What a difference a year makes.
Twelve months ago, the City Council Finance Committee on its first day of budget hearings stared at a nearly $20 million hole.
After Thursday, the first day of hearings for fiscal 2015-16, the group is up almost $1 million.
Last year, members didn’t like revenue projections Mayor Alvin Brown’s team proposed. They didn’t like $37 million in reserves being used as a balancing tool. Wholesale cuts to Brown’s proposed investments followed.
Now, the different vibe already is apparent. Bill Gulliford, the veteran chair of the committee, chalks the difference up to trust.
“From the very outset last year and the years before, it was bad,” he said, “because we knew we were being had. They didn’t give us a balanced budget and consequently, we just felt victimized from the very start … and that doesn’t make for good relationships or a good process.”
Revenue this year was mostly accepted. There weren’t any wholesale cuts, because there was no funding crater to climb.
The differences stretched beyond the working relationship between the committee and mayoral administration. In years past, Sheriff John Rutherford had vehemently pushed for more funding. Last year, Rutherford wanted 40 police officers and 40 community service officers added. Yet, with the upward funding climb the committee had, Rutherford was resigned it wasn’t to be. He blamed Brown for not providing the funding source, a disconnect that grew over the coming months.
This year, new Sheriff Mike Williams never raised his voice like his predecessor felt he had to at times. Williams didn’t have to.
Curry’s budget has money for an additional 25 officers and 40 community service officers and their related equipment. The remaining 15 officers were covered by a grant.
Williams also did his part toward saving, cutting almost $400,000 from the sheriff’s office budget by eliminating a couple of chief positions and two other spots. The committee applauded him for the effort and sticking to a campaign promise.
Afterward, Williams said further reorganization could be on the way but declined to reveal specifics, citing consideration to those personnel currently in place.
Yet, while the differences between this year and last year were noticeable, the committee couldn’t avoid longstanding issues that again reared.
During the morning, it was funding for UF Health. City money toward the indigent service provider has remained relatively flat for a dozen or so years. This year, it’s again at a little more than $26 million.
Penny Thompson, the hospital’s vice president of government affairs, told the group its ask this year was for another $7.5 million.
She admitted she was confident the request wouldn’t be granted, but said bumping the overall amount to $30 million or so would help.
That amount would show a good-faith effort to the Legislature, which spent $400 million this summer to offset federal cuts toward hospitals.
Some council members, led by Lori Boyer, proposed the idea of setting aside a contingency account that could go toward the hospital. How much would end up there wouldn’t be known yet.
Sam Mousa, Curry’s chief administrative officer, said such a contingency would be an “unwise decision” and strongly recommended against it until a budgetary bottom line was determined.
Instead, he said Curry was “totally committed” to UF Health and was organizing a workshop with local leaders for the first week of September. The goal, he said, was to find a “full and final” resolution to the hospital’s funding issue.
Public service grants, a thorny issue in years past, also were of concern to council members.
Overall, a little more than $2 million is set aside for nonprofits that serve homeless, elderly, hungry and others.
Yet, council member John Crescimbeni and others have an issue with the way grants are awarded.
“It’s all screwed up, that’s why I want to just start all over again,” Crescimbeni said afterward.
He cited problems brought to his attention on separate occasions.
One involved four to five organizations complaining their applications weren’t considered because they didn’t provide the right information.
Crescimbeni said the problem, though, was that the ordinance didn’t say the organizations had to submit what was being asked.
“They were making up their own rules,” he said of the administrators.
He has further concern with how some board members weren’t grading applications at all.
His solution is to hold the funding amount in place, but have the applications rescored.
It’s been a problem for too long, said Gulliford, who asked Finance Committee members and others to form a subcommittee and address the problems.
“It’s been in disarray,” he said.
Anna Lopez Brosche, the Finance Committee vice chair, will lead that group.
Budget hearings resume today for an all-day session, with topics including the Jacksonville Public Library and Office of Inspector General.
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