you know came oh okay do i get to start over all right uh but anyway what i want to just share with everybody is that okay i'll take any questions this is amendment okay thank you for listening testing one two we're good testing one two testing so we will move forward we're we have an agenda today that is pretty open forum workshop oriented so we are going to begin discussion about amendment three i don't want to dwell a lot on the impacts we know it's going to be significant some estimates are that the city of jacksonville will have an impact of about 25 reduction in ad valorem tax revenue so we will start with that as a uh a baseline and uh we can go through and i would like to develop a series of principles that would guide our analysis of the underlying finances so there are some principles that would include uh how much uh personnel cost can go up in terms of salaries a great portion of actual personnel costs are non-controllable they are contractual they are an attempt to uh true up so to speak uh an item called employer provided benefits which includes our health insurance for uh our city employees and uh i'm it's explained to me that in the past in recent years anyway that the um the employer provided benefit uh there were very limited increases in that and so as a result uh the employees didn't have to pay that additional cost and that was one way of sort of giving them a backdoor increase in salary that if if they didn't have to pay that increased cost of the benefits then that would be like money in their pocket so so there are a number of things along those lines the the pension cost uh that uh will be transitioning for fire and rescue and first risk and the police and fire pension that will be transitioning over to the florida retirement system uh the city general employee pension fund that is staying intact is that correct okay so they're not transitioning to frs all right so let's look at in terms of in terms of personnel cost uh what is going to be controllable and under under the salary category so colleen has distributed uh some pages that came out of the proposed city budget this is from page 12 uh titled overarching items so property tax revenue uh the um city council uh voted to reduce millage rate by one eighth of a mill and which has an impact of reducing the revenue by 1.1 percent and then uh the total projected revenue loss for the upcoming fiscal year uh is going to be 14 million two hundred and ninety one thousand three hundred ninety five dollars the uh interest pool i'm sorry the investment pool the interest earnings rate assumptions uh are they're increasing fiscal 27 from 3.02 to 3.5 that is probably uh a safe uh assumption it may end up being actually a little bit low uh as we saw the federal reserve just increased interest rates yesterday and the expectation is they will probably increase interest rates two more times before uh probably by springtime uh personnel cost as i mentioned earlier a lot of the personnel costs are in the uh employer provided benefits category health insurance pension plans etc the actual salaries of city employees are controlled both contractually and non-contractually the uh firefighters and the police uh they are guaranteed a five percent increase by the contract the fop members under the department of corrections under the sheriff's office are going to increase by seven percent all other unions which are uh i guess all the different unions uh within the general employees uh they negotiate directly and i my assumption is the only union that includes is the american i'm sorry is the association of state uh association of federal state and county employees is that the only union that represents city of jacksonville ibew okay so thanks so much so i would say that one of the overarching principles would be that uh non-cba employees employees that are not benefiting from a collective bargaining agreement that their salaries should be capped at three percent i looked through some of the i guess these are sub funds uh if you look at the executive office of the mayor if you divide the total salaries by the 24 positions in the mayor's office the projected increase for the fiscal 27 year is a 10.56 percent i believe it was you look at the office the executive office of the sheriff those employees they're projected and i think they're actually losing a couple of positions in the executive office of the sheriff but still the increase uh of those those employees is going to be over 10 percent i think it's 10.2 percent uh but roughly 10 in both instances and then if you get into the different components under the sheriff's office you have the department of corrections you have the um homeland security you have investigations you have patrol and enforcement uh police i think it's uh professional standards and i forget the other department under the sheriff's office all but one of those departments the increase is above three percent possibly bailiff so uh what i would say is now that the budget doesn't provide enough detail to tell you of those increases how much or how much of the increase is being driven by a collective bargaining agreement as opposed to non-collective bargaining agreements so i would say that one of our guiding principles would be that for all city employees other than employees under a collective bargaining agreement that those salary increases should be held to three percent that would include the executive office of the mayor the executive office of the sheriff and all of the departments that function under the sheriff jfrd if you looked at it their increases are uh i think about three and a half or maybe four percent but again that that's because they're subject to a collective bargaining agreement so i think one of the guiding principles is we'll start off by saying we believe that personnel costs should be capped at three percent for all city employees not subject to a collective bargaining agreement so that make that principle number one then uh the other guiding principle is in my opinion uh i think we should not touch any of the proposed spending other than personnel costs subject to reduction from principle one that we should hold all spending under the jacksonville sheriff's office and jfrd uh harmless that none of those increases in that spending should be reduced other than any employee expenses pursuant to principle one so we make that principle two that we hold uh jfrd and jso harmless from any potential in decreases in spending other than those related salary amounts so we can now proceed to look through if you look through your package and and this does go into a little bit of detail at the bottom of page 12 about the the pension benefits and you see that um uh the uh the total increase is 14.7 almost 14.8 million from 26 to 27 uh police and fire uh 7 million 982 uh corrections a million 646 uh i'm sorry this is police and fire is 7 million 982 uh general employees 4 million 497 and uh so but again these are their pension plans and uh i guess principle number three that we would adopt is that um we don't want to have any impact on reducing pensions that whatever is proposed to be spent for pensions in fact should be spent for pensions so then as you move through this package of information on page 14 uh you see our uh proposed budgets for the general fund and you have a series of sub funds 0 111 0 112 113 116 all the way down uh to you get to the constitutional officers property appraiser clerk of the court and tax collector all right so you see that uh all of those categories except for multi-year programs and initiatives uh there is a um significant increase except multi-year programs and initiatives which are in fact decreasing by about 14 million and then special events general fund decreasing by 3.4 million otherwise there's a total increase of general fund spending of 14 million dollars then you get under special revenue funds which are still part of the general fund and that runs all the way down from sub fund 10 101 all the way down through 15 304 and there are a few of those that are projected to have a reduction and the uh net impact of the reductions for special revenue funds is a decrease of 109 million dollars we're not going to talk about capital project funds we'll leave those alone right now we're just trying to focus on the operating budget for the general fund then you have your enterprise funds and these are in essence operations of city government that really are akin to a business and um you see where there was a uh projected decrease of 30 million 450 in solid waste and general capital projects tommy do you know what is driving that significant decrease are they projecting is this because of the new uh fee structure for solid waste that they're no longer going to be relying on subsidizing that operation out of the general fund could that be part of the
