By Rich Pollack
It has been the target of town leaders for more than a decade, with commission after commission taking aim but never being able to shoot down Highland Beach’s notorious spending cap.
Now the commission’s $350,000 spending limit on any one project is again the center of the bull’s-eye with at least one town leader suggesting it’s about time to update the cap, using today’s dollars.
“I believe in checks and balances; however, this is out of proportion,” said Commissioner David Stern, who was appointed to the commission in November to fill a vacant spot until March.
During a Jan. 3 commission meeting, Stern said the $350,000 cap that voters approved in 1991 no longer makes sense and proposed updating it to $800,000 with an annual consumer price index adjustment. That number is a little more than what the $350,000 spending limit would be in today’s dollars.
Stern, who suggested bringing the proposal to the voters in a referendum at the next possible date, withdrew his motion after pushback from other commissioners, who contended the $800,000 cap was too low or should be calculated as a percentage of the annual town budget.
“I think we should talk a little more about what the number should be,” Mayor Doug Hillman said.
Vice Mayor Natasha Moore agreed that the cap needs to be changed — as quickly as possible — but said she believes the spending limit should not be a hard number.
“I’m strongly opposed to a fixed number,” she said.
Commissioners batted around the idea of polling residents prior to putting a question about the cap on the ballot, but then agreed to put more discussion of the limit on the agenda of a special strategic priorities workshop.
If discussion of the spending limit seems like déjà vu all over again, that’s because it was less than a year ago when voters rejected a proposal to raise the cap, a spending limitation on town commissions that is imposed on few if any other municipalities in Florida.
The proposed charter change would have increased the cap from $350,000 per project to about 5% of the town’s combined overall budgets — which amounted to just over $1 million — before a referendum is required.
It failed, Stern says, in part because it was too complicated.
“It wasn’t clear,” Stern said. “I believe you have to make these things simple. If you make them complicated, you’re in trouble.”
Stern believes calculating what $350,000 is in today’s dollars and putting a number close to that before voters would mean a better chance of approval.
“You need a clear, simple number that makes sense to voters,” he said.
During meetings with residents last year, Hillman and other leaders shied away from a fixed number, instead praising the flexibility of using a cap that changes with the town’s spending needs.
Just over a decade ago another commission attempted to raise the cap — and actually did — but not properly.
In the end, the decision by commissioners in 2012 to raise the spending limit to $1 million by ordinance was rescinded after Palm Beach County’s inspector general determined that it could be changed only by referendum.
Elected officials at the time said they hoped to bring the issue to voters via referendum, but it appears that never happened.
Should the current commission choose to put the issue back before voters, it would have to wait until November 2024 in order to meet time requirements determined by the county’s elections supervisor office.
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