{"id":221473,"date":"2026-04-07T03:17:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T03:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/221473\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T03:17:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T03:17:07","slug":"committee-hits-pause-on-14-proposed-safe-haven-baby-boxes-around-jacksonville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/221473\/","title":{"rendered":"Committee hits pause on 14 proposed Safe Haven Baby Boxes around Jacksonville"},"content":{"rendered":"

“If you voted for a $775 million football stadium, you should vote for $300,000 to save a little newborn baby,” Councilman Rory Diamond said, pushing back.<\/p>\n

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Jacksonville City Council’s Neighborhoods Committee deferred a bill Monday that would fund 14 Safe Haven Baby Boxes<\/a>, one in each council district, as some members questioned the demand for the devices.<\/p>\n

The bill is sponsored by District 13 Council Member Rory Diamond and would appropriate nearly $315,000 to the fire department for purchasing and installing the climate-controlled boxes at fire stations.<\/p>\n

The boxes allow parents to anonymously and safely surrender newborns up to 30 days old under Florida’s Safe Haven law, automatically alerting first responders when they are dropped off.<\/p>\n

Diamond argued that it’s a worthwhile investment.<\/p>\n

“If we save one newborn baby, it’s worth the money,” he said.<\/p>\n

There are currently no boxes on the First Coast, with the nearest in Flagler County at Fire Station 25. That county recently saw a stark example of why they exist, with a Palm Coast woman indicted Monday for first-degree murder after allegedly letting her newborn drown\u00a0<\/a>after giving birth in a toilet.<\/p>\n

District 6 Council Member Michael Boylan didn’t oppose having the boxes, but proposed starting smaller with a four-box pilot program.<\/p>\n

“I absolutely support the concept… I just wondered how we determined the need for it,” Boylan said.<\/p>\n

He shared a letter from Adoptee Advocates of Michigan.<\/p>\n

“This proposal raises serious concerns about the allocation of a substantial portion of public funds toward a solution in a city that has not experienced a baby surrender or abandonment case in well over a decade,” the letter read in part. “At a minimum, it is difficult to justify diverting hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, not including thousands more in additional ongoing maintenance costs, to address a problem that does not appear to exist in Jacksonville.”<\/p>\n

Diamond pushed back, calling the proposed reduction unbelievable, especially after the city approved $775 million for a stadium and hundreds of millions for downtown developers.<\/p>\n

“They won’t spend $300,000 for newborn babies,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. I don’t know what planet these people live on.”<\/p>\n

The bill heads to the Finance Committee Tuesday, where Chair Joe Carlucci is expected to defer it again, Boylan said. That could delay a full council vote by two to four weeks, giving time to assess demand and the optimal number of boxes.<\/p>\n

District 2 Council Member Mike Gay also commented on the proposal.<\/p>\n

“I fully support the bill as originally filed,” Gay said. “The only change I will support is finding another funding source.”<\/p>\n

The measure was originally slated for possible full council consideration on April 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“If you voted for a $775 million football stadium, you should vote for $300,000 to save a little…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-221473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}