City commissioners in Miami Beach will discuss increasing their own stipends and staffing at Wednesday’s commission meeting.
Right now, the mayor gets a monthly stipend of $2,000, a figure that has not been adjusted in 18 years, according to a commission memo from staff. Commissioners currently get $2,250, a figure that was adjusted five years ago. No idea why the mayoral stipend was ignored then.
The memo from City Attorney Rafael Paz and Human Resources Director Maria Alpiza says that the commission could decide to raise it 23%, which is the rate of inflation since 2018, which would increase the stipends by $460 for the mayor and $517.50 for the commissioners. That adds up to $29,520 a year for the mayor and $33,210 annually for each commissioner.
This is more than their annual salaries of $10,000 and $6,000, respectively. For expenses!
According to the memo, the stipends are to “help offset the expenses associated with their public offices, such as providing food for elderly and needy residents, purchasing tickets to attend a myriad of civic, non-profit and community events in order to engage with City residents, and sending newsletters and correspondence to the City’s residents to keep them apprised of City business.”
Sounds like campaigning, right?
The discussion will also include vehicle and mobile phone expenses, which are paid separately. While members of the city commission get a $500 monthly vehicle allowance and a $50 bi-weekly mobile phone allowance, charter officers — the city manager, city attorney, city clerk and inspector general — get an $800 monthly vehicle allowance and most of them get a $100 bi-weekly mobile telephone allowance.
“If the City Commission desires to address these allowances comprehensively and provide parity with the allowances provided to the City’s Charter Officers, the foregoing allowances could be adjusted, at the City Commission’s discretion, to an amount equal to that provided to charter officers, or to some other amount, at the City Commission’s discretion.”
So this is entirely at the city commission’s discretion. Gotcha.
They could also, “if the city commission were inclined,” provide a annual automatic adjustment to the stipends and allowances each year by the recommended they use the consumer price index, which is the same inflation index used for the city’s fee schedule.
Adding it all up, it comes to a total aggregate monthly adjustment of about $1,650 for each of the members of the commission, which would be effective — you guess it — at their discretion. There’s Mayor Steve Meiner and six commissioners — Tanya Bhatt (Group 4), Laura Dominguez (Group 2), Alex Fernandez (Group 3), Joseph Magazine (Group 6), Kristen Rosen Gonzalez (Group 1) and David Suarez (Group 5) — so that’s $11,550 more every month or $138,600 more a year. The mayor and Bhatt, Suarez and Magazine were elected last year.
This follows a year in which the commission raised the the tax rate less than 2% — from 6.0515 per $1,000 of taxable value to 6.1481. The city manager said it meant about $67 more a month for the owner of a median homesteaded property, valued at about $248,000. Of which there are six. I mean, what property in Miami Beach is worth $248K? Ladra is ready to make an offer!
According to Zillow, the average Miami Beach home value is $534,952. But the taxable value for many homes is much higher. A house on La Gorce Island, for example, has a taxable value of $26 million. Those owners are paying way more than $67 more a year. But they probably can afford it.
Commissioners may also increase staff, which would also increase their office budgets.
“The City Commission may also wish to discuss the process for approving additional staff to better manage the workload of the office and respond to the public. This discussion could involve additional staff assigned to each commissioner, or shared staff assigned to multiple commissioners,” the memo states.
Two commissioners have staff vacancies within their respective offices, the memo adds, without saying which commissioners those are. “At this time, it is not clear when either these vacancies will be filled and/or if the City Commission would prefer to reassign existing vacancies for different purposes, in an effort to better manage the workload of the office and respond to the public.”
Miami Beach United, a non-profit, civic organization that very closely watches the city commission, said in its pre-meeting email blast that “now is not the best time for a discussion of stipends and other compensation” for the members of the commission.
“We believe, as was recommended by the Ad Hoc Charter Review Board, that the Commission should defer discussion of this item until after the Charter Review Board has had the opportunity to make recommendations on this matter,” the group’s email states.
Ya think? It might be easier for taxpayers to accept if an independent group makes the recommendation.
Miami Beach electeds consider increase in their expenses, allowances, staffing added by Ladra on
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