Copyrighted:  2011,2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

A lot of people like to bitch and whine about the city of Miami, but few of them ever show up at City Hall where their bitching and whining might have an impact, and even fewer folks bother to spend time looking at the annual budgets and supporting documentation to better acquaint themselves how and where their tax money is being spent.

Since this is the beginning of not only a new year, but a new decade, I figured that my first post this year should be about the information in the city's budget documents that almost no one reads, because this information is at the very back of the book, and because I figure that there is always value in understanding how decisions about spending public money are made. .

There is a lot of very interesting information in the operating budget , and well worth the time to peruse the operating budget. You can download the annual budget books HERE.

First up, is an overview of the makeup of the city by race, ethnicity, education, and cost of living indexes.

The next set of percentages and comparisons raise questions not only about how this information was obtained, but who was in charge of evaluating the ratings and coming up with the comparisons. Obviously, whoever did this, as well as whoever edited this page was confused on the concepts of Higher, Lower and Similar.

I guess that because this survey was at the end of the budget book prepared and reviewed by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, he figured that nobody would bother to actually read it, and conclude that not only are the percentages of citizens who are unhappy with the services and behavior of city officials and employees something to be concerned about, but that some of the so-called comparisons are actually alarming.

It's Miami 2020, Bitches!