Mayor Alvin Brown's proposed budget cuts jobs, spending

[Tacachale]

Saying structural changes are needed to shore up Jacksonville's financial position, Mayor Alvin Brown plans to cut about 225 jobs and reduce spending by $27.8 million in the proposed budget he will submit to the City Council today.

At the same time, the mayor said he will create four new, "leanly staffed" offices to focus on particular aspects of economic development.

Brown will submit a balanced $962.5 million budget at 10 a.m. The council must approve a balanced budget by Oct. 1.

Join our live blog coverage of Alvin Brown's budget presentation to the City Council

The cuts were necessary because city revenues have plummeted due to falling property values and Brown did not raise taxes or fees to compensate.

The lost jobs include almost 50 mayoral appointees. About half of the jobs being eliminated are currently filled.

Cutting labor costs is vital to getting the budget under control long-term, according to the mayor and his staff.

"You have to make the tough decisions now," Brown said. "This is just the first step."

Almost half of the overall drop in the budget comes from $13.8 million in cuts from across city departments, including $4.9 million from the fleet management department and $7.1 million from the information technology department.

Cuts to the city's central operations department include trimming administrative services positions as well as jobs in fleet, human resources and procurement.

Cuts in Sheriff's Office

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office will lose $1.3 million, savings that come from cutting about 40 positions and putting off replacing some vehicles. The budget also assumes officers will take a 2 percent pay cut, a change the police union has fought for years. Most other city employees have already taken such a cut.

The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department's budget was cut by $1.8 million, but no firefighters will be laid off nor will their wages be further cut.

The Jacksonville Journey will lose $1.7 million, mainly due to the loss of about that much in outside grants. The Jacksonville Children Commission's budget was cut $1.2 million, to $19.8 million.

The budget will reduce the hours that some public libraries are open but will not close any branches. The library budget will drop $906,000.

The budget will also include the creation of four new offices, mostly focused on different aspects of economic development, including downtown, sports and entertainment and public-private partnerships. Another will focus on education. It was unclear Thursday night how much each new initiative would cost to create.

"We're going to do a major reorganization of city government," Brown said.

Although the mayor has talked about attracting an NBA team over the next decade, the initiative focused on sports is a new idea but one Brown said fits in well with Jacksonville's image.

"We're a sports city," he said. "It makes good business sense to continue attracting sporting events to Jacksonville."

The initiative will focus on branding Jacksonville as a sports city, looking to attract NCAA games and help the Jaguars.

The Office of Public-Private Partnerships will look to find private dollars to fund public activities and ways government and businesses can work together.

Plans for downtown

The shape of the Downtown Community Empowerment Corp. has not been determined, although the mayor said Jacksonville Civic Council Executive Director Don Shea, an expert on downtowns, would draw up a plan.

It's not yet clear what impact the various new groups will have on the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission, which now oversees economic development. Earlier this week, the mayor said Jerry Mallot, head of the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce's economic development arm, would look at how the city could more efficiently create jobs.

Thursday, Brown said, "JEDC is all over the place."

"JEDC will obviously change," he said. "We'll work through those changes."

Among them, the mayor said, he'd like to see JEDC have more authority over granting incentives, rather than having all such decisions go through the City Council, a move that would cut the amount of time the process takes.

The budget also envisions saving $5.8 million by pushing back one more year a study to look at how much the city would have to spend to fully fund its general employee pension obligation.

Last year, after a tough fight with the council, Mayor John Peyton put off the study - a move that requires a two-thirds vote of council - saying it didn't make sense to do it right after the huge drop of the stock market.

City law requires the audit annually; state law says it must be done every three years. This is the last year the council could waive the local requirement.

The cuts in the budget presage the desire to make a host of changes to city government as part of a more deep-rooted restructuring, said Chris Hand, Brown's chief of staff.

"He wants to look at this not just as this year's budget," he said. "He wants to start dealing with things now."

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2011-07-14/story/mayor-alvin-browns-proposed-budget-cuts-jobs-spending#ixzz1SAvjtqA5

By Timothy Gibbons at the FTU.

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2011-07-14/story/mayor-alvin-browns-proposed-budget-cuts-jobs-spending

[Garden guy]

Lets push for a property tax rate hike on all home worth more than a million...sounds fair and it'll raise some over due cash in the city accounts.

[JeffreyS]

Well at this point trying to raise taxes may constitute religious persecution.  The Tea Party and similar ideologues right to worship ultra low taxes for the rich may be infringed.

[Garden guy]

Well at this point trying to raise taxes may constitute religious persecution.  The Tea Party and similar ideologues right to worship ultra low taxes for the rich may be infringed.

And it's those with that mentality that have put this city where it is today...the conservative leaders of this city have pushed for years and years for lower taxes everywhere and the result is an empty city with stupid children...i say fuck the tea party liars it is they who put our governor in place and we can now blame the dire staights of our whole state on them..if we follow them this city will soon be named and empty city.

[buckethead]

The Tea Partiers created this world wide fiscal disaster?

Now they've gotten to Alex Brown?

TIME TO REVOLT COMRADES!

NO BOURGEOIS GETS OUT ALIVE!

[Sigma]

^ lol - you do not post enough buckethead  - you seriously crack me up

[Tacachale]

The FTU's doing live blog coverage of the mayor's proposal to the City Council.

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/403455/timothy-gibbons/2011-07-15/live-blog-jacksonville-mayor-alvin-browns-first

[Tacachale]

^Check it out for some prescient comments by thelakelander.

[Tacachale]

Here is the presentation:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/60093579/Mayor-Alvin-Brown-Budget-Speech

And here's the proposed budget.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/60093832/Proposed-City-Budget-2011-2012

I have to say I'm not terribly impressed by this presentation. Not enough numbers or explanation.

[duvaldude08]

The article on Jaxdaily record has a complete breakdown on the numbers. I cant click on the TU blog at work, so im sure if this is the same presentation you seen.

http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=534042

[thelakelander]

Here is a link to the actual 424-page budget proposal:

http://www.coj.net/Departments/Finance/Docs/Budget/Proposed-Budget-2011-2012.aspx

[tufsu1]

And it's those with that mentality that have put this city where it is today...the conservative leaders of this city have pushed for years and years for lower taxes everywhere and the result is an empty city with stupid children.

I would point out that Mayor Peyton and Council (both Republican) pushed through property tax increases the last two years...and only one candidate in the race this year. Audrey moran (also a Republlican) was unwilling to make a "no new taxes" pledge.

[Jaxson]

Well, I believe that it is rather telling about Mayor Brown's budget that one of his biggest detractors (Who happens to have been a presence on metrojacksonville.com and is one of my Facebook friends) is posting criticism not of the budget but of his hopes to land an NBA team.  I am guessing that the poster in question finds no fault with the budget but must find something about which to see something negative. 

[duvaldude08]

Its okay if wants us to have an NBA team. Thats his vision. Whether it happens or not is another story. Bump that, Im more concerned about the budget. LOL

[heights unknown]

Looks and sounds good to me. He's trying to put Jacksonville in a much more healthy position financially...nothing wrong with that; then we'll be a able to do more things to improve the urban core, downtown, and the city as a whole. Let's be positive everyone...having a balanced budget is a very good and extremely positive thing. Barack Obama, congress, and the house and other federal governmental leaders and positions could probably learn something from Mayor Brown.

"HU"