WJXT: City Council Approves Budget

[TheCat]

The Jacksonville City Council voted to approve a brand new city budget at its meeting Monday night, with Mayor Lenny Curry pushing capital improvements across the city as some of his top priorities.

The new mayor did not face much opposition from council members on his first budget plan since taking office. Overall, the vote went pretty smoothly for the mayor as the council approved the budget that Curry has said will focus on making Jacksonville a better place to live.

More police officers, crime prevention, capital improvements and extending library hours are all included in the $1.1 billion budget for the new year.

The priorities in Curry's first budget survived weeks of scrutiny by the Finance Committee and made it through the budget process relatively intact. Some are calling this the "honeymoon phase" between the new mayor and City Council, but increased revenues from both property and sales taxes also played a part in smoothing the budget process because it never required any discussion of tax increases.

Curry said that the first budget of his new administration was met with good reviews early on, a testament to some of the early decision he said he made early on.

"Well I put the right team in place that was committed to budget discipline and basically presenting a budget that balanced, reflected my priorities and it paid down debt. It invested in the city and it did all of that without a tax increase," Curry said. "We're watching every tax payer dollar now. We're committed to the tax payers. We're investing in things that have been neglected for years like roads, bridges, parks and I'm investing in police officers."

The latter was a major campaign issue during Curry's run for office, something he emphasized again Monday night...

http://www.news4jax.com/news/city-council-poised-to-approve-201516-budget/35397662#

[Tacachale]

Well, that's a nice change of pace.

[tufsu1]

I think Mayor Brown's first budget also went fairly smoothly....and then it all unraveled