The Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County has released a report today on the 2009-2010 Jacksonville city budget. This report reflects our observations on the proposed budget and our recommendations for program cuts that could minimize or even eliminate the need for an increase in the millage rate. This report has been sent to the members of the Jacksonville City Council who will be deliberating on the budget this Thursday. You can view the report at http://jaxtaxpayers.org/pdfs/BudgetReviewReport.pdf.

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The Florida Times Union today released a database of 2008-2009 raises for Jacksonville City employees.  It is quite revealing to say the least.  The largest raise was for Manager of Accounting Services-Grants Devin Carter who received a whopping 87.16 percent raise – a $29,574 difference in salary from 2008 to 2009!   I certainly know that I did not receive a double digit raise for 2009.  I doubt that many Jacksonville taxpayers did too especially in this economy.

I accept that some of the salary increase may have been due to new bachelors degrees which led to promotions or something similar to this.  Clearly, this could be a legitimate recognition of the improved skill set brought about through higher education. However, 586 employees out of 8,116 – about 7 percent of the city workforce – received raises of 10 percent or more. Clearly, this has to be explained before we taxpayers will accept a 12 percent tax increase

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Last Tuesday (July 28), the Jacksonville City Council voted on the proposed millage rate for the 2009/2010 city budget. Here is how they voted.

The following City Council members voted to lower your taxes by keeping the millage rate as it currently is, specifically 8.48 mills.

Bill Bishop, Richard Clark, John Crescimbeni, Daniel Davis, Johnny Gaffney, Art Graham, Ray Holt, Glorious Johnson, Denise Lee, Clay Yarborough

The following City Council members voted to raise your taxes by 12 percent as proposed by Mayor Peyton.

Reggie Brown, Michael Corrigan, Ronnie Fussell, Kevin Hyde, Warren Jones, Stephen Joost, Don Redman, Art Shad, Jack Webb

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Well, budget season is now upon us in Jacksonville.  In his recent budget address, Mayor John Peyton asked for a 12 percent increase in our millage rate.  According to Peyton, without this tax hike, we will have to make deep cuts in services vital to the Jacksonville taxpayer.  We are talking about closing fire stations.  Parks will become jungles without adequate landscaping.  Our streets will be overflowing with criminals if the Jacksonville Journey is not funded for another year.  Peyton’s speech enters the world of hyperbole when he stated “Is it your plan to shut down government?”. Chicken Little is no longer saying that the sky is falling. Instead, he just threw up his wings and left town.

What makes the budget process insane is that in a scant two weeks after the budget was unveiled, the City Council must decide what the initial millage rate will be for the city budget. Yes, that is two weeks to study the budget and determine if a millage rate increase is needed or whether more cuts in the budget are possible. Of course, the millage rate can be set lower later once budgets cuts have been identified. But once the genie is let out of the bottle by giving the mayor his millage rate increase, reducing it could be harder to do this once the mayor gets the momentum moving in his direction.

However, if we do not want the millage rate increase and we do not want the mayor’s three fees, we have to identify what to cut in the budget. The worst thing that we can do is to cut say 10 percent from everything in the budget. Not everything is equal in the budget. Public safety and roads are a far higher priority than the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission and the Cultural Council. Prioritizing city spending is crucial as we must cut from the budget those expenditures that are superfluous to its city’s central mission of providing essential services utilized by the vast majority of the public that cannot be provided by the private sector.

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If you want to know what is wrong with city government spending in Jacksonville, take a look at bill 2009-403 that is coming up for a public hearing on Tuesday May 26th.  It spends $5,800 of taxpayer money to restore the Lakeshore Entrance Arches (see the picture to the left).  According to the bill summary, “the Lake Shore entryway at Blanding Boulevard, Appleton Street and Bayview Road was designated as a historic landmark by the City Council earlier this year. The entryway was constructed in 1925 in the Mediterranean style at the height of the Florida land boom.”  So basically what we are talking about is spending taxpayer money to fix up some old structure because someone decided that it has “historic” value.

If this is not bad enough, the money is being awarded to Rhodes Stucco without competitive bidding. The exemption is based upon Section 126.107(g) of the Ordinance Code which stipulates that “supplies or services to be provided by those specifically prescribed within authorizing legislation that appropriates the same” can be exempted from competitive bidding. You would think after the uproar over the no bid Trail Ridge contract to Waste Management that competitive bidding would be the way to go.  But apparently the City Council thinks that the amount is low enough that no one will notice. As you can see, Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County has noticed!

