OFFICE OF
THE CITY COUNCIL
CHERYL L. BROWN 117 WEST DUVAL STREET,
DIRECTOR 4TH
FLOOR, CITY HALL
OFFICE (904) 630-1452
FAX (904) 630-2906
E-MAIL: CLBROWN@coj.net
FINANCE COMMITTEE BUDGET HEARING MINUTES
August 29, 2012
9:00 a.m.
Location: City Council Chamber, 1st floor, City
Hall –
In attendance:
Council Members John Crescimbeni (Chair), Greg Anderson, Lori Boyer, Johnny Gaffney, Bill Gulliford (arr. 9:18), Stephen Joost and Clay Yarborough
Also: Council Members Robin Lumb and Matt Schellenberg; Kirk Sherman, Kim Taylor, Kyle Billy, Robert Campbell – Council Auditor’s Office; Peggy Sidman – Office of General Counsel; Ronnie Belton, Glenn Hansen and Angela Moyer – Finance Department; Jessica Deal – Mayor’s Office; Jessica Stephens – Legislative Services Division; Jeff Clements – City Council Research Division, David Bauerlein – Florida Times-Union; David Chapman – Financial News and Daily Record; Kevin Meerschaert – WJCT; Steve Cassada – Council Staff Services
Meeting Convened: 9:04 a.m.
Council Member Gulliford asked for clarification of comments made by some council members at last nights council meeting equating the appropriation of $4 million in Sheriff’s Office budget savings from FY11-12 to the looming hole in the FY12-13 budget and questioning the use of one-time funds to fill budget holes. Kirk Sherman reported that the Council has earmarked $10.5 million of the $13 million anticipated fund balance from FY11-12 for new purposes. That leaves a miniscule $2.5 million carryover out of a nearly $1 billion budget, and that assumes that all targets will be hit in the remaining month of the budget. He strongly cautioned the committee against any further uses of the fund balance. He explained the difference between General Fund balance and various other designated reserve funds. Mr. Sherman explained the sources of the $13 million deficit in the FY11-12 budget and said that the situation continues a trend of recent years in shortfalls in property tax, utility service and state-shared revenues due to the overall economic downturn.
Chairman Crescimbeni said that he had been informed by Court
Administrator Joe Stelma that the
References from this
point refer to the Council Auditor’s Handout for Meeting #7 - August 29, 2012.
Employee Services
Director Jarik Conrad explained the deletion of 10 employees and the addition of 10 new employees by transfer from the Administrative Services Department to handle a new function that the department does not currently handle.
Mr. Conrad explained the changing figures for college tuition reimbursement, which will be eliminated for all employees except police and firefighters who have a contractual right to the reimbursement. The contracts do not have an exact amount but provide for “reasonable” reimbursement, which the department and the Office of General Counsel have defined as the same amount as budgeted last year after negotiations with the firefighter union for reductions failed to produce savings. The committee discussed whether the tuition reimbursement funding is better budgeted in the Employee Services budget or in the departmental budgets. It used to be in the departmental budgets but was centralized about 5 years ago. Mr. Conrad would favor moving it back to the departmental budgets with some Employee Services oversight. The City has consistently expended more in tuition reimbursement than was budgeted in recent years and filled the gap with transfers within the department.
Motion (
Motion (
Tax Increment Districts
Northbank Downtown TIF
Motion (Yarborough): on p. 5, approve Council Auditor’s recommendation.
Motion (Joost): on p. 5, increase the Northbank Downtown TIF budget by $115,410 for MPS garage subsidy and fund by increasing the extraordinary lapse on the Office of Economic Development budget – approved.
In response to a question from Council Member Boyer about use of CRA funds, Office of Economic Development Acting Director Paul Crawford stated that his staff and the Office of General Counsel are researching the pledges of the CRA funds and whether any of the current uses may violate state law regarding appropriate use of the funds. General Counsel Cindy Laquidara said that the City Council is the ultimate authority on the use of CRA funds and can either amend the budget or amend the CRA redevelopment plan to ensure that CRA funds are properly expended on state-authorized projects.