reduction uh not totally sure but i believe that is part of what's driving that okay that um i remember that that being discussed um but it is from the new fee in that way the general fund's not having to it's not having to pay back the loan from the general fund all right so but all the enterprise funds there's
a projected decrease in them of 100 million dollars 709 million in the current fiscal year to uh 609 million for proposed spending for next year so you can see there has been some belt tightening already uh and then you get down to on page uh 16 the pension trust funds okay uh a nominal increase in pension trust funds of three million dollars on a base of 25 so a little bit more than 10 percent but again a lot of the contributions into the pension funds are driven by the required contributions to maintain uh the actuarial soundness of the pension fund and to begin closing the unfunded liability on page 17 you start seeing a summary of city employees capped general fund last year had 7 244 and they're projected in the coming next year they would have an increase of 71 positions 68 of those 71 are coming out of the general fund operating account fund number zero one 11 special revenue funds an increase of two positions total internal service funds a decrease of two positions the net impact is an increase of city employees of 71 so we may want to say principle number four is that the city look very closely at not increasing the number of city employees and then as we apply these principles each of these different points will have a financial impact on city operations so we go over to page 19 and we start breaking out that sub fund zero zero one eleven okay the current year which is the middle of the first three columns it's the middle column two billion three million nine hundred eighteen thousand dollars projected or proposed i should say for the next fiscal year that begins the first day of october about 14 days from now would be two billion twenty six million that's a one point one percent increase now if you look back up to the top line two of that two billion twenty six million one billion two hundred and forty eight million is coming from ad valorem taxes that is the line that will be impacted if amendment three passes if we were to assume and we can probably it's probably better to make a more severe assumption rather than a uh more lenient assumption so if we were to assume that that one billion two forty eight we're just going to keep it rounded at uh millions so billion two forty eight has a twenty five percent decrease that means that that number next year is going to become nine hundred thirty six million so one billion two forty eight drops to nine hundred and thirty six million that's a reduction of three hundred and twelve million
yes sir um when if amendment three passes the changes wouldn't go into effect until the 20 28 fiscal
year 28 fiscal year 27 28 fiscal year just to clarify that a reduction of or an additional hundred thousand added to the homestead exemption to go from 50 to 150 and then 2028 it goes to
50 and 2029 it goes to 50 to 150 flat uh after that then it's up to the legislature that will make
changes so we only have a hundred thousand increment per year starting for for the next two years
so a hundred thousand the first year well it's it's the the entire exemption in the first year is
a hundred fifty thousand dollars okay right okay that's right a marginal increase of a hundred thousand correct and then the second year is 250 correct correct which is a marginal increase of 200 000 over the current 250 plus the 50 yes 250 yeah includes the 50 it includes a 50 so it's a net change of 200 million 200 000 correct net change yes all right so so what now we have a policy question is uh should the city begin implementing uh policies to curtail uh expenditures in the 26 27 fiscal year uh that uh take effect in uh before the tax reduction occurs uh that's a policy decision so any thoughts which is october one the beginning of the new fiscal year correct so although there's no reduction in spending in the 27 proposed budget we know there's going to be an impact in the 27 28 budget should the city begin a glide path in the upcoming fiscal year to prepare or should we say let the good times roll and uh we'll kick the can down the road right right right and and deal with that in the with the new the new city council after they take office because they will be the ones who would have to deal with that budget shortfall correct tommy 27 28 that's correct correct so i mean uh now we're not we can't take any action because we don't have a quorum but i think what we could do would be to request probably not at the october meeting but maybe by the november meeting do you have a way uh do y'all have a person on your staff that deals with the budget that already has these great excel spreadsheets set up and we could just go in and say change you know row a 10 reduce it by five percent in year one 20 in year two and 25 in year three across the board or specific line items okay uh now
that would probably be more in the budget office um as we review the budget um so we don't prepare these numbers we review uh now um and a lot also depends too um you get the final final tax numbers because these estimates are based on the you know um fiscal year 26 which has not ended yet tack on the so far through the tax roll through july so you're not quite there yet so um but anyway but no we we uh so you don't have a budget analyst on the no council that's um that's that's the budget office would be would be that area we uh when when when we get the budget we are all assigned different parts
of the budget to review so if we were to say okay based on our conversations here today that uh and if the true commission were to take action at the october meeting enact these guidelines and we then request the finance department's budget division to prepare projections based on these new assumptions what is the probability that they would be accommodating and be able to come up with such projections that
would be an administration question i have i have no idea i don't know what the workload is i
i have i couldn't answer that question so the true commission being a a creation of city council with staffing by the city council auditor we don't actually have any resources to do modeling and projections and changes in city financing to my knowledge not in the council auditor's office we don't we don't have we don't have the modeling like that and the ordinance only charges the council auditor's office with providing support is that correct colleen our enabling legislation in your office but not in the executive branch to my knowledge no right you can request um the the various
you know administration agencies and things like that departments um but the support i believe is provided by our office and and colleen's requested on behalf of the commissioner appointed by the
