by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
With the deed to the Osborn Center essentially in safe keeping, the City can now use the 2 percent bed tax previously used to maintain the convention center for other purposes.
Monday, the City Council Finance Committee voted to shift the use of the local bed tax to what is called the Sports Complex Capital Maintenance Enterprise Fund. Once the full Council approves the legislation, those funds — expected to be $4.766 million in this fiscal year — can be used to maintain the facilities the City owns at the Sports Complex. Specifically, the funds will be used for the construction, extending, enlarging, remodeling, repairing, improving or maintaining the Baseball Grounds, the Arena and Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. Those facilities are managed by SMG, but there currently isn’t a dedicated funding source for the upkeep of those venues.
And, the vote comes at a good time. Council Vice President Jack Webb, who sits on the Finance Committee, said he and his family got stuck on an elevator at Saturday’s Florida-Georgia game with close to 50 other people.
“It was a scary situation. Was it from a lack of ongoing maintenance? Maybe,” he said. “People got off saying, ‘Why not Atlanta?’ These are the kinds of things we can’t let slip through the cracks.”
Atlanta has put in a proposal to host the game once every four years. Webb said the incident isn’t nearly enough reason for Jacksonville to lose the game. However, without a maintenance fund for the city’s Sports Complex, money for general upkeep and routine maintenance may not exist.
According to Janice Billy of the Council Auditor’s Office, the fund won’t sunset — expire — until Council votes otherwise the expected revenue will be an annual budget item.
Council President Richard Clark cosponsored the bill with Webb.
“We will incur over $100 million in maintenance costs in the next 20-30 years,” he said, adding the bond market may improve in a few years and that would allow the City to borrow money for major projects around the Sports Complex.
In other news from the Finance meeting:
• The Committee voted unanimously — and without comment or discussion — to defeat a bill that would have reduced the Council salaries by 50 percent. The bill was sponsored by Council member Art Shad who introduced it Aug. 11. Earlier Monday, the Council Rules Committee also voted it down, 6-1.
• A bill to spend about $1.4 million from the City’s Group Health Account was deferred. According to Millie Reeves of the City’s Human Resources Department, the funds are necessary to pay for the health insurance premiums of 456 additional City employees.
“We actually hired more people last year than expected,” said Reeves, adding many of the additions to the City’s plan are the dependents of City employees. “This is not an exact science and this is the first time we have ever been short like this. People are losing their jobs and they are bringing their dependents into the plan.”
Finance Chair Stephen Joost, who led this year’s budget sessions, said he knew the Council approved 40 new police officers, but he had no idea so many more had been hired.
“I’m a little perplexed,” he said. “We added 456 employees? I know we hired 40 new officers. That leaves 416. Where are they?”
• On an emergency basis, the Finance Committee approved a bill that will move $63,000 from the Courts Innovations/Judicial Support Account to help pay senior judges who have worked more than originally budgeted.
Senior judges are those who have retired from the Fourth Judicial Circuit and fill in on an as-needed basis. Their hours have been exhausted thanks to huge caseloads in the circuit, the passing of Circuit Court Judge Peter Fryefield and the retirement of Circuit Court Judge Michael Weatherby.
“At the rate we are going, we are going to be out of senior judge hours in December,” said Court Administrator Joe Stelma, adding that some judges currently have caseloads that number close to 600.
356-2466