Chairman Crescimbeni asked Ms. Laquidara to prepare legislation for his introduction to codify all of the City’s CRA projects that are legitimate uses of TIF funds. Council Member Boyer cautioned that state law prohibits use of TIF funds for CRA projects that are or have been within the City’s Capital Improvement Program within the last 3 years. Mr. Crescimbeni also asked for research on the City’s ability to recoup subsidies given to CRA projects from the General Fund when TIF funds were insufficient to meet the pledges. Council Member Joost suggested the creation of a fund that could process temporary subsidies from the General Fund that would be paid back over time by future CRA revenues.
Southbank Downtown TIF
Motion (Boyer): on p. 6, approve Council Auditor’s recommendation regarding two REV grant reductions totaling $100,000, and keep all the CRA funds within the CRA account ($1,186,238 not swept to General Fund) –
Council Member Boyer expressed grave concern about potentially violating the state statute by appropriating CRA funds at the beginning of the fiscal year as if it was sweeping unused funds at the end of a fiscal year. The Downtown Investment Authority will have authority to expend the funds in question on other uses in an approved CRA redevelopment plan, so the Council cannot count on there being unexpended funds at the close of the fiscal year.
JIA CRA
Motion (
Downtown Vision Inc.
Motion (
Special Services Department
General Fund
Motion (
Motion (Joost): on p. 17, apply the savings of $31,752 from the approval of recommendation #1 to offset the Council Auditor’s proposed reduction in Welfare Reimbursement and apply the remainder ($13,248) as an extraordinary lapse on the Special Services Department – approved.
Motion: on p. 17
approve Council Auditor’s recommendation #3 – approved.
Legal Aid
The auditor had no specific recommendation with regard to Legal Aid, but pointed out that it is one of the items, like others in the budget, that runs a continuing negative fund balance, which is a concern. Some permanent solution needs to found to rectify these continuing deficits.
Motion (Joost): give Legal Aid 95% of whatever is appropriated by the City Council this year for their operations and allocate the other 5% to a pay-down of the accumulated deficit in the Legal Aid account – approved.
Mr. Joost will introduce legislation to make the 5% application to accumulated deficit a permanent budgeting practice.
Planning and Development Department
Motion (
Motion (Boyer): on p. 22, Auditor’s recommendation #3, delete 4 positions from the employee cap and keep 4 positions unfunded – approved 4-2 (Yarborough and Crescimbeni no).
The committee was in
recess from 11:50 a.m. to 1:49 p.m.
Motion (Gulliford): reconsider vote on Boyer amendment – approved 3-2 (Joost and Boyer opposed).
Motion (Gulliford): repeal Boyer amendment on recommendation #3 – approved 4-1 (Boyer no).
Motion: on p.
21-22, approve Council Auditor’s recommendations #1, 2 and 3 – approved.
Motion (Gulliford): put the funding for the Chief of Community Planning position funding “below the line” – approved.
Concurrency Management Systems
The committee questioned Planning and Development Director Calvin Burney about the filling of a fifth planner position within the division when only four positions were authorized. Council Member Gulliford indicated his unwillingness to consider leaving unfunded positions in departmental budgets in the future because of the Mayor’s ability to transfer funds and fill unfunded positions.
Motion (Joost):
on p. 24, remove one of the five position caps for a planner within the
Concurrency Management Division and put the associated funding in the Special
Council Contingency account – approved
5-1 (
Building Inspection Division
Motion: on p. 28, approve Council Auditor’s recommendations #1, 2 and 3 – approved.
In response to a question from Chairman Crescimbeni, CFO Ronnie Belton indicated that his office was in the process of preparing the new fee schedule for fees that will be revised as a result of the Council’s action yesterday to remove the waiver of automatic fee increases from the budget ordinance. Mr. Crescimbeni asked that the fee schedule be completed and presented to the Finance Committee at its September 18th meeting.