administration so the mayor had his appointees here outside of the counseling one i know there's only one now
correct from that appointee and i don't think that's going to change well it would probably have
to come as a resolution from the true commission or from the to to the to the minister that's what we could do
we could come we can come back in october and say we have looked over this and you and i as a subcommittee of two and then we can bring this up at the october meeting under new business and uh i will use my discretion as chair to clear the agenda for october of anything other than a further discussion these items i'm sorry correct and we will uh go ahead and uh can you see if philip see if he wants to come at four and we'll just do the same thing we're doing today we'll just block out the entire two hours for the commission let's do that so we'll just have a full meeting of the commission to begin at four as opposed to 4 30 we'll hear from philip we'll give him 30 minutes as much time as he wants then we'll come back in and we'll pick up discussion of this and you and i i don't have to be anywhere until 6 30 tonight so i've got to leave here by six i've got to be in orange park at 6 30 perfect so how much time do you have much time as you need okay can we continue to discuss this until six absolutely is that okay with you and that's no intention of going past six because i can't get to orange park in 25 minutes so if i could mr chairman
for clarification um outside uh yeah mr day or raymond outside of the police and fire pensions or the collective bargaining groups to put a cap of three percent on salaries currently it's set with the three percent based on cola correct just cost of living increases the reason it's rolled in on pensions
i mean on uh payroll and salaries not necessarily and again that's what's done at collective bargaining
for those but that's not done on behalf of city employees i don't know and here's why i'm saying
that because when i looked in i just looked at the mayor's office the executive office of the sheriff and i looked at the operating units under the sheriff and i looked at jfrd now because it's it's only it's only one line item on that in the city budget unless there's somewhere in that 471 pages of text that it's broken out in more detail uh the sheriff's office had units within it of getting more than a three percent increase his office was getting a ten percent increase a couple of the other offices were getting an increase of the six percent now if you go back to our overarching items where the sheriff's office for corrections was seven percent i believe even that line item was more than seven maybe not but you know if it's not i'll be happy to admit that i was wrong uh but uh and and then the uh the other sheriff's office's components under salaries they should not exceed five percent what was currently
negotiated on behalf of the unions was what the eight and a quarter defined benefit that's the old
program now we're under a new 401 a we're trying to keep let's just talk about salaries right okay not
not how we're doing the pension or well and find out where the money is is to find out what was negotiated but are we looking at police and fire or are we looking at just salaries of employees of the city we in my opinion we should look at all salaries of all city employees everybody at three no three
percent other than collective bargaining agreements you can't you can't override contracts i agree that's
my that's my point i guess that's what i was backing into is that that comment so just salaries of existing employees over and above the reduction that so it showed and proposed budgets in the reduction but a three percent cap and that could take effect currently that and that am i wrong where's
the current agreement with salaries well the budget document that i read i can't discern that level of detail wouldn't that be important to know that detail i hate to get into the weeds but no i mean this this is what's required i guess that's why we don't have anybody here that people don't like getting in the weeds um but that's what's required i mean if this is going to be a legitimate advisory body then we have to give advice and if we don't don't have the information then you know
how do we give the advice colleen is that something you can speak to is there a a document that would show the details or who do we request that would probably come out the administration
don't you think payroll budget the budget book that comes out from which is not the thing that's online it it's online the pdf the pdf 471 page it breaks it down by all hartman see obviously i have
not read all 471 pages um i mean it it gets into for the most part um the um you know it breaks down in mayor's office uh in jso right and i see each i saw those yes a separate page and you and you go these are the these are the positions in fiscal 25 26 these are the proposed positions for fiscal 26 27 these these were the salaries in fiscal 25 26 these are proposed salaries for 20 20 26 27 you divide the salaries by the positions and that's your average salary and the increase was over 10 for the mayor's office her 24 people were getting on average a 10 and a half percent increase in salary last last year
well and also about these so where are they capped at this time they didn't cut positions correct
uh one of the budget hearings they they limited the mayor's office increase salary increase to that which was city council's same percentages same percentage to me is only fair and and also last year um i believe colleen if you remember correct me if i'm wrong last year budget um city council reduce the mayor's office budget order and something thousand right but she just simply went in and did an
internal transfer and put it back and and so when you're looking at what was approved for what's
proposed you've got that cut so it looks like it's higher so because what you what we what we review and how we review it is a approved budget to proposed so if there was uh and it's original approved so if that's what so that makes what makes it look like it is actually higher than what it was
um on on paper if that makes sense no no i follow you i follow you closely it it just um it bothers me as a taxpayer and as a business person that uh the executive branch is not subject to the legislative branch when it comes to the legislative branch controlling the purse strings that is a fundamental principle of our republic for which we fought a revolution to hold the executive accountable to the people and that is done through the legislative appropriations process and this example of the city council cutting and the mayor restoring is an example that fundamentally the mayor just said well i'm not going to be subject to the legislative branch kind of gave the council the fat finger and said i'm moving on now to be fair i do believe that the city council they were just playing politics and they so they decided they're going to cut the mayor's budget and you know that's so there's plenty of blame to go around between the mayor's office and the city council in my opinion and it's just you know we need to move we have more important things to do than to play politics over half a million dollars out of a two billion dollar city budget and uh but at the same time there's a fundamental principle that the executive branch is subject to the control of the legislative branch when it comes to spending i mean that's just an inviolable principle in my in my opinion so that that bothers me um so um mr chair if i could speak for
