More than 100 city staff positions, libraries, fire stations and community centers fall victim to financial woes in budget.
QuoteJacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown's proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year calls for $61 million in service reductions.
The reductions include the elimination of 120 positions and the closing of fire stations, libraries and swimming pools, according to the $953 million budget delivered to City Council Friday afternoon. It does not include a property tax increase, a promise Brown made during his campaign.
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2013-07-13/story/more-100-city-staff-positions-libraries-fire-stations-and-community#ixzz2Z1NLopTM
Does anyone know if what the Mayor submitted to the Council falls under Sunshine? Could the public get a copy of it? As much as I love a leader who makes cuts, a discussion on another thread here has made me begin to wonder how much of this is a ploy to get citizens to bully the council to go along with the Mayor on the pension.
Quote from: JayBird on July 14, 2013, 08:32:04 AM
Does anyone know if what the Mayor submitted to the Council falls under Sunshine? Could the public get a copy of it?
yes...in fact, it will likely be on the COJ website tomorrow
Quote from: tufsu1 on July 14, 2013, 09:36:28 AM
Quote from: JayBird on July 14, 2013, 08:32:04 AM
Does anyone know if what the Mayor submitted to the Council falls under Sunshine? Could the public get a copy of it?
yes...in fact, it will likely be on the COJ website tomorrow
Yep, under the "Transparency" link. ??? :(
Quote from: spuwho on July 14, 2013, 01:58:30 PM
Quote from: tufsu1 on July 14, 2013, 09:36:28 AM
Quote from: JayBird on July 14, 2013, 08:32:04 AM
Does anyone know if what the Mayor submitted to the Council falls under Sunshine? Could the public get a copy of it?
yes...in fact, it will likely be on the COJ website tomorrow
Yep, under the "Transparency" link. ??? :(
As in so transparent that you can't see it? lol
Quote from: thelakelander on July 14, 2013, 08:11:50 AM
More than 100 city staff positions, libraries, fire stations and community centers fall victim to financial woes in budget.
QuoteJacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown's proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year calls for $61 million in service reductions.
The reductions include the elimination of 120 positions and the closing of fire stations, libraries and swimming pools, according to the $953 million budget delivered to City Council Friday afternoon. It does not include a property tax increase, a promise Brown made during his campaign.
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2013-07-13/story/more-100-city-staff-positions-libraries-fire-stations-and-community#ixzz2Z1NLopTM
When speaking with David DeCamp the other day, the budget came up. I told him there are a lot of people who wouldn't mind paying the roll up rate to address the short fall. He mentioned that while I and my neighbors may not mind, there were a lot of people that would mind, and that the Mayor promised no new taxes while campaigning. He pitched the Mayor's pension reform deal as the solution.
For the record, the average home owner would pay $70.00 more per year in taxes if the roll up rate were adopted.
Quote from: tufsu1 on July 14, 2013, 09:36:28 AM
Quote from: JayBird on July 14, 2013, 08:32:04 AM
Does anyone know if what the Mayor submitted to the Council falls under Sunshine? Could the public get a copy of it?
yes...in fact, it will likely be on the COJ website tomorrow
Thx, you were right, on the home page it was front and center.
http://www.MyJaxBudget.com (http://www.myjaxbudget.com)
Taking Jacksonville to the next level down!
What I found amusing is that he wont raise taxes because he promise he wouldnt. He's broken every other promise he has made, so why not break this one and not cut city services. I am fairly new tax payer (bout my home last year) and I dont mind an increase. Do whatever it takes to keep our city afloat.
For those interested, here is the video of his speech to the council, and a link to the transcript. Sorry, haven't learned how to embed video so maybe someone with more knowledge than I can.
Mayor Alvin Brown Presents: The Budget That Will Save Jacksonville, Give Taxpayers More Spending Money, and Explains How Many Licks It Really Does Take to Get to the Center of a Tootsie Roll Pop.
http://youtu.be/tBT_27LhJxM (http://youtu.be/tBT_27LhJxM)
http://MyJaxBudget.com (http://myjaxbudget.com)
Just downloaded his proposal, but at over 400 pages will most likely not comment on it until Wednesday or Thursday. Thankfully, the Council has until October.
Quote from: duvaldude08 on July 15, 2013, 03:17:16 PM
What I found amusing is that he wont raise taxes because he promise he wouldnt. He's broken every other promise he has made, so why not break this one and not cut city services. I am fairly new tax payer (bout my home last year) and I dont mind an increase. Do whatever it takes to keep our city afloat.
what promises has he broken?
