After more than an hour of debate, the Jacksonville City Council approved legislation April 25 that allows city agencies to cease publishing public notices in the Jacksonville Daily Record and The Florida Times-Union print and online newspapers and move them to a city-controlled website.
Council voted 14-4 to pass Ordinance 2023-0187.
Mayor Lenny Curry’s bill does not require or mandate city departments to pull notices from Duval County’s two papers of record but gives city officials the option to publish them on a publicly accessible website that would be maintained and managed by the Information Technology department.
Council approved a substitute bill passed the Council Land Use and Zoning Committee and supported by the Curry administration that was wider-reaching and encompasses all government agency notices.
Examples of public notices include advertising property zoning and land use changes, public hearing notices and public auctions.
Curry administration officials say the legislation will change city code to mirror the Florida statute changed in 2022 to give city and county governments the option to take over online publishing and curating of notices.
“I think it’s worthwhile to get the code in a position where this (public notices) can be a part of adopting technology,” said Brian Hughes, city chief administrative officer.
Council members opposed to the bill are concerned it could lead to confusion for businesses and residents who have been accessing public notices in print and on newspaper websites for decades.
Council member Matt Carlucci called the bill “bad public policy.”
“I’m for more noticing. I’m for more accountability. And I’m for allowing citizens more places to know what is going on in their city government,” Carlucci said.
Council struck down a substitute bill introduced by Carlucci on April 25 that would have allowed the city to establish the public notices website while keeping the mandate to publish in newspapers in city code for at least three years.
It also would have required a cost-comparison analysis of the two methods over that period.
Council members Al Ferraro, Tyrona Clark-Murray and Joyce Morgan joined Carlucci in voting against the administration's bill.
Carlucci and Clark-Murray said that removing notices from print would be less transparent and accessible for certain Duval County residents who don’t have internet access.
Clark-Murray criticized the legislation for not having an implementation plan. Clark-Murray said she didn’t “see the necessity of this bill,” noting the Daily Record has published public notices in Duval County since 1912.
The Daily Record and Times-Union are paid for providing the service.
Two members of the public spoke in support of Carlucci’s substitute bill.
“We have become immune to the real cost of doing business. When a city’s budget is in excess of $1.5 billion, it’s easy to forget from where that money came (from),” said one of them, Duval County resident Kathleen Murray.
Council member Randy DeFoor, who ultimately voted for the Land Use and Zoning substitute bill, expressed concern during a Council committee hearing April 18 that it could expose the city to additional legal liability and require more city staff.
Hughes called the cost “nominal” but did not provide a specific dollar amount when asked by DeFoor for the city’s anticipated cost.
“The cost is far less and I would argue nominal if you want to assign a value to it,” Hughes said.
“It is absolutely, unequivocally less than what we spend. We have existing infrastructure, database, ITD (Information Technology Department) already has the fundamental site checked by OGC (the city Office of General Counsel) all done within our ITD budget this year with no additional expense.”
Hughes said employees in every city department involved in the legal notice process could handle the remainder of the work completed by the Daily Record and Times-Union.
The Curry administration told Council Auditors that it cost the city $11,165 to develop its public notice interface on the city’s website.
The bill includes a recommended auditor’s amendment that will require city departments to file a 30-day notice with Council before they switch from newspapers to the public website and include a cost comparison analysis.
Before the bill was amended, the Council Auditor questioned the Curry administration via email whether spreadsheets it provided detailing how much the city spent with local newspapers on public notices over a three-year period satisfied the state’s cost analysis requirement.
Another amendment by Brenda Priestly Jackson and supported by the Curry administration allows Council members the ability to request any notice be published in the newspapers as well as online.
But Priestly Jackson called the possible shift in how the city publishes legal notices “a radical change.”
“I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say there’s really some grand amount of cost savings. I’m just going to be very candid,” she said.
“If we’re talking about $150,000 per year to let a city full of a million people be on notice for what’s going on and we have done it this way since the Daily Record has been in effect since 1912, then that’s the cost of doing business.”
Daily Record Publisher Angela Campbell told the Council members that in 2022 the newspaper published about 1,300 public notices for city and county agencies for less than $150,000, or about $100 per ad.
“This cost includes notification to property owners in print, in searchable format on jaxdailyrecord.com, our free publicly accessible website, and notifications are available by notification or text alert,” she said.
Administration officials provided Council members with a spreadsheet that shows the city spent a total of $512,582 on notices in the Daily Record and Times-Union from fiscal year 2020 through March 13, 2023. The spreadsheet shows the city paid the two newspapers a total of $166,823 for notices and legal advertising in 2022.
“An accounting record spent to local newspapers over the last four years does not satisfy the Florida statute requirement that places this decision before you tonight,” Campbell said. “As your third-party transparency partner, the Jacksonville Daily Record holds liability for every notice published with us.”
Campbell listed the services that the Daily Record and Times-Union employees provide in the public noticing process like proofreading and confirming accuracy and ensuring the notice is published for the legally required time frame.
She urged Council to ensure all city costs for in-house, online publishing be itemized in the department cost analyses to show the taxpayer impact.
“All of these costs, plus development and maintenance of your own publicly accessible website, the notification database for every department and city agency, labor, materials and postage, along with the added legal liability must by state statute cost less than the average $100 you pay us,” she said.
The administration says the transition to its in-house website does not have a timeline and Hughes said it could take months.
“There’s no way for me to turn a spigot off tomorrow on one and turn it on the other. It simply cannot happen. We’re still giving a lot of latitude to departments,” Hughes said.
