by David Ball
Staff Writer
With Monday’s scheduled presentation of Major John Peyton’s annual budget only days away, City Council President Daniel Davis sat down with Council Finance Committee Chair Art Shad Wednesday to begin discussing what could be one of the most tumultuous budget seasons since consolidation.
Governments across Florida are having to deal with budget cuts mandated by property tax legislation passed by the State Legislature this summer. In short, governments are required to reduce taxing levels for the 2007-08 budget year to between 3 and 7 percent below the taxing levels of the 2006-07 (current) budget year.
A second component is a constitutional amendment to greatly expand the current $25,000 homestead exemption, but it would not go into effect unless approved by a statewide referendum in January.
“In this budget, we should be preparing for what happens in January,” Davis told Shad. “We need to have a five-year view of the city’s budget.”
Davis asked that all 19 council members, with about half entering their first-ever terms, be required to attend the first public budget hearing scheduled for Aug. 16 to go over “the technical side of how the budget works, because we’ve got so many new guys,” he said.
Davis and Shad quickly moved to discussions of the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department, where budget cuts are feared to cause a significant drop in service and even some fire stations to close. Davis asked Shad to be as “conservative as possible” in trimming that budget, and Shad agreed.
“It will be hard to cut back on fire,” said Shad, “especially when the response times are where they are.”
Davis then moved on to public service grants, asking for every cut to be “defensible.”
Shad added the Council needs to be careful in cutting some grants that are required in order to receive additional federal dollars.
“It would be silly to cut a $20,000 public service grant that got us $1 million,” he said.
Davis said there may be other areas where he’d like to see more cuts made, and he’d like to see the city “diversify its revenue stream,” but he won’t have any specific details until the budget is officially presented.
“We’ve cut for the last three years,” said Davis. “At some point, it gets pretty difficult to find more places to do it.”