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Frankel pursues federal options

Task force takes on local issues

By Jane Smith
    
    The city’s public safety departments will be able to hire 12 staffers to assist with the growing drug-overdose problems, under a proposed tax rate set by the Delray Beach City Commission.
    Police and fire-rescue staff have responded this year to 293 heroin overdoses as of July 27, compared with 195 for all of last year, according to the Delray Beach Police Department. The overdoses are increasingly fatal, despite police and fire-rescue’s use of Narcan to counteract the high.
    In all of 2015, 10 people died from heroin overdoses compared with 28 so far this year.
    City Manager Don Cooper described the $110.04 million budget as having a back-to-basics focus, in his executive summary of June 24. From the city’s goal-setting sessions of October and January, he gleaned a list of priorities: police, fire rescue, code enforcement and parks.
    Repairing and replacing city assets is underway, with work started on Old School Square, a contract awarded to determine the cost of work on the public docks and seawalls at Veterans Park, and work started on the beach promenade.
    The proposed tax rate of $7.21 per $1,000 value is lower than the current year’s rate of $7.34, according to the city’s finance department. The tax rate will go into effect in the budget year that starts Oct. 1.
    Most Delray Beach property owners won’t see a reduction in their property taxes because property values increased by an average of 10 percent in the city, the county property appraiser determined. Homeowners with a $50,000 homestead exemption will see their taxable property values increase by .7 percent.
    The proposed tax rate has two components. The operating tax rate is $6.96 per $1,000 value while the debt service rate is 25 cents per $1,000 value.
    Tax rates had to be set by the end of July for the county property appraiser to mail notices in mid-August to every property owner. The notices cover assessed values and proposed tax rates. The rates can be lowered but not raised during the city’s budget hearings in September, Cooper said.
    At the July 12 commission meeting, Mayor Cary Glickstein asked whether the city can afford the reduction when he quizzed the city’s financial officer: “Are we going to regret setting that number?”
    No, said Jack Warner, chief financial officer.
    Most of the city’s property value increase occurred in the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency district that covers more than 1,900 acres from the interstate to the beach. The CRA, which gets a percentage of the city tax dollars over a base rate set in 1995, and the city have their spending goals closely aligned.
    As an example, the CRA will pay for two new officers downtown in the next budget year to allow 24/7 coverage of that district. The CRA estimated that cost to be $188,625 for salaries and benefits.
    The city would pay for two additional police officers and eight fire-rescue employees in next year’s budget.
    The city also is relying on the CRA to pay for the improvements at Old School Square, estimated to cost $1.1 million. The repairs should be finished by December.