petition against JEA<\/a> that has already collected more than 5,000 signatures. He said the bills his family has been receiving are far beyond what he expected.<\/p>\n\u201cMy mother received a $500 bill, and when she came to me, they said we need to get this bill paid. I\u2019m thinking 100, maybe 200, but when I say 500, I\u2019m like, yeah, no,\u201d Goodrich said.<\/p>\n
Councilmembers Reggie Gaffney Jr. and Jimmy Peluso are asking what the city can do to help families facing those kinds of bills.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very upsetting; it\u2019s disturbing. It moves me because you have everyday individuals who have to make a priority \u2014 whether they pay their rent, whether they pay their gas, food \u2014 they have to make tough decisions,\u201d Gaffney said.<\/p>\n
Big questions remain, including who would qualify for assistance, how much help a household could receive, where the funding would come from, and how quickly relief could reach families.<\/p>\n
Gaffney said those details are not yet finalized.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now we\u2019re not sure,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have a roundtable dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that identifying revenue sources is a critical next step. \u201cI\u2019m not sure if legislation will come out of this. We\u2019ve got to identify our revenue sources \u2014 what is JEA doing, we\u2019ve got to figure out who could hold the money,\u201d Gaffney said.<\/p>\n
The roundtable discussion is scheduled for Thursday at 4 p.m. in the Don Davis Room at City Hall.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Rising prices are squeezing household budgets across Jacksonville, and for some residents, keeping up with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,501,2159],"class_list":["post-421979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jea","tag-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421979","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=421979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}