A Tale of Three Cities: Weston: City Government Lite

Of all the chamber of commerce-type promotions for Weston, there is one thing that screams its success as a young city.

It is not the 14 city parks in which leaders take great pride. It’s not the rather lavish new city hall building. It’s not the full range of police, fire and rescue, building and zoning and community services in place. It’s not even the full control of its growth future and self-determination, which is indeed one of the major benefits proponents of incorporation sought.

Rather, it’s this rather eye-popping stat for a city of 64,000 residents. Total number of city employees: nine.

Weston is as fully contracted out a city as is possible. All nine employees are directors of a department of the city but largely act as contract control agents with the 30 major private contractors handling the work of the city.

“We kept our promise; it works,” said City Manager John Flint, a longtime resident who was a CDD supervisor before the city incorporated.

Like Bonita Springs and Wellington, Weston has outsourced its police department to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and also kept the fire and rescue operations through the county. But Weston went even further, contracting out for everything from planning and zoning down to the receptionist at the desk entering City Hall.

“We have the lowest tax rate in Broward County,” Flint said.

But there is more to it. A recent study for Broward County found that when all taxes, fees and other governmental assessments on citizens are combined, Weston becomes the cheapest place in the county to live — at least as far as government expenses go.

And unlike some other cities, particularly Wellington, Weston breezed to city-hood with little opposition and an ultimate vote of 90% in favor. Getting nine out of 10 people to agree on anything is a rarity, but the city did it in a post-Labor Day election that drew a surprisingly high 40% voter turnout.

Nearly obstacle free
Weston was an Arvida Corp. master-planned community known as Indian Trace and originally approved for 25,000 dwelling units, later reduced to 17,000. The developer created the Indian Trace Community Development District to govern the community. The structure is similar to Lakewood Ranch’s own CDDs.

The first homes were built in 1984, and by 1991, there were more than 5,000 residents in Indian Trace and residents became the majority on the Board of Supervisors of the CDD. In 1994, an incorporation feasibility study was conducted, concluding that if the community incorporated, it would gain control of its own growth management and would keep more if its property tax dollars in Indian Trace.

“Prior to incorporating, we were under the governance of the Broward County Board of County Commissioners sitting in downtown Fort Lauderdale 20 miles away,” Flint said.

That rankled residents, who did not feel the county commissioners, often consumed with other issues, paid much attention to the city’s growth needs. Indeed, the community had no representative on the county commission.

Plus, like so many upscale, unincorporated areas, Indian Trace was a net donor of tax dollars, meaning that more taxes were sent to the county coffers than the community received back in services.

Flint sums up the driving factors for incorporation in two words: “Zoning and cash.”

There were not many obstacles. Arvida Corp. was worried it might lose its entitlements to develop its properties the way the county had approved. So proponents included in the charter that the developer would retain all of its vested development rights, and those would only change if the developer requested it.

Also, Broward County firefighters were apprehensive that the new city would start its own fire department, risking their job security.

“They worried those of us in favor were empire building,” Flint said.

It was a matter of education and promise-keeping to assuage those fears.

The education paid off when 40% of the residents voted the day after Labor Day in 1996 to become the city of Weston.

Promises kept
Flint makes the conversion from upscale subdivisions and golf courses to city sound pretty easy. In fact, it was for Weston.

With almost no opposition and overwhelming resident support, the leaders of the new city needed only to not overplay their newfound powers and create a monster.

They didn’t. As Flint repeats, they kept their promise and have shaved the city to as small a size as possible.

But the city parents also developed a good handle on what the first five years of being a city would cost and whether an incorporated Weston was up to the task of maintaining infrastructure. Surprises in that area could have changed the Weston tale, but they turned out to have good order in those first years. Flint said there is nothing they would change in the charter.

On the promise of keep city overhead small, Weston unarguably has met or exceeded expectations. The entire staff of the city of Weston, population 64,000, is the city manager, assistant city manager, chief financial officer, chief operating officer, treasurer, city clerk, director of communications, director of parks and recreation and director of landscaping. Everyone else is a private-sector employee on contract with the city.

But Weston also has been increasing its millage rate every year since 2006 — when it was about 1.5 mills — to the current level of 2 mills.

Weston has built itself a well appointed, $6 million City Hall. The 15,000-square-foot facility houses the department heads, contract secretaries, meeting rooms and the commission chambers.

Weston has some other unique arrangements, including maintaining the Indian Trace CDD as a simpler development district that issued bonds and assessed fees for infrastructure needs. But it was retained as a “dependent district,” meaning the Weston City Commissioners and the district’s board are the same people.

Weston also has annexed some properties since becoming a city, including land along U.S. 27, which is now the city’s western border with the Everglades, and property along Interstate 75 and State Road 84. The development of Bonaventure also voted to become part of Weston in 1997.

But it is not the unique arrangements, the tiny size of city government or the lower taxes that makes Weston’s story. The story is written by a lot of people who find a unique home in the city in the middle of Southeast Florida’s 5.5 million-person hubbub.

Weston was named one of the 25 most affordable suburbs in 1996 in the United States by BusinessWeek.com and was named “One of America’s Best Small Cities” by Money Magazine in 2008, one of only three Florida cities.