Mayor Lenny Curry’s first budget goes into effect today.
It also marks the point where he’ll stop talking about the spending plan and instead focus on what’s next.
That includes unfunded pension liabilities, the $2.7 billion problem without a funding solution.
It’s an issue he’s pledged to solve in his four years. It’s also one that could have failures before success.
Plan A might not work, he said, so it’d be on to Plan B. Plan B could lead to Plan C. A Plan D might hatch, if necessary.
“We’re going to solve that problem,” he told members of a JAX Chamber young professionals group Wednesday.
He said the first attempt to solve pension woes are still in conceptual stages, numerous options are on the table “that I am going to explore deeply.”
What those options are he declined to elaborate, saying it could be “detrimental to success.”
Yet, there is one item that isn’t on the table.
Plan A won’t include a tax increase.
“You never start with a new tax on people,” he said.
For more than a year, some City Council members have seen that as a viable option.
Council member Bill Gulliford says a sales-tax option is one that would be more fair than a property tax increase.
It could create more than $60 million to help pay down those unfunded liabilities — $1.6 billion in police and fire, $121 million in corrections officers and $910 million in general employees plans.
A complicated, never-before-used tax increase on fire rescue services and facilities would need voter approval and require a property tax decrease in the same amount.
But it would free up the ability to levy such a sales tax.
Other municipalities across the state have greater capacity to seek such increase, which irks Matt Schellenberg. As a consolidated government, Jacksonville has limitations.
“I am a great believer in home rule,” said Schellenberg. “Everybody should play by the same rules.”
He said he also hopes upcoming collective bargaining sessions with unions might be able to provide some form of savings to reduce the financial burden.
In the meantime, council members and city attorneys have been working on a request to the state Attorney General’s Office for clarity and logistics of the sales tax measure. But Gulliford says as of now, “it looks like the only option.”
“I know the mayor makes a ‘no new tax’ pledge, but the difference here is he’s not raising taxes,” said Gulliford. “He wouldn’t be involved … he’d be involved in allowing the people to decide.”
He said Curry and his administration know the sales-tax effort is in motion. But, he’s ready to hear another possible solution.
“God bless them if they find something,” he said.
Curry said he and his team were still formulating that first plan and it would be unveiled before the end of the year.
The sooner a plan is initiated, the better it will be on city books.
The city is contributing $263 million toward the three pension plans for fiscal year 2015-16. With unfunded liability wiped out, it’d be closer to $73 million.
The difference, Curry said Wednesday, could be spent on infrastructure, Downtown, public safety and a host of other investments.
Left unsolved, the price tag rises by millions in the coming years.
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