Jacksonville City Council unanimously approved a plan Tuesday to provide the Jacksonville Transportation Authority with $30 million in gas tax revenue as the agency works through a major financial shortfall.<\/p>\n
The funding will function as a loan, with JTA expected to repay the money over time.<\/p>\n
Council members voted 15-0 in favor of the measure, despite mixed reactions from residents who spoke before the vote.<\/p>\n
“We all should support it. We really have no choice,” Councilman Ron Salem said.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n “Getting back to what the JTA is supposed to be doing and that’s providing transportation to our community,” Councilman Mike Gay said.<\/p>\n Last month, Action News Jax reported that nearly 200 employees could be laid off as JTA works to close a $39 million budget gap.<\/p>\n Residents offered differing opinions during Tuesday night’s meeting.<\/p>\n “The people didn’t create this crisis, and we shouldn’t have to pay for it,” one resident said.<\/p>\n Another resident supported the move, citing concerns about transportation affordability.<\/p>\n “The routes got cut; it was really bad. I’m hoping that the gas tax … the changes to the gas tax will help address some of the affordability issues that they’re having,” the resident said.<\/p>\n District 7 Councilman Jimmy Peluso emphasized that the funding does not represent new money for the authority.<\/p>\n “They’re just getting access to dollars that they would’ve otherwise gotten access to at a later date,” Peluso said.<\/p>\n Under the agreement, JTA will have until 2037 to repay the money, which is intended to support transportation-related projects.<\/p>\n “I think they’re going to get to a place where they solve it. Relatively quickly,” Peluso said.<\/p>\n Salem noted that JTA has already taken out a $25 million loan and described the agency’s situation as a “death spiral.” Several council members agreed that Tuesday’s vote represents a step toward stabilizing the authority’s finances.<\/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 City Council unanimously approved a plan Tuesday to provide the Jacksonville Transportation Authority with $30 million in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-427317","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\/427317","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=427317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}