Now that the Jacksonville City Council gave the transit authority access to $30M, council auditors are still trying to figure out how the budget shortfall happened
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville City Council unanimously approved a plan Tuesday night to provide the Jacksonville Transportation Authority with access to $30 million in local option gas tax funds, helping the agency address a $39 million budget shortfall that has already led to layoffs and major service cuts.
Under the agreement, JTA must repay the money without interest by Sept. 30, 2037. However, city leaders say there are currently no penalties in place if the agency fails to meet that deadline. City councilmember Ron Salem, who is the Vice Chair of the city’s Financial Audit and Oversight Committee, says he has concerns about JTA’s budget moving forward, but hopes the transit authority will be able to pay the money back sooner rather than later.
“I hope they pay it back before 10 years. I hope they can stabilize the situation over a 2-to-3 year period and begin paying it back and not wait till the end of 10 years to pay it back, but a lot of that will depend upon the next uh few months and how things go,” Salem said.
The authority’s chief financial officer previously told First Coast News that the $30 million would be used in part to reduce a line of credit that was used to pay past-due invoices.
As part of the authority’s savings plan, JTA has already announced the elimination of nearly 200 jobs, reductions to weekday bus service and the suspension of several transit services. Beginning November 2nd, routes 18, 25, 32 and 82 will be discontinued, and the Downtown Skyway is also scheduled to cease operations. The Neighborhood Autonomous Vehicle Innovation, or NAVI, service is slated to end Jan. 1.
“No one really knows how they got to this point,” Salem said.
Councilman Salem says council auditors have begun reviewing years of financial records to determine when revenue projections and expenses began to diverge.
“We’re beginning to get feedback from our council auditors who are looking at quarterly reports over the last few years trying to identify exactly when the revenue projections and expenses began to diverge, so to speak,” said Salem. “Once we have those dates, we can then determine who was putting together the budget at that time and what they were thinking and why it was out of whack.”
The committee first met last week to begin examining JTA’s finances and is scheduled to meet Thursday morning again at City Hall. JTA has also indicated it is considering hiring an independent forensic auditor to review its books.
“The board of directors of JTA has indicated they’re gonna bring in an outside auditor. Uh, someone that’s not done business with JTA to look at the books as well. We are reviewing a lot of different things within JTA, so I think between that outside audit and what the council is doing, hopefully we can, uh, make sure that we, we determine exactly what happened and put some policies in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Salem said.
As the city investigates the causes of the shortfall, Salem said JTA should focus on its core transportation responsibilities before advancing major capital initiatives.
“This is my own opinion: the JTA needs to focus first on core issues such as bus service, the Connection Plus services, transporting our disabled around town, uh, and the ferry,” Salem said. “We need to get those done well, and then we can begin looking at the Emerald Trail and the other transportation projects and how we handle those.”