a moment the the debate has always been the increase or cut uh partisan politics is always that way how do we think outside the box looking back and coming from private business for 30 years and multiple entities to reward those who spend appropriately it's always been the use it or lose it budget approach so they see at the end of their budget cycle we have resources in here if we don't spend this we're not going to get the increase next year and we're going to lose what we have now it's it's it's spread probably citywide in every internal department that they have a use it or lose it mindset versus a a way to reward those who spend their money more appropriately it's i think you get more with the honey than you do with the the cut or spend yes yes sir you wanted to say something
i was just going to say one of one of the things we do look at is we we look to see if there is you know um i guess a spending spree that's at the end of the budget year uh and and you know if if warranted we'll make recommendations and there might be reasons for that but we make recommendations to maybe you know lower the budget if if if it's reasonable type thing um but i understand what you're saying but a reward
uh you know those who do um are financially responsible for their internal departments whether it's 2500 or 250 000 doesn't matter which if there is a good reduction that can be in place a reward for them hey that money may stay there earmarked for your department but we don't have to ask for an increase leave it there instead of the use it or lose it mentality how is the budget zero-based budgeting per department how does that work internally for the department heads according to
anna there is no zero it's not zero base it's it's it's um it is it it it's just a comparative from the year this year the previous year and and usually your your increases like this year most of the increase uh i believe um of the other unions and i believe appointed employees uh there is a three percent cola in the budget so you'll see that but um i know you know services or whatever they may they may be flat or some may be going up a little bit uh which is why the 1.1 percent increase in your expenditures
but that's it's it's usually you do a comparison um year to year which is why i go back to my pet peeve that we don't budget on a monthly basis we budget on an annual basis and then as the fiscal year progresses and if a department goes oops we've spent money we shouldn't have spent well then they have two choices they can cut spending on the back end or else they can just do a budget transfer and they have what a hundred thousand dollar authority to do a interdepartmental budget transfer
i think the mayor has 500 000 budget transfer authority discretionary i thought it was just
within her department no she has she can do a half half a million but anywhere within city budget take from one department and put it somewhere else under under those under executive side i've got a problem
with that that may come back to the charter obligation to having the strong mayor form of government and home rule and that's the latitude she's afforded or he or she is afforded in that position but you but
you can control through ordinance oh truly you know we could say all right the mayor can only can can only transfer a hundred thousand dollars under these conditions has he filed it every year since
he's been on the council do you know okay and that's to reduce the amount or the the latitude to do it
just the amount of the transfer but they reduced it under uh mayor brown and then when mayor curry put it
back put it back put it back away yeah every mayor would as well it's unpeeling the onion um and that's why i'm trying to think outside the box of a system that's rewarding to a zero base budget monthly versus annually i agree it's heavy and you'll spend more on the the payroll side just to administer that so that comes at a cost but it's more efficient and it's what business has to do when and i was coming
coming out of barnett and but we were a growing organization but we had to anticipate our staff every month and we the manager was charged with understanding the growth dynamics of barnett in the state of florida and the rapid growth that barnett was experiencing they had to project when they would need an additional person and that was put in that month and then that month's salary in expense went up commensurately and i believe that if if the city government were to adopt a zero base budgeting monthly uh structure that i believe that we could probably save some money in the long run and i would propose as we're talking hypotheticals that the way you reward efficiency is if your department is budgeted it was going to use five million dollars for your department and if your budget if your if your department if you're able to manage that budget and you come in at 450 then i would say that fifty thousand dollar savings half should be distributed to the employees on a formulaic basis to reward them for saving the 50 pay reward or to the department to the employees of the i mean it's the individuals that make the savings they do that if and it could be the department i mean a bonus to the employee or a bonus to the i would say a bonus to the department to the department the only way to do it fairly would be to allocate it on a per capita basis absolutely that's fantastic maybe a little bit of a kicker for the
management team again just trying from the outside looking in there has to be some sort of reward component for doing what's right if not the same thing will continue to happen if you if you run the
city efficiently in the long run the taxpayers are having to pay less money for city services truly reward the employees for creating that operating doing what's right right yeah right so back to your
original number then if we go from the 1 billion 284 and you're you put together a projection of a shortfall of 25 where did the 25 number come from uh how's that a percentage that's what i heard you know where where i got that i don't remember i mean after we have a number of someone already done this and we're duplicating their efforts what's the number is i've heard 250 million shortfall i've heard a 350 million shortfall what is the potential shortfall and it's clearly going to change annually
each budget cycle based on until the whole until the you know until the python swallows the pig until
it levels out right which would be 20 28 29 that's ours or the administration's projection
this came this this actually came from the um property appraisers office okay uh you have a copy of that i don't i'm sorry um uh the uh it's an impact study and this is based on values from from the like i said before 2026 tax roll which is in progress okay um total for first year for fiscal year 27 28 is estimated 193 million dollars shortfall shortfall our total revenue reduction 193 yeah total revenue reduction 193.1 million you or you could say 200 million yeah i mean yeah um uh and that's that's the revenue reduction for the city of jacksonville uh for fiscal year 28 29 it's estimated um and again these it could be it could be higher because values of home it will be higher but as homes go up you you know so um is um basically 300 million dollars 299 million 593 000
so my number 312 was a little high but not over within a okay what formula did they use to derive at that number and not that i don't trust anybody but obviously during little cycles you have formulas that can be stretched one way or the other to come out with the outcome what was the formula used well they they have we know yeah we know a clear number of the volume of houses so this as i understand with amendment three you must be a resident for five years uh you must own the home not not own it outright but financed and you have title to your home obviously the bank probably owns most of them but with that being said the 50 million or the 50 000 current exemption goes to 150 within that first year did we did we cycle it based on the first year total volume of homes five-year resident did we match that or we did or did somebody just yeah the the home yeah it was on but homesteaded properties plus five-year requirement of residency and also their number change and also affecting this
