An animated and interesting meeting took place Wednesday at the New Smyrna Beach City Commission budget hearing. The energized audience was demanding that the city budget be shrunk to coincide with the shrinkage the citizens have been having in their personal budgets.The city Commission was considering a budget that grew slightly in dollar terms, but represented a big millage hike of about 11 percent. The audience got its direction from resident Bill Koleszar, a retired attorney and former Orlando police chief, who spoke forcefully and eloquently in favor of cutting the budget. Mr. Koleszar made a number of cogent remarks, including threats to recall any of the commissioners and the mayor who didn't see it the crowd's way -- all 200 of them with him. They got their way.
First he said that the real action will be at the ballot box if they don’t make the cuts and implied that he would be backing the effort to oust them if need be. He intimated that he rarely if ever loses in these matters.
Mr. Koleszar made several memorable quotes, including: “I’m not going to stab you in the back I’m going to stab you in the chest.” “Leave the millage at 3.1 and deal with it.”
The most dramatic quote from Mr. Koleszar came in the form of a pointed question: “Is there anything I have said you don’t understand?”
As logical as cutting bloated municipal budgets might sound, city budgets only seem to shrink if the city is put into receivership as in Encourse, Mich., or if the country loses a war. For some reason city officials and city employees seem to think that they should be insulated from the hard times that hit the rest of the country.
Mr. Koleszar eloquent and forceful presentation emboldened the citizens to get up and speak their minds.
A number of people got up to point out that their incomes had been severely cut.
Bill Denmark (who writes a business column for NSBNEWS.net) pointed out that money could be saved if they got rid of the golf course and the $150,000 firemen and quit buying Kayak paddles.
John Vasquez, well known Realtor in town, added, “None of us can raise our income. We can’t go to our boss and demand a ten per cent raise. We must make do with what we have.”
Mayor Sally Mackay did a great job to keep things cool and orderly. She pointed out that she had had about 200 e-mails about the golf course.
The point was made that the actual increase in City funding was actually closer to 2 percent as opposed to the 11 percent millage increase needed to fund it, but that's because assessments are down.
However, the citizens stuck to their point that the budget should be going down -- not up or staying the same, especially in these bad economic times.