Last year during tight times, Mayor Alvin Brown’s budget showed he would cut more than $366,000 from his office.
City Council agreed.
Almost a year later, council members learned Brown didn’t cut anything.
Instead, his office plugged that $366,546 hole by taking savings from a dozen other sources.
That didn’t sit well with several council members. Neither did the response by the administration.
“Why do we stick to a budget if that’s what happens?” Finance Committee Chair Richard Clark asked. “I’m at a loss.”
Others had similar reactions.
“Everyone else was disciplined and was supposed to hold tight,” said council member Bill Gulliford. “Yet, they busted their budget.”
Chris Hand, Brown’s chief of staff, acknowledged using the savings from other areas. But he explained to the committee the practice was part of the transfer directive process. He later said it was a responsible and prudent way to handle a budget that has limitations.
Council President Clay Yarborough said the administration didn’t adhere to the imposed restriction — and he was tempted to double the amount heading into next fiscal year.
Instead, the finance committee simply carried the figure forward — with additional money and restrictions meant to keep the office within its financial framework.
The lapse
The mayor’s office wasn’t the only part of city government that began with an extraordinary lapse in the budget Brown proposed last year.
The sheriff’s office, fire and rescue department, council and medical examiner’s office all had unidentified cuts in the budget Brown presented to council. Brown’s proposal had more than $60 million in cuts, with departments asked to trim 14 percent from their budgets.
Ultimately, the majority of those cuts were avoided after council passed a 14 percent property tax increase.
Just the mayor’s office and Supervisor of Elections Office had the extraordinary lapses remaining.
“It was what it was,” he said, declining to elaborate on last year’s budget process or speculating why council kept the office’s lapse intact.
Lapses like those in the mayor’s office can be taken care of throughout the year by individual departments reducing expenditures. Council members have said it’s a way for department heads to determine priorities and adjust accordingly.
Cuts weren’t made to fill Brown’s lapse, though. Transferring money did.
A dozen transfers totaling the $366,546 were approved last month by the Mayor’s Budget Review Committee, which consists of administration officials.
The largest, worth almost $81,000, came from savings in a contract with the Greater Jacksonville Agricultural Fair. Passed in 2012, the contract called for the city to offset expenses the fair would incur for moving dates in 2013 and 2014 to avoid conflicts with the annual Florida-Georgia game.
The next highest was $75,000 for permanent and probationary salaries for “Playgrounds & Centers.” The majority of the others ranged from $5,000 to $69,000 for unused pension contributions for employees who were never hired in various departments.
Hand said the finance department waited until fourth quarter for the transfers, because it provides a sense of where unspent money remains could be pulled without negatively impacting other departments.
The supervisor of elections was mainly able to meet its lapse after realizing savings from the election center’s move from Gateway to One Imeson, Hand said.
Hand said with just 3 percent of the mayor’s office budget not relating to uncontrollable internal service charges or personnel, it didn’t have the same opportunity.
“This is a budget that is almost entirely of people,” he said.
After reviewing the options, he said the responsible and prudent one was the one that made the most sense: use the transfer power to make the budget whole.
Council members didn’t see it the same way.
The backlash
The nine-member committee took the mayor’s office budget under review Aug. 28.
Hand said he met with members leading up to that meeting and received no questions after the review.
So, he said it came as a surprise when members brought the issue up Friday.
Clark was the first to inquire, asking how the $366,546 gap was so quickly filled.
Hand’s response about transfer triggered a back-and-forth between the two.
“So, you were over budget and instead of living within the budget that you were provided … you took money that other people had saved and balanced your budget,” Clark said.
Hand said he didn’t agree with that assessment.
A couple of hours later, the issue came back up with Yarborough leading the questioning.
“Why did the mayor recommend lapses to other departments for the budget this year, but did not live within the lapse that was placed on his own office?” he asked.
Hand responded that the mayor’s office was the only department with an extraordinary lapse and that during the budget process other areas of government had funds to help close the hole.
Yarborough said that action doesn’t justify deviating what council approved.
“That didn’t make the committee too enthralled,” he later said.
It showed the mayor’s office “decided to do what it felt like instead of what was approved” and “was basically thumbing its nose at council.”
“It’s not fair to all the other departments,” Yarborough said.
Clark said there always was an option: downsize.
“It’s what they were telling every other department to do,” he said.
The result
The response was swift.
Yarborough proposed rolling over the same $366,546 lapse into the mayor’s budget for the fiscal year. In addition, the amendment included a provision that any financial transfer to the mayor’s office had to first be approved by council — effectively serving as a way to block any such move.
The city charter and ordinance code currently allow for up to $500,000 to be transferred without council approval.
An additional $130,700 was tacked on during the final part of the meeting to cover a budget hole relating to the city’s Victim Services.
When combined with the 2 percent across-the-board cut the group has imposed to all city departments, the total lapse rises to almost $544,000. Brown proposed a fiscal 2014-15 budget of $3.9 million.
“There’s a penalty now,” Clark later said. “They will have to live within that.”
Hand said the decision to impose the extraordinary lapse onto next year’s budget was unexpected.
The amendment to limit the mayor’s transfer authority, he said, goes against the mayor’s authority granted by law.
“Obviously, we disagree with that,” Hand said of the decision.
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Here’s a breakdown of where the mayor’s office transferred funds from other areas to close the $366,546 lapse in its budget.
• $6,546 from Administration-Employee Services for pension contributions.
• $10,000 from Talent Management for pension contributions.
• $69,033 from Animal Care and Protective Services Division for pension contributions.
• $5,000 from Code Compliance for pension contributions.
• $12,000 from Surface Water Pollution Control for pension contributions.
• $15,000 from Administration-Intragovernmental Services for pension contributions.
• $45,000 from Public Buildings-Supervision for pension contributions.
• $15,000 from Traffic Engineering for permanent and probationary salaries.
• $15,000 from Traffic Engineering for pension contributions.
• $18,000 from Behavioral and Mental Health-General Assistant for pension contributions.
• $75,000 from Playgrounds and Centers for permanent and probationary salaries
• $80,967 from the Greater Jacksonville Agricultural Fair contract that wasn’t spent.
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