City budget panel outlines cuts to pay for tax reduction

Jacksonville leaders are targeting health care initiatves, housing programs and some projects in connection with the stadium deal to help pay for a cut to property taxes.

The City Council’s Finance Committee reviewed possible cuts Friday on its second day of reviewing Mayor Donna Deegan’s $2 billion city budget proposal.

Committee members voted 8-1 on Thursday for a ⅛-mil cut to the city’s property tax rate, resulting in about a $13 million drop in revenue to the city. 

Finance Committee Chair Raul Arias began the hearings with the property tax cut, which at least six council members said before the hearings they would support. 

Proponents on council say cutting the city’s millage rate would give relief to taxpayers facing rising costs of insurance and groceries.

But Deegan, a Democrat, called the move performative and meant to coincide with an on-site visit Thursday by Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia — who’s been pushing cities and counties to lower their tax rates — and his state DOGE auditors.

“That was interesting timing, huh?” Deegan said during a news conference Thursday. “As I’ve said before, I am sincerely hopeful that once we get to the full council that we’ll have less performers and more statesmen.

“It’s clearly something that is just so fiscally irresponsible right now,” Deegan said. “And, it frankly just doesn’t give any tax relief to speak of. It gives people a little more than a buck a month into their pocket. And it takes millions of dollars away from what we can spend on public safety, we can spend on roads and sidewalks and potholes. And these are the things that people are telling us they want.”

Arias began Friday’s meeting by challenging the mayor’s statements and allusion that the cuts to property taxes and health care programs were caving to outside political pressure. Arias said Friday that these were “not programs that the community wanted.”

“If they want a performance, the performance starts today. Get ready,” he said.

“When we talk about managed cuts — reductions — it’s not necessarily to cut across the board. It’s to cut those programs that are probably useless or wasteful spending,” Arias said about the millage rate cut Thursday. “That’s all it is. It’s not for public safety. Public safety will be paramount and it’s all our No. 1 priority.” 

The ⅛-mil cut falls short of a proposal by committee member Rory Diamond, who wanted to cut the rate by a full mil, or more than $100 million. But the committee left the door open to cut the millage rate further as the budget hearings, scheduled to run through Aug. 22, move forward and it makes more cuts to the budget.

Council member Ju’Coby Pittman, the only Democrat on the committee, was the sole “no” vote on cutting the city’s millage rate, which is the lowest of any of Florida’s major cities.

Council President Kevin Carrico joined the committee to vote for the property tax cut.

The pilot Healthlink Jax telehealth program is one of the largest single cuts to the budget so far at  $2.18 million.

Healthlink Jax is a free, virtual service to help Duval County residents who don’t have health insurance. The city’s chief health officer, Dr. Sunil Joshi, told the committee the program kept 1,300 people from visiting emergency rooms in the last year.

In total, Joshi said 3,100 people used the service with a majority living in Jacksonville’s urban core neighborhoods and on the Northside.

The committee also cut $230,000 for a new dental health services program and $110,000 of a $310,000 line item meant for infant mortality and syphilis screening. 

Deegan said Thursday that she was surprised the committee slashed the health care programs, as it has been an agreed-upon priority for her office in recent years.

Michael Boylan, a Republican council member who led a Critical Quality of Life Issues committee in 2021 and 2022, challenged the notion from committee members that cutting social service programs won’t affect public safety, calling it “shortsighted.” 

“We talk about sacred cows in terms of public safety. There are other sacred cows, I understand, in this process. But the whole intent of focusing on some of the social services, health care, access to homelessness and affordable housing, came out of the work of this council and supported by this council over the next two years,” Boylan told committee members Thursday. 

“So I’m hopeful, as you take a look at this, the expectations of the citizens out there is that we do support these programs.” 

Housing and more cuts

On Friday, the committee cut more than $7 million for housing initiatives from the budget proposal. In the weeks leading up to the budget hearings, several council members pointed to state dollars allocated by the Jacksonville Housing Finance Authority to push back against public critique that the city doesn’t allocate enough money for affordable housing in Jacksonville.

Joshua Hicks, the city’s affordable housing administrator, issued a statement about the committee’s cuts.

“The need for housing that is affordable came up repeatedly in Mayor Deegan’s town halls. For the first time ever, it surpassed crime as the top concern of our citizens,” Hicks said in an email. “How did the Finance Committee respond? They cut all local funding to address housing costs — more than $7 million — and then wrongly took credit for state funding that is implemented by the Jacksonville Housing Finance Authority, an independent authority.

“Cities around the country are spending millions in local dollars to address this crisis. We need to do the same. Progress is being made to provide relief to our citizens. We must continue to move forward.”

The $678 million Capital Improvement Plan filed with Deegan’s budget had a $2.5 million line item to go toward countywide projects to satisfy a $40 million commitment by the city in the $300 million Community Development Agreement struck with the Jacksonville Jaguars in the $1.4 billion deal to renovate EverBank Stadium.

That money also was removed from the budget. Arias said the $19 million in other projects throughout the county would satisfy the contract’s commitment. Mike Weinstein, the mayor’s chief of staff, said Thursday that he felt the action goes against the spirit of the CBA.

The committee also made a $300,000 cut Friday to the mayor’s office’s $5.39 million budget that went toward salaries. The money was for part-time positions in the public affairs office and for Carla Miller, the former head of the city’s ethics office, who is now a special adviser to the mayor.

The city’s $390,673 contribution to the Northeast Florida Regional Council, the planning and research organization that aids multiple counties in the region, also was on the chopping block Thursday.

Arias also amended the budget to finance $14 million budgeted for council members to spend in their districts with cash instead of debt. 

The $1 million for each of the 14 districts is also part of the CBA. 

That move, combined with the $13 million property tax cut, meant the council had to cut $27 million to rebalance the budget. According to the City Council auditor, as of Friday morning, the committee’s cuts closed that gap to $18.2 million. 

Some organizations, including Jacksonville Journey Forward and some of the neighborhood chambers, will have to come before the committee in two weeks to defend their funding needs. 

The committee put funding for these organizations “below the line, ” meaning the Finance Committee believes it needs further review before including it in the final budget. That included $839,410 for municipal dues and $1.9 million for Journey Forward, an initiative to address the root causes of violent crime.

Florida DOGE

In a post on the social media platform X on Friday, Ingoglia criticized concerns outlined by Deegan in her news conference Thursday that the property tax cut would hurt the city’s momentum.

“The only “real momentum” the @CityofJax has under your ‘leadership’ is rising property taxes, a bloated budget and wasteful spending. You’re clearly not listening to the taxpayers. I am,” he posted. 

The state’s CFO praised the tax cut in his Jacksonville news conference Thursday. 

Deegan attributed some of the committee’s cuts to pressure from Tallahassee and DOGE. She hopes the telehealth and other programs will get put back into the budget once it gets to the full Council.

“I think there’s a lot of pressure right now on these council people to behave in a certain way. Many of them, not all of them, but many of them know this is the wrong thing to do. But they are getting incredible pressure to do so,” Deegan said.

Council will take its final votes on the budget and property tax rate in September, and the budget will go into effect Oct. 1. 

Carrico issued a statement Friday in response to the mayor’s news conference. 

“There’s nothing performative about delivering real savings — millions of dollars of tax cuts — to Jacksonville property owners who have been feeling the pinch of rising costs over the past few years,” Carrico said in the release. “Maybe it feels performative to someone who gets chauffeured around by a taxpayer-funded driver and doles out six-figure salaries to her friends — but it sure doesn’t feel that way to the working-class resident I represent.”