City Commission Conference Meeting on 2024-05-21 1:30 PM

meeting

Fort Lauderdale City Commission 3h 17m 3 speakers 8 agenda items transcribed 4 days ago official recording ↗

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What topics are introduced at the beginning of the meeting?

Dean Trantalis 0:00

I appreciate everyone's patience. Um got a little late start because of the uh length of our commissioner workshop. But I I uh Um I believe we have quite a bit to do this afternoon, so uh Let us begin with um uh Let me just jump right into before we get to communications, I understand that Dr. Zieman has to be somewhere. So if we could just jump right into business one, uh redefining our our school's presentation. Is anyone from our city staff uh Um joining in on this?

Susan Grant 0:31

So Mayor, after Dr. Zimi makes his presentation, Susan Leon, I'd just like to introduce her and she'll make a few comments as well.

Dean Trantalis 0:38

Great. Excellent. Doctor Zieman. Now again, my understanding is there's a lot going on at the school board level, there's still a lot of moving parts, there's been no decisions made. Um you still have a all a whole lot of public outreach to pursue, so you're just sort of giving us like an up to date update what's going on, right? Okay. I'd like to give you a quick update. Doctor Zeman, could you push the button below the microphone? Yeah, thank you. And we will give you more than one minute. No, no, I uh w I really want to spend some time talking about repurposing schools because that's uh fundamental. But there's other things that influence you very much. The first is teacher pay. Uh two years ago we moved teacher pay up nine percent, this year we moved up fourteen percent.

Dean Trantalis 1:24

And so we're working very, very hard to make sure that we're going to be able to do it So what's the starting salary of a teacher? So starting salary is in the low fifties, but the average compensation, Mayor, is now $93,000. So we have about $73,000 of average pay, $10,000 toward the retirement, and $10,000 toward full medical. We're one of the last employers that gives our people a hundred percent medical with nothing out of pocket. So average ninety-three, average uh pay seventy-three starting is in the fifty-three to fifty-four range, depending on the case. on whether they have a graduate degree or not. It's it's much better than it's been. We continue to reallocate the money that we get from property taxes and from the state to pay better, but right now up fourteen percent and then nine percent.

Dean Trantalis 2:05

So we feel pretty good the last two years. But considering the teacher shortage in this in this community and around the country Has there any thought been given to incentivizing new teachers with higher pay? Absolutely. Um we continue to work on right sizing the kind of layers of management. In fact, this afternoon I'm gonna propose an elimination of one layer of management. Um and that's a $13 million savings. Every time we do that, we have four layers of management, believe it or not, between the superintendent and the principals. And the principals are the CEOs that run schools. They hire everybody, they run the budget, they keep people excited, Mayor, about coming to work. You know, teachers don't come just for the pay.

Dean Trantalis 2:43

Uh they have to be paid well enough, particularly in a high inflation, high cost place like Broward County uh or Fort Lauderdale. Uh but we still have too much management. Uh It's ridiculous that you take orders from the superintendent, from the senior staff. From a regional superintendent, and then there's a thing called a director that oversees all the principals. Uh Zeman's view is that that's four layers, that's one too many at least. And so we're gonna actually talk about that this afternoon uh at the school board meeting that I left. So every time we do that, Mayor, we're able to free up money, and the school board has been very clear that as we free up money in any regard uh that's operational money, we're gonna turn it into educator pay.

Dean Trantalis 3:20

Couple other things just to tell you about smart bonds gonna end in October of twenty twenty five. Uh that means we're gonna declare uh defeat. We're gonna over-deliver what we promised voters in the smart by about 13 percent, but we did it at a cost growth of 100 percent and an extension of time of five years. So what we promised in seven, we're gonna deliver in twelve.