too is they lowered the assessment cap on non-homesteaded property from ten percent to five percent and that's also schools except schools but that that was also um included in that number that that effect of the five percent i can only say uh this is a um which came from the property appraisers they they they said that um the first one i read for the first year reflected 150 000 homestead exemption the second year reflected the 250 000 homestead exemption both include the estimated impact of the five percent assessment cap on non-homesteaded property properties um all the estimates for you were prepared using values from the 2026 tax roll which is in progress and calculated using the 2025 final
millage rates so that's that's how it was i would like to see if it included the five or the uh five year residency because that changes pretty substantially could change the number pretty substantially so if we could ask that to make sure that what that does coincide with the amendment three to then get a more realistic number or to have a more absolute number i don't know what it could change it by could it change it by a million or would it change it by 10 million i have no idea but that's a component of
the true amendment yeah so we're we have a two percent growth rate on average right now we're growing by about 20 000 people a year so you could just back that into just a basic two two people per unit calculation so we're growing 10 000 homes uh 10 000 housing units a year and then you can divide that between single family and multi-family the multi-family would not be impacted because it's considered non-homestead right homestead the uh if if again let's say you did probably of the housing units in the city i would think probably maybe 60 percent single family 40 percent multi-family um so of that thousand let's say that 600 of of them are uh single family okay so they could project out that that 600 over a five-year time frame it's going to take that long now i don't believe the amendment would would be applied ex post facto to where if you lived here three years and the amendment kicks in you've got to live here another two years correct that's what i would assume okay date of passage correct you already meet the threshold so yeah so they could do a relatively i think that's an easy calculation and you know we just did 600 over five years that's 3 000 units and then you just what once you hit the year five so the biggest impact is going to be in the initial oh yeah year one and year two can we get a
copy colleen of the document he has from the property appraiser's office took each of the and email it
back to the commissioners just so we can see that i can email it to colleen and she can send to you guys
and then can we make the request mr chairman to staff for a whether the five percent or the you want to know how they how they apply it was that five-year rule five-year rule residency rule was it included in the formula just so we can you contact joyce's office on that one colleen i don't know who the chief appraiser is anymore down there and then back to i like your idea of legislation to reduce the the executive level spending from the 500 000 to the 100 000 and if we could look look into the legislation that i think you said councilman diamond had submitted where that stands yeah
could you forward us a copy of that bill and maybe we put him on the agenda for november to come in and talk to us about that sure sounds like he wants traction but he's going out of office anyway give him a last chance to get a headline get a bite on it i mean i can call him up i think i've got his number but i don't know him that well but i've got his number and then just back for a fluid conversation again in
the weeds what's legally allowed you spoke of compensation directly to the employee that doesn't sound legal um but is there a reward to the department that they're able to keep it within their budget but
half of it has to come back to the general fund or i i think it needs to go to the employee otherwise you have no you're not creating any incentive is that legal well if not change change law that's not
legal that's tax dollars going to payroll i'm not a an attorney but i don't think that would be legal but to reward the department had a a percentage per rata back to the agency for doing what's right uh i don't think's problem if there was earmarked amount uh to be spent and they saved it then they get to ultimately keep a percentage of it what do they do with it again not all of it if it's say
if they can't convert it to a personal reward what's there's no incentive it doesn't sound legal but
that's a question for officer general counsel and back to the charter of responsibility but the question would be if it's a hundred thousand dollars and they save a hundred thousand dollars does twenty five thousand dollars come back to the department and 75 goes back to the city so each year of savings they can essentially pull some resources for the department to make large expenditures or capital expenditures or investments into maintenance or whatever it may be dependent upon department to staff does that sound legal and legitimate does it you've been doing this far
longer than i have you see the numbers can can we direct a question to legal to ogc if we were to adopt a zero base budget approach and if a department through its own operating efficiency realized reduced spending is there a legal framework for directing the savings and spending to the department employees as a reward mr jim i'll leave that employee i don't think we need to ask i think
that may be an obvious answer i don't think you can reward the efficiency or savings
say because that we need to do we need to change ordinance we have to go change that okay let's think
through it for a minute if an employee is afforded the opportunity to save a hundred thousand dollars knowing that he could receive the benefit of the savings and that may perpetrate more fraud because they're like well i just won't spend it we don't need it's not my grass to be cut it's not my
house to be painted it's not my that's why you want to have oversight of of the audit function
you had a statement i was going to say i think i think uh i think office would be
let's ask them to other words for the record we have to change for the chairman wants to ask
whether he can reward the employee i don't think it's a good question i think it smacks of impropriety and it would be unethical so i just apply it to business would i afford the efficiency yes but private
business can tax dollars cannot yeah but that's why if you're going to do if you want to adopt a business principle to be applied to government and if the statute's prohibited then you have to
change the law but i think the principle can be applied principle yes and that we have to change
the law the legislative guidelines then i would propose we change the guidelines so the question
needs to be where should the savings go to the department or back to the general fund where do you put the efficiencies and then the question how do reward them what's the prorata what's the percentage publicly traded company you could speak to it goes back to the shareholders but i don't see
refund checks coming back it's a combination of two if you save a hundred thousand and as a department manager it let's say your your bank came in by because it reduced expenses it reduced operating expenses we would call that non-interest expense if we cut our non-interest expense then the net income of that bank by definition was higher there were two things that could happen to it the management of the bank would get a bonus an increased bonus and it flowed down from the management of a department the if you were an exempt employee if you're not exempt i don't believe federal law allows that but i remember personally receiving bonuses from because of how well our unit operated right i just think we need to come up with some way to apply a reward system for city employees based on realized efficiencies
