Government Day

Another leadership class blog. Government day wasn't as eventful as the previous days but it was very educational. Before I start, I should mention that within Osceola County there are 2 cities, Kissimmee and St. Cloud. It gets very confusing when there are commissioners and managers for each one; County, City of Kissimmee and City of St Cloud. I've worked here for a while and I still get them all confused.

We started at Kissimmee City Hall where we had breakfast with the City manager and City Commissioners for a Q & A session. The City manager answered questions about one of the heated topics in Florida, the bill introduced in our legislature that would eliminate property taxes. To the average uninformed homeowner this seems like a wonderful idea. However, as the city manager reiterated today it is a terrible idea. Property taxes revenues make up 30-40% (depending on the city) of the city budget that includes police, fire, sanitation, public works, parks & recreation among many other departments. Hence, if property taxes are eliminated there would have to be major budget cuts and the residents would "pay" for the consequences. Obviously to make up for the loss of money, local governments would implement fire/rescue fees, law enforcement fees, sanitation fees, etc and also may be forced to lay off employees. This has been a popular subject at my job because our funding would be cut since we're a non-profit and our funding comes from the social services fund...that would be eliminated if this bill would pass. The ramifications of this bill would be extremely detrimental to our communities. What's even sadder about this whole thing is that both city managers came back from Tallahassee (the capital) yesterday and they said that one of the State legislators actually asked the audience "What should we do? We have no clue what to do"....and that's a quote...reassuring isn't it?!?!? Honestly, I could go on and on all day telling you how bad of an idea this is but I'll move on...just say NO!

Our first hands-on experience of the day was with the Public Works department. They showed us the trucks used to fix the traffic lights and such. Some of us got to go up in the "bucket". It was about 4 stories high and again I learned I'm not afraid of heights...until the wind blows. That "bucket" sways a little too much for my comfort.

Then we moved on to the County Administration Building where we met with the County Commissioners and took part in a mock commissioners meeting. All I can say is that making decisions as a Commissioner is a lot harder than I expected. As opinionated as I am I thought I'd enjoy to actually make a decision on a matter rather than just criticize it but I don't think I could ever be in public office.

We then took a tour through the Historic Kissimmee Courthouse. This is the oldest courthouse (in consecutive use) in Florida. It will be 116 years old this year. Some County departments such as Human Resources and Economic Development work in this building (1st and 2nd floors). The court room is in the 3rd floor. It is still a functional court although not used unless need be. It is still used for ceremonial events and it can also be rented out for weddings. Once the defendant received their sentence they would go down to the first floor where the jail used to be. The sheriff and his wife used to live on the first floor as well. The wife would make the meals for the inmates, funny huh?

Lastly, we went to the City of St Cloud for a city planning exercise. In the exercise we used a current city map and there are 900 "vacant" acres that need to be planned for. What would the residents want? What is best for the city? There's 20,000 people moving to the city that they need to plan for...that includes housing, schools, infrastructure, commercial (grocery stores, retail, doctors, etc) and parks. Again, this is one of those jobs that I gained respect for because it was unbelievably hard to figure out how to grow as a city. I wanted to predict the ramifications of what we were doing but there's no way to predict certain things. I often criticize city, county and school districts for not planning enough but when I was put in the situation it was very difficult to think of everything at once. The bottom line is someone will be pissed at you no matter what you do. It was a very interesting exercise. Below you see the city map we used for the exercise. All the colors represent a different type of development and the white is where we needed to plan for.