JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Jacksonville City Council spent the day Thursday digging into the mayor\u2019s proposed $2 billion city budget, but the biggest parts of the budget sailed through with few questions or concerns. <\/p>\n
At $400 million and $673.6 million respectively, JFRD and JSO\u2019s budgets make up more than half of the proposed $2 billion city budget.<\/p>\n
Spending at JFRD is jumping about $12.5 million, while JSO is asking for an additional $35.6 million.<\/p>\n
Council members had few questions and no critiques on the two budgets during the hearing, as the vast majority of the budget increases are driven by salaries and benefits.<\/p>\n
In the fire budget, there are 22 new positions to staff a new fire station, which is currently being operated by firefighters working overtime.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving these actually funded next year will create some consistency at the fire station so it won\u2019t be people transferring in,\u201d said JFRD Fire Chief Percy Golden.<\/p>\n
The JSO budget also includes 20 new positions for crime scene technicians, which Sheriff TK Waters explained will free up 20 officers to work the streets.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not want to overburden our taxpayers and so we\u2019re very careful with that. That\u2019s why instead of asking for more positions at this point, we\u2019re going to hire civilians to fill some of those positions and then put those guys back on the street,\u201d said Waters.<\/p>\n
With Amendment 3 looming on the horizon, which could eliminate hundreds of millions in city revenues<\/a> if passed, we asked the sheriff if he considered those potential impacts while crafting JSO\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, not typically. Typically what\u2019s in the back of my mind is the taxpayers of Duval County. I want to make sure they know their sheriff, our staff, is very cognizant and very careful with the way we spend their dollars,\u201d said Waters.<\/p>\n There were also some additional costs this year in JSO\u2019s budget to help facilitate the move of JSO headquarters into the Florida Blue Building.<\/p>\n The Sheriff said that move is expected to be more or less complete by the end of this fall.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Jacksonville City Council spent the day Thursday digging into the mayor\u2019s proposed $2 billion city…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":999544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[386658,5229,12187,3188,723,400323,167755,7310,82820,3005,174645,12179,8423,425,12498,38099,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-999543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-amendment_3","tag-america","tag-duval_county","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-florida_blue_building","tag-jackson_state","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville_city_council","tag-jake","tag-jake_stofan","tag-jfrd","tag-jso","tag-local","tag-sheriff","tag-tk_waters","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=999543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/999544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=999543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=999543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=999543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}