Let’s Talk Percentages

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Much talk around town about the Mayor and City Commissioners voting to raise their salary.
The Mayor and Commissioners salaries have not been raised or adjusted since 2004.

Mayor’s salary would rise from $125,000.00 to $150,000.00, a 20% rate hike.
City Commissioner’s salary would rise from $30,000.00 to $35,000.00, a 16.7% rate hike.

The Commissioners voted themselves the following benefits.
Cadillac Health Insurance: for them, their spouse and Dependents age 27-30
The figures below were effective on August 1, 2012, and I assure you the prices have increased. The health plan includes no deductibles or co-pays and 100% taxpayer financed, with the exception of costing the employee $303.37/month for their dependents age 27-30. Taxpayer’s are very generous.

Employee: $605.43/month or $7,265.16/year
Employee + 1: $1,275.54/month or $15,306.48/year.
Family: $1,774.11/month or $21,289.32/year.

Dental:
Employee: $35.14/month or $421.68/year
Employee+1: $69.28/month or $831.36/year.
Family: $120.80/month or $1,449.60/year.

Vision:
Employee: $4.48/month or $53.76/year.
Family: $12.80/month or $153.60/year.

$16,291.44 Employee+1 includes Mayor Muoio, Commissioners Ryan, Moffitt.
$22,892.52 Family includes Commissioner Neering and possibly Materio.
$7,740.60 Employee Commissioner James with no spouse or dependent.

Question: Why are taxpayers supporting health care for elected official’s spouse and dependent children?
Answer: The Commissioner’s voted for it, and our input was not needed nor requested.

Car allowance: $500.00/ month, for a total of an additional $6,000.00 year for all elected officials.

Discretionary Fund: $3,200.00 a year for each Commissioners.

Mayor Muoio has her own fund where she can spend up to $5,000.00 a month without permission from the Commissioners, who control the city purse strings. The mayor uses this fund to pay former City Attorney Claudia McKenna, who retired mid April 2014, a total of $4,800.00 a month to continue the lawsuit against the PBC Inspector General. This payment has continued for 22 months @ $4,800.00/month for a total of $105,600.00 taxpayer dollars. I’ll never get over how generous we taxpayer’s are.

Travel Budget: Nov.2012 Commissioners voted to place $10,000.00 into a travel  budget to be shared by all five Commissioners.

Retirement Benefit Package: The first time I knew of this benefit was when it was mentioned at a budget meeting when the city declared “We have no money”
I placed a PRR (public records request) for their retirement package and was told I would not be supplied with the information because it concerned private money matters. When taxpayers pay for this benefit it should not be private.

All City employees received a pay raise in Oct. 2014 & 2015 amounting to 3% both years.

Let’s talk about Social Security:

Barack Obama, 44th President was sworn into office on 1/20/2009. In his eight years in office seniors living on Social Security received no COLA a total of three times.

January 2009 — 5.8% Increase was approved in 2008 to commence Jan.1,2009. (previous administration)
January 2010 — 0.0%
January 2011 — 0.0%
January 2012 — 3.6%
January 2013 — 1.7%
January 2014 — 1.5%
January 2015 — 1.7%
January 2016 — 0.0%

SSI (Supplemental Security Income) Generally, legal immigrants – those who have become citizens and some who have legal permission to be in the U.S – can qualify for SSI and Medicare.
In a press briefing, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that President Obama will direct his administration to make preparations to accept at least 10,000 refugees from Syria in fiscal year 2016. So Obama was true to his word concerning “spreading the wealth”

American born citizens who worked and paid into Social Security wont receive a COLA so we can share our benefits with Syrian immigrants. When Obama pledged to spread the wealth, did American’s believe he was going to take from the five richest such as Bill Gates ($54 billion), Warren Buffett ($45 billion), Larry Ellison ($27 billion), Christy Walton ($18 billion), and Charles Koch ($21.5 billion). No politician will cut their own throat and anger the wealthy who contribute to their Super Pac’s.

Keeping in mind elected officials have not had a rate increase in 11 years, I suggest they increase their salary somewhere between SS increase of 1.5% to city employees raise of 3%. So what do you think?