“This is the most difficult budget year the county has ever faced.”
– Palm Beach County Administrator Bob Weisman, June 6, 2011
– also June 8, 2010
–also May 28, 2009

Crafting a budget for the Palm Beach County government keeps getting more difficult.

Palm Beach County Administrator Bob Weisman unveiled a spending plan for 2011-12 on Monday and called the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 “the most difficult budget year the county has ever faced.”

Weisman used the exact same language a year ago when he proposed a 2010-11 budget.

And he used the exact same sentence two years ago to describe the 2009-10 budget year.

Palm Beach County commissioners are scheduled to vote Tuesday on extending longtime County Administrator Bob Weisman’s contract for another year. His current contract runs through the end of 2013. No change in Weisman’s current $251,593 salary is proposed.

Commissioners tapped Weisman, a former Water Utilities director and assistant county administrator, for the top job at the end of 1991 when former county administrator Jan Winters resigned. Weisman’s pay for 1992 was $105,000.

If Palm Beach County Commissioner Jess Santamaria and attorney Elissa Pearl collide in a Democratic primary next year, expect some debate over Santamaria’s past remarks about running for reelection.

“I don’t like politics. Running for a second term is politics. … I’m only interested in serving for four solid years of public service,” Santamaria said in 2007.

But that wasn’t a flat declaration against running again.

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Palm Beach County Administrator Bob Weisman told a roomful of Acreage residents on Thursday that he had cancer and underwent surgery last year to treat it.

It was the first time Weisman has discussed his cancer publicly. The revelation came during a meeting of several hundred residents concerned about a potential brain-cancer cluster in their community, where state environmental regulators plan to draw samples from private drinking water wells.

“I personally suffer from cancer,” Weisman told the crowd. “I had surgery last year. I’m in testing right now. I live in Wellington on public water. My neighbor has a different problem on public water in Wellington right next door from me. I can’t explain it. I don’t know why I got it. But these things just happen.”

Weisman declined to discuss the cancer in more detail Friday.

Some residents at the meeting wanted to know why the county hasn’t done more to connect the community to public utility lines.

Weisman said his daughter lives in The Acreage with her husband.

“My daughter is of child-bearing age and she lives in the central north Acreage. She has lived there for a year. She just got married. She is living there right now, but that is not why we do anything here or not. These are all honest people who have their job. This is what they live for. Public health.”

Asked whether he would encourage his daughter to stay in the neighborhood, Weisman said: “Yes, because I don’t know there is a problem that I can identify.”