would you support approach like that no no question about it we just need to figure out how to make it to work so if i could mr chairman to staff what's been done in the past you guys are in it you probably never get asked but questions directly on can we should we how we where do you see savings or efficiencies what's been discussed at council level you were clear uh that you understood that there was legislation that was spoken of to reduce the executive level spending from half a million to 100 000 what do you know of legislatively that's been done to help efficiencies in the community that's being asked of us and many other people in the city but you see it you hear it and you know it and are you able to speak to
it what you've seen does that put you on the spot just across the board and that's the only department
fantastic just went into essential services utilize charter responsibilities i can't imagine that that
was received well but if only one agency came back and requested for it to be added back in it sounds
like it worked if you were to look at what he spends first what that department spends versus what that
department saves there is a positive roi that was a two and a half percent across the board yes that's
this is one way to kind of ring that was put in by the doge special committee that was their initiative
which has now been put into a jea it's now kind of defunct yes just defunct so mr chairman let's do that again request it and it causes every internal department to evaluate how they spend the money we could spend years digging into the details or just take a low-hanging fruit approach and across the entire spectrum request that council tighten the belt by two and a half percent do it again colleen so we have
we came up with principle number one you got that that was the that was to reduce uh non-cba employees capping increases at three percent principle number two was remember how good my memory is what was principle number two we were going to control what uh public safety spending hold harmless note that was principle number two principle number three was not
payroll of public or the uh the pensions or the um not touching pensions right that was principle three and principle four was but expenditures not payroll i guess was my question for public safety
expenditures not payroll or we started with payroll reducing all payroll reducing all salaries other than cba employees other than employees subject to a cba that would be all police no no capping their increases at three percent not cutting their salaries capping their increases at three percent who is that within
public safety those well i mean what position is that i think all of them zero yeah so in the jso
every single employee is subject to that yeah collective cba it's not just sworn leos no i don't think that's not all everybody corrections it's all but then it wouldn't apply it that's right but it would apply to other if we just said that you can't say all because then you're you say all i think all police fire just just not covered by cba and that covers everything other than saying fire police
corrections etc you can you can you speak to that is all collective bargaining is all police and fire
employees period there there are there are civilian employees at jso uh there are civilian employees
at jfrd and don't know if they're subject to the cba i don't believe they are okay okay how many i believe it i don't know but the point is it doesn't matter how many the point is if they're not subject to the cba their their increase would be capped at three percent because collective bargaining has bargained
a three percent goal or more or more or more right okay well and that's okay and um remain
it's remain to the discussion so then principle number five is going to be figuring out some way to adopt zero-based budgeting with realized operating cost reductions savings to be passed on to city employees in a bonus structure to be determined by the legislative branch part of that issue is a request to ogc to determine the legality of that approach and if it's not currently legal what
would be the legislative remedy to create i would ask carla miller under ethics to see if that's the case without even going out to general counsel i think it would come back in my opinion unethical
not unethical but just currently illegal right so that's the difference though there is is it is it unethical to reward a city employee for operating efficiently no it's not unethical this is currently illegal meaning there's no legal framework no legal framework for creating that process so in order to implement that approach you simply have to change the law truly and then and then provide adequate guard
rails that there is no abuse i think that's a heavier lift than doing what doge did is say two and a half percent across the board if you want that to be your principal guiding principle number six i may suggest yes i have no problem with that number six mandatory two percent reduction in spending for all city departments mirror what doge unless two and a half unless mirror what they did okay two and a half if only one agency came back and requested to be put back that was pretty efficient savings across the board do you know that dollar amount staff it was pretty small it's a small
office and i want to say it was less than twenty thousand dollars but i would have to okay but the the savings across the oh the total savings total savings i don't know off the top of my head um
that would be a good thing to know that's very interesting if there weren't a line of lobbying
and people clamoring to get it back it sounds like that worked two and a half percent of two billion
but you see you know only one two billion you subtract out the roughly 800 million dollars in salaries they didn't take it from public safety yeah so that's i mean you that's fine you exempt
certain so that two billion not number so that's something that's always discussed if i could is every time a budget cut across the board is discussed uh partisanship steps in and they clamor that police and fire is going to be cut and i think that's a misnomer it's not it can be cut elsewhere uh without cutting police and fire and i just think you wait you saw only a billion then so one billion is police and fire so really it was two and a half percent of a billion correct correct
that's closer to it yes okay we got that number then that's yeah thank you the elephant in the room
one by its own all right any thoughts on uh non-profit grants how much is being spent through uh
i think it comes through a well i think it comes through a community block grant first and then goes to public service grants and once it comes to public service grants i believe a large portion goes to the cultural council and art and public places as a immediate pass through what is that dollar amount now for public service grants i don't have the budget open it was 12 million down then it was four million well at one time when i was serving it was six million and as soon as it came in three and a three million went to uh the cultural council right two pots there's one that goes to
the public service grant grants that's roughly seven million is what they requested something along that line they requested seven million in the in the proposed budget right okay was that an increase over last year it's roughly the same okay and then that's the one that they they reduced the request by 65 percent based on the outcome of the amendment three referendum so they did that for public service grants and cultural service grants okay both of those things but these are community block grants that
