JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Jacksonville City Council Finance Committee kicked off budget hearings Thursday, digging into Mayor Donna Deegan\u2019s proposed $2 billion city budget.<\/p>\n
During opening remarks, the mayor\u2019s office indicated it wants to work as a team with council members to get to a final product.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of you may not want to be on the same team, but we\u2019re looked at as a team,\u201d said Jacksonville Chief Administrative Officer Mike Weinstein.<\/p>\n
But quickly disagreements arose\u2026 Many repeats from last year.<\/p>\n
A $1.5 million budget ask for a Telehealth program serving the uninsured was cut in half – at least for now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe the city government should be subsidizing this,\u201d said Councilmember Ron Salem (R-Group 2 At-Large).<\/p>\n
The committee also slashed nearly $5 million meant for affordable housing programs, to the disdain of some members.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that when we take care of those who are the least amongst us financially and give them a little dignity in how we take care of them, I think that speaks to the spirit of the kind of community that we are,\u201d said Councilmember Matt Carlucci (R-Group 4 At-Large).<\/p>\n
The committee even cut $8 million out of its own contingency fund.<\/p>\n
Finance Chair Will Lahnen (R-District 3) argued the council needs to lead by example in this uncertain budget year, as revenues totaling hundreds of millions of dollars<\/a> <\/a>could be lost if the property tax phaseout proposal passes in November.<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever you\u2019re in the real world, the business world, and you\u2019re facing revenue uncertainty, you want to preserve cash,\u201d said Lahnen.<\/p>\n In total, about $14 million was either cut or put on hold in the first round.<\/p>\n There are five more budget hearings scheduled over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Jacksonville City Council Finance Committee kicked off budget hearings Thursday, digging into Mayor Donna…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[150587,56464,969,1130,116,118,117,971,44784,634,1375,113983,150588],"class_list":["post-372774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-council_finance_committee","tag-deegan","tag-jack","tag-jackson","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jake","tag-jake_stofan","tag-local","tag-mayor","tag-six","tag-will_lanen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372774","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=372774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}