Mayor Carlos Gimenez presented his 2011-2012 proposed budget with the property tax rate rolled back to the 2009 rate. By now, we know that property tax increase became the death knell for the tenure of Carlos Alvarez as County Mayor.

The hoopla over the tax increase brings us to the unpleasant situation in which we find ourselves. To fill the budget gap, 1,300 positions will be eliminated. Of those positions, almost 900 are filled. That means many people will lose their job. Some are firefighters and more than 360 are Head Start workers. You know, mostly black women who are also head of households. That's already sounding really ugly, right?

Supposedly another agency will take over Head Start. The children will continue to receive services and the workers will keep their jobs. Yeah, right.

These proposed job cuts appear especially distasteful considering Mayor Gimenez is bringing back his former Chief of Staff, Chip Iglesias, at $225K plus benefits and perks as Deputy Mayor. I'm waiting to see which other positions are eliminated, especially those high-level staff jobs. I think Gimenez is too smart to allow his Deputy Mayor position to become an albatross around his neck. I find it difficult to successfully defend such a high salary for a public service position regardless how logical the rationale.

Even if Julio Robaina had been elected County mayor, we would have found ourselves in an ugly budget situation. Gimenez already compromised on the number of libraries to be closed, let's see how much more compromising will be done before the final budget is adopted.

Stay alert and pay attention.



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