

As far as government building projects: They who build the least build the best. The new city hall is a total waste of money. The city and county are squealing they lack funds and yet, they are building new and unnecessary multi-million dollar facilities.

If you were to walk through the old city hall, you’d see that in the last three to five years it has been totally overhauled inside. The workspace is top shelf, better than 75% of offices in commercial buildings in the city. But it’s not good enough for our spendthrift city manager and council. Their lies that this is necessary would be laughable only if they were spending their own funds and not ours.

If one were ever to get into city politics, it should be on a platform of taking the axe to the root of the tree. Their goal should be to shut down and sell of 25% off city administrative offices, to lay off 25% of the police and fire department, and to turn the saved taxes ($25 million per year roughly) back to the people. They should reserve $1 million every year to throw huge weekly taxpayer funded keg parties ($20,000 per party should make it a fun festival, and the city would still be $24 million to the good every year.

I am nauseated by the sickness that permeates our city and county governments. At KSC, they have worked with a steady and/or declining budget for about 20 years. Yet, they have managed to maintain and improve services and facilities because they take responsibility; they are supporting a mission, not merely seeking to extend jobs and empires. As they mature, their workforce shrinks and their processes become mature. At the county level, however, the opposite is the case.

The city/county groups have “Jabba the Hut” appetites for funding, they are gorged with ill gotten tax proceeds and they spend it faster than it comes in. They are like gambling addicts whose credit card pulls money out of other people’s life savings - no negative feedback can stop them.

They have enslaved Brevard citizens in their own homes, unable to move or they will have to pay an extra $3000 to $4000 per year in taxes, and unable to legally upgrade their homes or they will pay the same amount after the county tax assessor kills their exemptions because they put an addition on.

For instance, I know someone who just improved their home. To reward her, the city is going to reappraise her house from the ground up. She won’t be taxed on the value of the addition plus the value of the old house; No, they will take away any homestead exemptions she has and she’ll be taxed on the house at current rates from the ground up. She fully expects to be paying an extra $3000 per year because she added onto her house. What did the city do to earn an extra $3,000 from her every year? Nothing. No extra sewer, no extra trash, no extra police oversight, no drainage improvements. She will just pay more because she improved her house. That is evil.

I have lost my sense of humor about city fluff projects. It would be nice to see a sage individual get onto council along with some like minded councilpersons just as they broke ground for a new facility. They could call a stop work on the work, defund the project, and defund the city budget by the projected construction cost. Then, they could defund the city budget by the salaries of the staff members who recommended the project, and defund the city manager’s salary from the budget as well. Every time a new construction project came up for consideration, they could reduce the city budget by the proposed amount of construction and add in the city manager’s salary to the cut. So, a proposal for a $1 million project would result in no project, plus $1.15 million less in the budget for the next year, every single time. I think that would slow down the bleed of money and the increasing maintenance costs we are now seeing.

By the way, if you haven’t heard, the city is improving the water plant again in Melbourne. They originally had a 20-year plan that they promised would mean no new construction would be required until 2018. The alternative presented to council at that time was that if they did not vote for it, that the city would be forced to spend more money. However, they obviously lied, and the building goes on.

It’s not the size of the voting group that is the problem, it is their mindset. Don’t believe the lies.