JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 After much infighting and political posturing, Jacksonville City Council passed its budget this week. On her show This Week in the 904, Emily Turner sat down with Raul Arias, the chair of the Finance Committee, to talk about the rocky road to getting it across the finish line.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <\/b><\/a><\/p>\n The budget passed by a razor-thin margin \u2014 ten to nine \u2014 and after thirteen hours of public comment and debate. Arias says there were two big sticking points \u2014 property tax cuts and a proposed ban on spending on DEI, abortion, and illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is one of the reasons why it took such a long time for us to complete our session,\u201d Arias says. \u201cThe millage cut was one of biggest proponent, but this piece of legislation\u2026 Rory Diamond\u2019s amendment, that was the one that had a lot of debate.”<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem is that we had enough votes to pass those amendments\u2026 but it had three components wrapped into one. While those amendments did pass, when it came down to voting on the final budget, we needed enough votes for the final budgeting, and we didn\u2019t have that, because a lot of council members didn\u2019t want to support those amendments, and so we couldn\u2019t pass that, and that\u2019s really what took the longest.\u201d <\/p>\n He goes on to talk about the financial future of the city, what line items did and didn\u2019t made the cut, and more. You can catch the whole conversation on This Week in the 904 this Sunday morning on Action News Jax. <\/p>\n Watch previous episodes <\/b>here.<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n