by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
“This is the fifth budget I have presented. It is the most high-profile and most important,” said Mayor John Peyton Monday morning in the City Council chambers.
Peyton began his remarks by pointing out his fifth appearance to present a proposed City budget was like none other in his experience.
“We now have a different world and that requires us to look at things differently,” he said and described Jacksonville as “the dolphin caught in the tuna net” when Gov. Charlie Crist’s tax reform package was passed by the State legislature in response to what Peyton called “the enormous tax burden in other parts of the state.”
Peyton then laid out a plan to address the next fiscal year’s expected $65 million revenue shortfall by reducing expenses with budget cuts and restructuring City government to eliminate duplicated services. The proposal also includes what Peyton called “diversifying the City’s income to reduce reliance on property taxes” with new fees on residential solid waste service, stormwater runoff and a franchise fee that will be added to utility bills.
He said the garbage and stormwater fees are already in place in virtually every other municipality in Florida. According to his calculations, taking into account the reduction in property taxes and the levying of the new user and franchise fees, the average homeowner in Duval County will have $79 more in their bank account in 2007-08 than under the current budget.
Peyton also said the reorganization plan would eliminate the existing 12 City departments and replace them with eight new and more efficient “business units.” The plan also would eliminate 55 City jobs and result in a savings of $3 million.
Even after cutting $38.5 million out of the budget by reducing expenditures in departments including public safety, capital maintenance and Public Service Grants, the budget is still $26.5 million short based on projected costs and revenues.
Peyton said he and his staff chose to balance the budget with the new user fees rather than lobby the Council to override the statutory rollback from Tallahassee due to penalties the City would absorb by the act. He added that failure to diversify income would maintain the City’s reliance on property taxes for revenue, which Peyton called “an unreliable source.”
“It’s not in our long-term best interest to override the State. We’re a growing community and our services costs will continue to rise. We know we cannot continue to cut funding and still provide quality services, but property tax revenue is no longer a reliable source of income.
“It also positions us for the ‘great unknown’,” he said, referring to the constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot in January. If it is enacted, Peyton said the first post-amendment budget shortfall for Jacksonville could be $100 million – and he expects the amendment will be the choice of a majority of Florida’s voters.
The other guiding principle behind the proposed budget, Peyton said, was to find a way to reduce the costs of public safety while “not removing a single police officer from the street or closing a single fire station. We can reduce public safety spending while excluding (any impact on) first responders.”
“Change is difficult but we must triumph in this new marketplace,” said Peyton. “We owe it to the architects of consolidation, we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to our children. The City has risen to the challenge.”
The City’s Chief Operating Officer, Alan Mosley, said the budget proposal is the product of many late nights at City Hall, but throughout the entire process, Peyton never waivered from his belief in the value of the “diversified and sustainable” concepts.
“The State changed the rules and we had to come up with a plan to compensate for that,” said Mosley.
After the presentation, Dist. 4 Council member Don Redman, who’s newly-elected and heard his first budget address Monday, said he couldn’t compare the mayor’s 2007-08 proposal to past budgets but the part about eliminating duplicated services makes sense to him based on his experience.
Council member Art Shad, chair of the Finance Committee, said the committee will now begin to “dig deeper into the budget” and has scheduled a public meeting Aug. 16 at 9 a.m. when the Council Auditor will present an overview of the proposals.