This is also touted as an emergency expenditure. Emergency?! Unless this structure is about to collapse and take out a busload of nuns, this is hardly an emergency!

I do not see how this repairing this structure could be considered a valid government function. If anything, it is a waste of taxpayer money!

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Two City Council Bills that will likely come up before the full City Council on January 13th have caught our attention here at Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County.  The first one is bill 2008-1021. This bill appropriates $109,000 from the Special Council Contingency/PSG/Cultural Council account to pay for the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra’s rental of Jacoby Symphony Hall at the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts for the 2008-09 orchestra season.  So the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra cannot pay its rent.  It provides a valuable service, right?  Why not let the taxpayers help it out of its financial bind?

As Councilman Stephen Joost pointed out at a recent Finance Committee meeting, the number of people attending performances by the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra for the past budget year was 110,000+.  If one more dollar had been charged per ticket, there would be no need to burden the Jacksonville taxpayer with this bill.

The second one is bill 2008-1055.  This bill sets a graduated point system for evaluating the proximity of businesses seeking city government professional service contracts to Jacksonville.  The pecking order for favoring contract candidates is businesses that have headquarters in Jacksonville followed by businesses with branch offices in Jacksonville followed by business with branch office elsewhere in Florida followed by business with no offices in Florida. So isn’t favoring local businesses who pay local taxes a good idea?

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It is 2009 and it is time for all of us to make our resolutions for the new year (which hopefully we will keep!). Here are a few suggested new year resolutions for the city of Jacksonville.

1. Prioritize city spending.  The city does not have to be everything to everyone.  It needs to identify those services that are vital to our city, meet the needs of the vast majority of its taxpayers rather than only a few and cannot be provided by the free enterprise system.
2. Ask taxpayers for permission before raising taxes.
3. Use toll roads and better traffic light synchronization to help relieve traffic congestion rather than light rail.
4. Find a solution to the unfunded city pension liabilities of over $700 million according to the latest figures.
5. Build a cheaper courthouse.

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I made a discovery when perusing City Council bills recently. Ordinance 2008-1059 appropriates $184,754 for various water related environmental studies to UNF. The studies are not being competitively bidded because there is an exception in the ordinance code (126.107(f)) that exempts government entities like UNF from competitive bidding.

Section 126.107(f) of the Ordinance Code is as follows:

Unless ordered by the Mayor or Council or otherwise required by the Jacksonville Ordinance Code, the following supplies, contractual services, professional design services, professional services, capital improvements and/or sales transactions are exempt from competitive solicitation:
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(f) Supplies or services or commodities provided by governmental entity or agencies.

So even if a private organization is able to do the study at a cheaper price, it will not be allowed to compete with UNF. One would have to ask is why are government entities like UNF so afraid of competing with private companies in the awarding of city government contracts?

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My first observation was that Councilman Clay Yarborough had done his homework. He appropriately  scrutinized all the bills. He questioned the legislation as if he was spending his own money.  He expected government spending to be appropriate use of taxpayer money.

I was disappointed in City Council members Michael Corrigan and Daniel Davis for their cavalier attitude towards a Tangible Property Inventory audit that implied much lack of accountability in the Peyton administration especially in the Planning Department.

Corrigan and Davis said that they were not concerned about missing property (computers) because it was 8 years old.  One item was identified as 22 years old and another was identified as a missing outboard motor. No one asked what the values of these items were when they were found missing.   It was like “okay, stuff happens”.

I heard little about making sure that taxpayers assets were better protected in the future. Councilman Stephen Joost did make a mild attempt at questioning the inventory process.

Another problem is that the City Council is giving away millions of taxpayer dollars in interest free loans for housing and rehabilitation of existing housing. The testimony indicated we have already spent rehabilitation money on 3000 houses and have a little over 2000 on the waiting list.

The multi-year/multi-million dollar Trail Ridge Landfill no bid contract (2008-538) was deferred in both the Rules and Finance committees on November 17th.

Tony Bates, President
Concerned Taxpayers Duval County

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Recently, there has been a lot in the news about competitive bidding for government contracts in Jacksonville. First, the city is considering awarding a landfill operations agreement with Trail Ridge Landfill, a subsidiary of Waste Management of Florida, without competitive bidding. Waste Management of Florida is using the the carrot and stick approach of lowering the base costs of its landfill services along with an intimidating lawsuit threat to force the city to give it a 40 year contract for about three quarters of a billion dollars without looking at other companies.

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