Fort Myers, FL.
Sometimes you have to wonder why Bob Nielson's Supervisors even bother going through the exercise of preparing a budget, having a public hearing on the budget and voting on a new document. Year after year the Supervisors discuss how they should stay in line with the budget they've set for engineering and attorney fees. Every year they throw a dart at the board and come up with a new number. And every year they miss by a country mile. Not a mini-mile, not a few hundred bucks or a percentage point here or there, by a seriously long mile.
In the month of January the Supervisors approved invoices that total $12,770. They set a budget of $1,500. That's a miss of 738%. Translation - A Country Mile! Since the fiscal year began last October the board has spent $29,180 on engineering after budgeting $6,099. That's a miss of 378% and some seriously bad budgeting. There's no recovering from those kind of misses unless you tell the engineer to take three months off. Imagine that. A government agency saving money by laying people off. It'll never happen. The board will no doubt just shuffle money from another account to make up for the over-spending, which begs the question, was the money from that other account ever really needed.
Can you imagine walking into your bosses office and saying "hey big kahuna, I know when we were doing the budget last year I told you I was only going to spend $1,000 of your money. Instead I spent $5,000 of your money. Would you sign these invoices for me so I can get the checks cut?" He might sign the invoices....right after he signed your pink slip. A government agency is a completely different animal. They'll spend and spend and spend with no regard for a budget they approved and if they need more money they'll just take it from you.
I would like to propose a 30-minute workshop session four our Supervisors. For the first 15 minutes of the workshop the engineers (I think we have two now. We're pying both Tetra Tech and Johnson Engineering), the attorney and the entire staff would step before the microphone, one at a time, and make various monetary requests. Each request would be answered by the Supervisors in unison saying "No". Perhaps they are just out of practice. For the next ten minutes the Supervisors would have to write the word "No" on the blackboard 100 times, you know to kind of get used to how to spell the word. It could be difficult after all. And for the final five minutes the board should listen to a recording of the word "No" in at least ten different languages just in case some slick talking engineer tries to slide something by them in German.
Read the up to date financials HERE
