Mayor aims to educate public on Jacksonville budget

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With between $40 million and $60 million to cut from next year’s city budget, Jacksonville

Mayor John Peyton is launching a Web site and holding workshops aimed at getting taxpayers involved in the process early.

Part of Peyton’s motivation, he said, is to avoid the conflict and drama of last summer â€" when a $90 million hole led to a series of contentious meetings with the City Council and, ultimately, a 9 percent property tax increase.

Council President Richard Clark says he expects the city to be scraping for money the next three to five years â€" even if the economy turns around quickly.

The projected 2010-11 shortfall comes from declining tax revenues and rising employee-related costs Peyton described Thursday as “off the charts.”

The city has been in negotiations with unions since fall, proposing 3 percent salary cuts and reduced pension benefits for new employees. No deals have been reached.

Peyton says the Web site and workshops, which start next week , aren’t the start of a sales pitch â€" yet.

Last summer, when Peyton made upward of 50 budget speeches, the mayor was making his case to raise property taxes for the first time since 1992. He’d already crafted his budget by that point and was trying to get it through the council.

Today, a draft of the spending plan is still months away, but Peyton said he wants to give citizens an opportunity to understand the nearly $1 billion budget and what it takes to keep local government operating.

Once people learn the details behind the budget, there will be a “consensus that our government is not over-invested or bloated,” he said.

Guidance online
By visiting myjax budget.com , residents can get department-level information detailing where their tax dollars go.

People can sign up online for one of the budget workshops. On request, the city will also mail out information packets about several departments â€" the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, public libraries and or housing and neighborhoods.

At the workshops, city officials and the Jacksonville Community Council, a nonprofit think-tank, will go through the major functions of each department.

Attendees will then be asked to assign a priority level to various city services. The results will be compiled for use when Peyton and his staff sit down later to choose what gets funded.

“Having a depth of knowledge among the citizenry will make the difficult discussions go better, I think,” Peyton said.

Clark said he and the rest of the council will hold traditional town hall-style meetings to meet with constituents and balance the work from the mayor’s office.

Clark and Peyton sparred publicly during the budget talks last year, with Clark vowing to find more to cut, making  Peyton’s proposed 12 percent property tax hike unnecessary.

After months of hearings, the council still had to swallow a 9 percent rate increase.

Peyton will present his 2010-11 budget to the council in July.

http://jacksonville.com/news/2010-02-05/story/mayor_aims_to_educate_public_on_jacksonville_budget