Interview: Chris Lagerbloom, City

Strong recovery

Decisions made early in the pandemic have positioned the city to emerge stronger

Chris Lagerbloom

City Manager – City of Fort Lauderdale

What are your expectations for Fort Lauderdale’s economic turnaround toward 2022? We will have a strong recovery because of decisions we made early on. Our organization has maintained a AAA bond rating through the balance of the pandemic. That has been huge in our demonstration to others that we have a sound and balanced budget and we have been ultra-conservative in making assumptions in a year that we were just toward having 25% of our dollars in reserve in the general fund, should we need it. We were at 24.8% going into the fiscal year. Even amid the crisis, we were still able to get there. Our property values have stayed strong. Some of that is because of the lack of volume, while another critical factor is the desire to be in South Florida. There is a nice pipeline of people out of the Northeast who are finding their way to Florida. Fort Lauderdale is looking attractive. Our emergence will be strong.

How has the city transformed its thinking in terms of its top priorities? We’ve had to reflect on the decline in tax revenues and how we deliver services, what is important versus what is not. As a city, we run an $850 million all-funds budget. People are most familiar with the general fund, because that is where their taxes go. About $340 million of our total budget comes from the general fund. We are forecasting that we will have to reduce spending by $20 million. The general fund portion not attributed to personnel costs amounts to $26 million. The reality is that you do not get that $20 million cut without deciding which positions are important and which are not in the short term. We froze about 150 general fund positions. We will look at them on an as-needed basis and we will have to make a case for restaffing them. It is a whole lot easier to hold vacant spots vacant than it is to decide that we need to go through massive layoffs, so we took that approach. We’re preparing for several years of flat to declining budget performance. We will have to be creative with our budget for some time.

How did the city help residents keep their spirits up in the past year? One of the things that we committed to in 2020 was a set of fundamental values that we were not going to let go of whether we had a pandemic or not. Our Fourth of July celebration last year, for example, was not something we were just going to let go; it’s known for having one of the largest fireworks displays in South Florida. While we did not have it at the beach and we did not have a big crowd, we still found a spot in each of the commission districts to launch fireworks on the Fourth of July. We encouraged people to view them from the comfort of their own home.