Deerfield-News.com-Deerfield Beach, Fl-Continuing in the story of Calvin and Giordano, and why does Deerfield Beach spend nearly 18 million dollars a year in code enforcement. That number represents close to ten percent of the city of Deerfield Beach’s annual budget.
Why is the city privatizing this? Whatever the revenue split 75/25 on the first 3 million dollars in fines and then 90/10 in favor of Calvin and Giordano seems to be a moot point as we do not collect fines. The amount of money fined and the amount we collect is minuscule. Seems this a prima facie case of why the government should not privatize certain things , code enforcement seems to be one of them.
I do not know what is average or what is normal for a city of 80,000 residents to bill in fines and liens and not collect but $62 plus million dollars in uncollected fines seems like something is not right?
When it costs the taxpayers nearly 90 million dollars over that five years to implement and enforce and we collected only $ 1.3 million dollars. I understand code enforcement is not a tax but a penalty a fine that municipalities have ordinances on the books and they must be enforced. That said at what cost to the community? Why is the city spending nearly 18 million a year nearly 90 million dollars since inception with Calvin and Giordano and collecting 1.3 million in fines? You can make whatever argument you want about whether fines and liens should be a source of revenue for a municipality.
We must go back and look at the years prior to Calvin and Giordano and what the city spent. Deerfield-News, com has made another public record request for this information. We need to ascertain the number of employees Calvin and Giordano have that serve Deerfield Beach in the capacity of enforcement inspectors. Deerfield Beach needs to reexamine our spending on code enforcement and what exactly is the purpose of it.
Deerfield-News.com will also be checking what nearby cities are paying for outsourcing code enforcement vs keeping it in house and vs what we paid BSO to do it previously.
Stay Tuned!
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