are pass-throughs so some of them you can't catch it comes straight through and it has to go to them
correct i think public service grants has come straight from the general fund as do cultural service i think they both do there's other things that come from what you're talking about but these
funds i think are just straight from the general fund are there some proceeds from the cdbg that does
go to the public service grants i don't think so it's been many years since i was in public service grant but i believe there was at that time whether there still is i have no idea do we still get cdbgs
i'm not aware if there still are i don't i know one time there there were you said but kind of earmarks i'm not sure right now what the status of that is with that at one time there was 75 organizations recipients of
the public service grants do you know what that number is now is it increased or decreased and i mean
it's a competitive bid process there's a limit on the award is 150 000 per per but how many agencies
are requesting of the the seven million that's available potentially available if the budget's passed because when i was serving they did it as kind of a they kept using the term peanut butter spread it's just kind of like everybody gets a little and then they we created a scoring system to make certain that the uh the mayor's priorities were met and the most uh at need or at risk community so if that's still the case and there's seven million going that direction what would be the division it's a three and a half million to 75 agencies you can do that math but is it still 75 i guess is my question i don't think
there's a fixed number i think it's based on on the on the applications themselves but no but
approximately how many applicants are there right now i mean i so if we were to revert back to the
question at hand assuming that public service grants council and the cultural grants council are both funded out of the general fund the the revenue out of ad valorem taxes would we then say if amendment three passes those receipt those two items should be zeroed out no sir um and the reason i say that
having served and seeing the at-risk community and those needs met in the community the public-private partnerships do better and they're more efficient with the tax dollars in the city could be we just discussed the the deficiency that we see in the departments that there's no reward for not going to a zero base system so we see the very same on public service grants that they are more accountable as entities than the city could be uh however we did find there was some egregious spending at times and they could be held accountable where it would have been better that we written a check directly to the person need at the city level than it was to flow through public service grants however that was not the norm um i can give them some for instance uh the the salvation army i remember one of theirs they received 250 000 and of the 250 000 almost 70 cent of every dollar made it to the people in need and they could prove it i was impressed there were others that i won't mention because i'm certain they'd be upset but it was so egregious it would have been better to write a check from the city and put them in the ritz carlton and buy them dinner than it would be to let that agency do it so that's a a scoring system to hold them accountable to spend the money more appropriately but they did a better job to answer your question the public service grants to the non-profits did a better job than the city could have done to meet the mayor's priorities of taking care of the most in need and at risk if this amendment
were to pass would you propose to hold them harmless for many reductions if if ad valorem taxes are going to
decrease by 10 percent 15 do you think they're a recipient of tax dollars to think that they can't cut their budget by two and a half also it sounds bizarre but sharing the sharing the gains
sharing the uh you would not so you would propose you would not propose to exempt them from the application of the reduced revenue if amendment had an answer for me i'm sorry mr chairman he
uh on the public service grant council yes sir um the the the council or the finance committee um they they have pulled there's a full amount that was the proposed was seven million seven point two million dollars for public service proposed proposed um and they are previous year was i don't know what what the previous year was so the the finance committee established a amendment three contingency okay that if this passes then the the contingency will be help help to help defer some of the costs for next year but it's only got six point two million dollars in it right now so the city would defer the
cost to help the non-profit no no this is for this is just what they're taking they they've taken
2.5 million from the 7.2 million so they took 2.5 million dollars from the public service grant and then uh 3.7 million um out of the um cultural council uh to come up with the total of 6.2 million
which is what is in the contingency for the amendment three is that the total amount in the contingency i believe so yes both and that entire amount came out of two sources correct if and impacts it would not occur until the next fiscal year correct why you would have to ask the finance chair i don't know
it wasn't discussed in the meeting it was discussed but i'm not sure i wasn't i wasn't i wasn't part of that meeting so um the now if amendment three doesn't pass then it goes back to the intended sources current funding levels well yes it goes back to where it was intended to be but um i don't know it's it's um it was done to help i guess defer in in the future that was that that's my feeling from
the committee was that they don't perceive it to be a core service of government and so they were trying to look at those buckets to see what could be so that's true because there's so many other ones that
they wouldn't touch at all so it's not a core function absolutely having served though i saw the needs in the community being met and i know that the it must be met because you can't trip over the homeless before you realize you have a problem and there's a problem we can't ignore them i don't think we should be philanthropic with the city taxes i'm not saying that at all but at the public service grants commission those commissioners having served do some very at the time good work holding accountable the resources they're receiving and they spend it far better than the city ever
could as we do as we're discussing well because they're leveraging those dollars for their dollars
and through um volunteerism and community and public private partnerships and faith-based communities all those things included so uh again to share in the cuts yes i may disagree with what their findings were to say take it all out for now uh because it's not a core function of government whoever made that statement never served in those capacities to see the true community they didn't
take it all but for the for this but and that's what they have they've taken some out of of of of that
sure well a substantial amount a third i think 35 percent out of both right yeah right um again back
to the two and a half percent that we spoke of in your uh uh presentation of item six two percent or two and a half percent across the board including psgc and cultural council all across the board just an opinion where else can we save money you said there was a reduction in workforce that you mentioned um what was that because it looks like that's already as you know in business that's one of the
heaviest lifts is human capital two-thirds of your operating right right right service-related business two-thirds of your operating costs come out of payroll right right counting salaries and benefits it's probably approaching 65 maybe 70 percent even well you can on page 20.
