Stranger Than Fiction? Town Increases Services, Slashes Tax Rates

Robert Baldwin, since 2009 the city manager of the city of Dania Beach, Florida, attended the University of Florida to earn his masters degree in public administration, with a concentration in city management and budgeting. Since earning his degree in 1976, he has held several positions of increasing responsibility in municipal governments and law enforcement administration. In 1995, Robert Baldwin accepted the position of town manager for Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, a small town in Broward County dwarfed by its neighbors, Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach. When Robert Baldwin took the job of town manager, Lauderdale-by-the-Seas finances were in poor condition, and he took immediate action, freezing spending and leaving vacant positions unfilled. The only new hire he made was an accountant; the only new purchase a financial software package. Then he set out to accomplish what had been a pipe dream for the town for a long time: annexation of the unincorporated piece of land to the north, regionally known as South Beach, a small enclave of gated communities and pricy condominiums. The area had long resisted annexation, but Broward County made it clear that it wanted to be out of the business of providing essential services to unincorporated areas, especially those areas that were so close to major cities like Pompano Beach and Fort Lauderdale. However, those two cities couldnt allow South Beach to continue paying low taxes. Pompano Beachs tax rate was $7.50 per $1,000 of assessed value, and Fort Lauderdales was $5.74. Lauderdale-by-the-Seas, by contrast, was $4.85. And because annexing South Beach would increase its tax rolls by more than 50 percent, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea was in the enviable position of being able to promise lower taxes and more services. Annexation was a vexing issue for more than a decade, and it took Town Manager Baldwin five years to make it happen, but in the end, the vote on September 5, 2000, was anticlimactic; as 86 percent of the residents of South Beach voted to be annexed by Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, and the other 14 percent split among the two other cities or the choice of forming their own city.