Barking about the Winter Park budget

City employees could get a higher raise than expected, trees dead since the 2004 hurricane season could finally be cut down and a new dog park bathroom may be on the horizon if a Winter Park budget proposal passes on Sept. 26.

Some big changes are set for the Winter Park budget for 2012, and a $100,000 cut in the tree maintenance budget could be included. With another line item adding in $85,000 to help pay for a new restroom in the off-leash portion of Fleet Peeples Park’s dog park, one resident was crying foul.

But city officials say that $100,000 is being diverted to a contractor to do the same thing the city would have done.

New restroom

Nancy Shutts said she noticed that some big changes to the city budget for 2012 weren’t in the printed proposed budget, and that at least two commissioners don’t know about the changes.

One of those budget items, pledging $85,000 toward a restroom at Fleet Peeples Park, had her wondering why the city would pay so much money to a group that she said comprises mostly non-residents.

“Half of this new bathroom that people don’t need is being paid by our tax dollars,” Shutts said.

And that restroom, according to current plans, would be fenced entirely inside of the off-leash side of the dog park.

“There are better things to do than building a bathroom that’s really for the dog people,” Shutts said.

Clearing up controversy

That concern came out of the budget work session during the City Commission meeting Aug. 22, when commissioners proposed changes to the 2012 budget.

Winter Park City Manager Randy Knight said that the tree removal fund change and dog park bathroom funding are unrelated, clarifying that the tree removal budget is being diverted from funds that normally do not cover that service.

“It wasn’t ‘Let’s cut the tree money and build a bathroom,’ that’s just part of the process,” Knight said.

Confusion abounded about just how the city was paying for tree trimming and removal, as those topics dominated the budget work session. Knight said that the city had at one point ceased cutting trees in the right of way that were in homeowners’ yards, but that residents still expected it.

“Prior to 2004 we had been doing it, so there’s an expectation that we’ll continue to do it,” Knight said.

Playing catch up

That year was a big one for tree removals, after three hurricanes hammered Central Florida in a two-month span.

“Our tree crews…they’re still trying to clean up after the hurricane,” Commissioner Carolyn Cooper said.

Since then, the city has been working to catch up on removing dead trees — a problem that continues to grow as more trees die, Knight said.

“We’ve got about 60 dead trees out there,” Knight said. “We’ve found more dead trees on a weekly basis. It seems to grow by three or four trees on a weekly basis. We’ve been chipping away at it for the last seven years.”

The city planned to use the $100,000 tree removal money to pay a contractor to perform all the dead tree removals.

“If we hire a contractor that’s focused solely on tree removal, it’ll get that all done quickly,” Knight said. “It’ll release our crews to do other things.”

Employee raises

The Commission also pushed for increasing employee raises from a proposed 2 percent to 2.5 percent, which Knight said he may be able to find money in the budget for by freezing positions.

“That’s going to cost us about $140,000,” Knight said of the difference in raises. “We pay for that out of what I call gapped positions. We hold positions open long enough during that year to cover the cost.”

The Commission will have its first reading of the proposed budget at the Sept. 12 meeting. A second reading will solidify the budget on Sept. 26.