Plant City Observer YO UR HOMETO WN. YO UR NEWSPAP ER .
YOUR HOMETOWN. YOUR NEWSPAPER FREE
VOLUME 6, NO. 56
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THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 2019
INITIAL BUDGET WORKSHOP BRINGS THE HEAT The proposal of a change to the city’s financial policy last week led to a half hour discussion and fractured vote at a preliminary budget workshop for the upcoming fiscal year.
One sentence in the City of Plant City’s financial policies sparked a more than half-hour debate during the initial budget workshop last week when commissioners discussed the possibility of offering more power — and access to more money — to the city manager. It all began when Mayor Rick Lott brought up an issue that he said had been on his mind toward the end of the first hour of the meeting. It wasn’t on the agenda, it wasn’t something they had planned to dive deeply into, but it was something he felt desperately needed to be addressed before they considered moving forward into the next fiscal year. “Last year, we had a lot of large projects we had to get off the ground and this is the year they’re on the ground, we’re completing them,” Lott said. “Something
the city manager talks a lot about is the deep dive, that’s his words, that’s not my words, that’s his words, it’s the ‘deep dive.’ And if you don’t mind, we have 50 minutes, we don’t need lunch or dinner or whatever it’s called. I really think if I look at this year, and I think we’ll call this budget this year the ‘deep dive budget.’ It’s not in words in here and so forth, but this is our CEO we have here and so, in conversation with our city manager, our CEO, we talk about the deep dive, we got into our working documents and one of the working documents is our financial policies. Every year we approve our budget, we get into our financial policies and I don’t know how he’s going to be able to accomplish his deep dive with one sentence in our financial policies, I’d like to discuss with you in a minute.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
HIDDEN AMONG THE BRUSH
The community gathered Wednesday morning in honor of the discovery of a unique wetland found right here at the Plant City Commons Community Garden and Botanical Treasure Garden.
SEE PAGE 3