that's what i'm looking at numbers 68 and uh increase it's almost all public that's untouchable
yeah which is not enough right i mean 842 square miles they're 800 when they're 800 law enforcement
officers short and we're don't get me started i'll go off the deep end to the staff at time of so the 22nd will be the approval of the proposal as we see it correct what were some of the discussions for the proverbial low-hanging fruit on efficiencies that were discussed there what are they already seeing that uh because i don't see any huge reductions uh and the ones that are are legitimate and they're in brackets here what was discussed maybe that was controversial controversial discussion about
a flat cut i feel like five million to the kids hope alliance budget discussion about doing a percentage out of the biggest departments so public works and i wish i had brian's sheet um are these questions we could also ask parks and public works philip yes well it sounds like you said
there is a sheet that you want to refer to that may already have some of those efficiencies i sent it
to you all the last time at the last meeting but it it's like a four-page document that shows every every decision that was made every change that was made to the budget during the budget hearings
okay don't remember seeing that but it's my fault can we send it again yeah i'll do i'd love to see it now one of the one of the areas that still bother me is why the executive office of the mayor and the executive office of the sheriff have to have so many people that those positions can't be integrated into the line departments within the office of the sheriff and the city city government what specifically i'm and i don't know who these people are i just i've seen the positions there are a couple of positions for strategic initiatives well are those are those positions that would be better placed in public works or planning or in uh uh neighborhoods the department the neighborhoods department and uh where where is the where are senior services is that in parks parks and recreation parks recreation and social services is that the title community services yeah those are just those are the questions that i ask is why do you why do you need those staff positions for the mayor when you have appointed department heads that should be doing some whose departments should be doing some of the functional
work in these areas that's that's what bothers me but so something i had looked at years ago was the the park system uh owned property and mayor paten at that time was discussing how robust our park system is and we have the largest park system of any city in the united states however is it all necessary what i meant and even made this the last statement of the last meeting is not a park with a swing set a park bench or a sidewalk parks that we call parks that are really green space that are overgrown some of them fenced some of them retention or drainage areas that we call parks that could be put back on the tax roll to allow private business to do what it does best best a developer to develop it whether it be commercial or residential whatever it may be and allow the taxpayers essentially through private business to pay taxes on property that's owned not by the city but back to the community i don't know that number those that have served i'm sure on parks and recs know that number but they're managing it so you have to increase your staff you have to increase your maintenance you have to increase your equipment cost but that's pretty substantial i'm certain i don't know what the number is but i know at one time boasted by previous administration the largest park system of any city in the united states so i'm assuming it's a fair amount of real estate that's probably owned by the city that's being maintained by
the city that's not producing revenue and aren't there under mayor delaney weren't there like large blocks of acreage that were given to the city and then i know out at uh butler mr hodges uh when he passed away i want to say it's like 1100 acres that was gifted to the city of jacksonville i'm sure or maybe it's a a restrictive covenant or something i believe it's owned by the city and if if that's if that acreage is counting in our quote park system is it skewing that number sure it wouldn't it would because it's just sitting out there it's where his air is where his airfield is david deep forest davis property mr hodges deep forest okay there was one out there that's what he called off of jtb
there was a that's mr okay some reason i thought it was a davis from wendixie side no their plane was that at craig do we know can we ask i guess the real estate department of what parcels are vacant available not maintained not used and let's go after the ones that aren't being maintained let's again not to cause a problem with again no park bench no sidewalks no swing set not truly a legitimate city park that is city-owned real estate that could be put up for sale let's
frame it like this jeff what if we said what is the total acreage held by parks and recreation department of that acreage how much is considered a quote developed park sure as opposed to undeveloped and of the undeveloped how much is being held for future development as opposed to just being held you know as a conservation area and that makes sense is that a fair question it is a fair
question because i think the scope of the true commission would to be look four years out and that's kind of the responsibility we have so again not to sell it to sell it but if it can be used for buffer conservation city park and be rolled in but to what extent and how far do we go 842 square miles how much real estate do we have that could be put back on the rolls and i'm sure there'll be other philanthropic people in the future that'll be giving of their land with passing of their relatives back to the city for conservation easements and so forth so i don't think we need to gobble it all up now and keep it off the income benefit to the community and tax paying benefit to the community so find a way to put it back on the tactical so if we know that number we can then approach it that's all i have
for now i have more questions you do me a favor can you distribute this document to all the members of the commission and request a lot a lot i don't like to use the word direct but request that they review it and come prepared to discuss potential spending reductions at our october meeting sure i also
resend you the document that i was talking about kind of hard to see on my phone but if it would look be easier to read on your laptop or whatever right any other items do you have any comments to make as
a commissioner under commissioner comments no not that i have remade i have none and since we don't have enough members to take action we just can adjourn take care i'm going to my first meeting of the year