Jacksonville, Fl \u2014 Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan is putting finishing touches on her budget address that\u2019ll be presented to City Council on July 20. <\/p>\n
In our monthly sit-down, Deegan addresses the prospective millage rate, her emerging relationship with the new City Council President Nick Howland, affordable housing, and the loss of a $1 million parks grant. <\/p>\n
While not prepared to offer specific numbers, Deegan says it will be infrastructure-heavy. <\/p>\n
\u201cListen to our residents about what they want us to invest in, invest in those things that bring us the greatest return on investment, and keep this incredible momentum the city has going forward. That\u2019s the goal,\u201d said Deegan. <\/p>\n
She encouraged City Council to keep its foot on the gas and not presume what voters will do in November. A constitutional amendment would increase the homestead tax exemption for non-school taxes. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of money in reserves. I think we have a year to deal with whatever the voters do after that. So we\u2019ll continue to be very forward-facing in terms of what our residents need,\u201d Deegan said. <\/p>\n
Costs for first responders will continue to escalate under the Florida Retirement System along with raises that were given in prior years. <\/p>\n
Deegan says that\u2019s the only place that\u2019s going to see substantial growth. <\/p>\n
The city\u2019s millage rate hasn\u2019t been finalized yet. But Deegan says it\u2019s looking a little better than they were initially anticipating. <\/p>\n
LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE:<\/p>\n
\u25b6 Listen to Jacksonville\u2019s Morning News Interviews<\/a><\/p>\n [\u00a0Read more local news from WOKV<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download our free news, weather and traffic app. And click here<\/a> to subscribe to our daily 3 Big Things newsletter.<\/p>\n \u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacksonville, Fl \u2014 Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan is putting finishing touches on her budget address that\u2019ll be presented…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-331960","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\/331960","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=331960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}