The taxes issue is why I would never promise to either raise or lower them. If I were Mayor Brown I would have campaigned to do "everything in my power to keep taxes the same!" Im sure there are many out there that wouldn't like that line but he wouldn't feel like he was in the position of having to "break his promise" now to even consider that as an option.
^ agreed...the only candidate last time willing to say that was Audrey Moran
Raising taxes? The process of cutting back, running a lean city, makes it easier to raise taxes. We "must" pay taxes to build and maintain the infrastructure of a modern city..... schools, police, fire departments, jails, libraries.
Mayor Brown is right by trimming down first, forcing all departments to efficiency. Once taxpayers perceive that waste is eliminated, then most will look favorably at a needed tax increase. To gain support for new taxes, stupid projects, doomed to failure, must be avoided.
The 2012 to 2013 Library budget dropped from 38.2 to 33.9 million, while the Sheriff's Department increased from 345.9 to 358.5 million. Spending more on the machine of imprisonment, and less on the fundamental causes of imprisonment, only ensures an environment which builds more prisons and destroys more lives.
Not being a competitive enterprise, a governmental agency such as the Sheriff's Department has little pressure to achieve efficiency. Therefore, if not reigned in, a wasteful Sheriff's Department can absorb huge amounts of available funds -- a momentum supported by the often stated, "Public Safety is at risk", or "We need more officers on the street".
Funneling money from education and youth programs, and from efforts to create jobs, and carelessly increasing the officers on the street, will only ensure an increased need for officers.
The effective problem solver focuses on the fundamental cause of a problem, not on the results of it. The habit in America is to enlarge the machine that incarcerates, avoiding attention to the the conditions forcing incarceration. Prisons and jails are businesses now, more intent on changing inmates into monsters, than on assisting those trapped within to prepare for a productive life.
Quote from: ronchamblin on July 15, 2013, 11:23:37 PM
Spending more on the machine of imprisonment, and less on the fundamental causes of imprisonment, only ensures an environment which builds more prisons and destroys more lives.
Not being a competitive enterprise, a governmental agency such as the Sheriff's Department has little pressure to achieve efficiency. Therefore, if not reigned in, a wasteful Sheriff's Department can absorb huge amounts of available funds -- a momentum supported by the often stated, "Public Safety is at risk", or "We need more officers on the street".
The effective problem solver focuses on the fundamental cause of a problem, not on the results of it. The habit in America is to enlarge the machine that incarcerates, avoiding attention to the the conditions forcing incarceration. Prisons and jails are businesses now, more intent on changing inmates into monsters, than on assisting those trapped within to prepare for a productive life.
Kind of hard to agree when the facts do not substantiate a need to enhance a 'growing' prison industry.
QuoteAs a result of declining prison admissions and excess bed space, the Florida Department of Corrections will be closing seven prisons and four work/forestry camps by July 1, 2012, as part of a statewide consolidation plan. No inmates will be released early as a result of this decision, and there will remain adequate bed space to accommodate projected prison admissions, which have steadily decreased since FY 2007-08.
"Declining prison admissions has led to a surplus of prison beds, allowing us to pare down our budget shortfall by consolidating and closing our older, less efficient facilities. We are committed to placing as many affected staff as possible in vacant positions for which they are qualified," said Secretary Ken Tucker.
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/secretary/press/2012/01-12prisonclosings.html (http://www.dc.state.fl.us/secretary/press/2012/01-12prisonclosings.html)
As a matter of fact, it was a cut of over 1,200 beds that cost $75M a year to operate. That's not the most efficient way to build a growing industry.
In addition, a large portion of the FDC budget is dedicated to programming to educate and assist the individual in staying out of prison and becoming contributing members to society. The only growth anywhere within the prison system is through private contractors that must prove they can operate cheaper than the state services, which is actually a good thing.
As for the Sheriff's budget, how does that compare to other areas? Last I looked Jax spent almost the same as Miami-Dade PD and JSO has more officers, Tampa spent a little more than a 1/3 of JSO even though the area and population served is more than 3 times larger than Tampa. That would actually lean toward an efficient law enforcement agency.
But it brings up a good point for budget talks, what are good comparable cities that you can form a baseline to evaluate if we spend too much in one area versus another? I know Jax is compared to Charlotte a lot, Miami? San Antonio? San Fran?
Comparable cities of 500,000-1,000,000:
Atlanta
Birmingham
Richmond
Charlotte
Santé Fe
Jacksonville
Indianapolis
Baltimore
Boston
Detroit
Denver
El Paso
San Francisco