by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
“It’s time to talk about the budget not in terms of dollars and cents but in terms of priorities to keep Jacksonville moving in the right direction. If we don’t get public safety right, everything else will be for naught,” was how Mayor John Peyton summed up his proposed 2008-09 City budget Monday at the meeting of the Rotary Club of Jacksonville.
“Our police officers are in combat on the streets of Jacksonville,” he added, then pointed out that while murders get the most news coverage, the actual cost of violent crime goes far beyond capital crime.
“We focus on murder but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot going on we don’t hear about. For every person who is murdered, 48 people go to the emergency room and five are hospitalized,” said Peyton.
He commended the 140 community leaders who at his request participated in developing the Jacksonville Journey anticrime initiative.
“I have never seen a better work product. All of the recommendations were relevant and important but I had to decide which of the recommendations would be housed in City Hall and which would be in the private sector,” said Peyton.
Putting more police officers on the street is an important part of the plan, but so are prevention and intervention and Peyton said those are areas “we have underinvested in and we need after school programs for kids to keep them active and put them on the right path. Absent that, the criminal element has a recruitment pool. We have to cut off the criminals’ supply chain by making it more difficult to be a criminal and getting the kids before they are exposed (to that element). The taxpayers are funding prosecution and incarceration. It’s much less costly to provide prevention and intervention.
“I’m convinced we can win this war and succeed in turning the tide.”
When asked about how he arrived at decisions about which parts of the initiative to fund through the budget and which would have to depend on the private sector for implementation, Peyton gave two examples of the process.
“One of the challenges of being mayor is to be accountable. I chose not to budget $1 million (recommended by the Journey committee) to fund the mentoring initiative because the limiting factor on mentoring is not funding, it’s finding people to do it. Our goal is to recruit and place 1,500 mentors and it’s up to the private sector.
“I also chose not to pay for career counselors and social workers in the public schools. The City should not be funding the School Board. That’s the responsibility of our State legislators. They’re not doing enough now and I’m not going to make it easier for them,” he said.
Peyton also addressed the reasoning behind his decision not to ask for an increase in property taxes to fund the Jacksonville’s Journey’s $30 million share of the $972 million budget. He said it’s about timing.
“A lot of people in this community are hurting right now. Electric rates are going up and so is the number of people who are having their service disconnected. Gas is $4 a gallon and so many homes are in foreclosure.
“I think it would demoralize this community to have a (property) tax increase in this environment,” he said then added, “We found the $30 million by revising how we do business. We have done an extraordinary job in rerouting funds. Some (City) departments are sacrificing for the sake of public safety, but it must be done.”
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