By Rich Pollack
For more than 30 years, Highland Beach town commissioners have been handcuffed by a $350,000 spending cap on any one project unless voters approve otherwise.
Soon residents could have an opportunity to remove that restraint if a series of charter changes makes it onto the March municipal election ballot.
The commission plans to bring the spending limit issue before the voters a second time after they rejected it in 2022.
This time, however, the proposal is a lot different.
While the proposed change last year was based on a percentage of the total annual budget, the new proposal includes a defined dollar amount based on inflation.
At a meeting last month, Vice Mayor David Stern proposed bringing the spending limit up to $900,000 per project, an amount that translates into what the $350,000, first incorporated in the town charter in 1991, would be worth today based on the consumer price index.
“It’s the same amount in today’s dollars,” he said.
Stern also suggested an annual increase based on the consumer price index. That increase would begin in 2025, if the ballot issue receives voter approval.
Others on the commission appeared to agree with Stern that an increase from the $350,000 cap is long overdue.
“We are providing many more services than we were 30 years ago,” Mayor Natasha Moore said.
Stern has said in the past that one of the reasons the last effort to increase the cap failed was that it was difficult for voters to understand.
“You need a clear, simple number that voters understand,” he has said while pushing for an increase in the cap.
Because the proposal would be a cap on projects, it is possible the town could spend more than the $900,000 in any year, which could be a concern among voters.
Commissioners, however, pointed out that there are other factors, including approval by referendum for financing, that would require taking such projects to voters.
“It’s not like you are opening up a piggy bank with no limits,” Commissioner Evalyn David said. “There are limits.”
Efforts to change the cap have not had much success in the past. Besides the voters’ rejection in 2022, an effort in 2012 to raise the spending limit to $1 million by ordinance was later rescinded after Palm Beach County’s inspector general’s office determined that it could be changed only with voter approval.
In addition to bringing the spending limit change to voters, commissioners are considering asking voters to approve funding for a much-needed sewer pipe lining project that could cost an estimated $3.5 million. That number could change before referendum language is finalized after the town gets additional information from engineers.
Also being discussed as a ballot item is a charter change that would no longer require the town to provide members for the election canvassing board. Instead, commissioners would have the option of retaining that responsibility or giving it to the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office, which provides that service at no cost to all but two other municipalities in the county.
During discussions of bringing items to voters, commissioners discussed a new state law that prohibits local governments from spending public funds to educate voters about upcoming referendum issues.
Commissioners pointed out, however, that they will be discussing the proposed charter changes at upcoming meetings and are hoping to get resident input before finalizing wording on any ballot items they decide to present in March.
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