References from this
point refer to Council Auditor’s handout labeled Wrap Up Items –
August 29, 2102.
Administration’s plan to address budget deficit
The committee discussed the $750,000 in savings the administration foresees from the new public facilities management contract and the $3.5 million attributable to a favorable health insurance contract (3% increase over current year rather than 7% originally anticipated). General Counsel Cindy Laquidara answered questions about the facilities management RFP and contract. Kirk Sherman still has questions about whether there will be an effect on the forecast savings based on whether the Jaguars insist that SMG continue to operate EverBank Field, how much of the savings is derived from EverBank Field versus the other facilities, and how much of the savings are related to football operations (Jaguars, Florida/Georgia game, Gator Bowl) that all fall within the first quarter of the fiscal year.
Motion: on p. 1, approve Council Auditor’s estimated savings of $1,558,565 on competitive bidding – approved.
Budget Officer Glenn Hansen and Kirk Sherman discussed how they calculated their estimates of revenue increases
Motion (
Motion
(Gulliford): on p. 1 approve Council Auditor’s estimate of FY12/13 debt service
savings of $2,000,000 – approved.
Motion (
Motion (
Current Special Council Contingency deficit stands at $1,641,182 at this moment. In response to a question for clarification from Council Member Boyer, Mr. Sherman explained that the combination of $7.1 million in savings and revenue enhancements just approved combined with the decision this morning to sweep $4.5 million in CRA tax increment revenues to the General Fund leaves the $1.6 million deficit from the original shortfall of $13.2 million.
Public Service Grants
Council Member Boyer asked several questions about the PSG grant scoring process and matrix and how the Council’s priority populations affected the evaluations of the applications. She is curious about why some funded organizations saw very substantial changes in the amounts granted from year to year. John Snyder of the Parks and Recreation Department and Alex Graham, a member of the PSG Grant Council, explained that the awards are competitive each year and no one is guaranteed to get any funding from year to year. The awards depend heavily on the priority populations and the number and quality of applications in each service area. The council tries to give the most resources to the agency with the best ranked program in each category, so other applicants may be substantially reduced as a result. No program may receive more than $200,000 in PSG funding. This year the minimum score to receive any funding was increased from 60 to 72, so it’s a high bar to be met to receive any funding.
Motion (
Cultural Service Grants
Robert White, Executive Director of the Cultural Council, answered questions about the Council’s administrative costs and about the percentage of Cultural Service Grant funding that goes to Cultural Council salaries. Council Member Yarborough expressed his support for the arts and cultural programming but also his concern for good stewardship of the City’s very limited tax dollars. He urged an increase in private funding for the arts. Council Member Gulliford
Motion
(Gulliford): tentatively approve the Cultural Service Grant funding allocation
– approved.
The committee was in recess between 4:30 and 4:41 p.m.
Health Department – security guard service
Kirk Sherman provided additional information requested by the committee at the last meeting. The committee restored funding for the private security guards for the City-owned buildings. There are 174 state employees and 5 City employees in the building. The lease does not require the City to provide guard service. The Health Department will be invited to tomorrow’s meeting to comment or answer questions.
Human Rights Commission – ITD charges
George Chaktoura from ITD stated that the $100,000 charge the Human Rights Commission questioned was for programming work done in FY11-12 on a case management tracking system. What’s left to be funded after the original development charge is maintenance only, which should be only about 10% of the original cost. Usha Mohan, Chief of ITD, said that the ITD allocation that produced the $100,000 cost for FY12-13 was for in-house programming time rather than buying an off-the-shelf package. That was funded by ITD maintenance funds rather than a contractual service allocation for a lump sum purchase. Mr. Chaktoura says that he informed the JHRC about the costs and will provide documentation of that correspondence. Chairman Crescimbeni said that the Human Rights Commission’s example is similar to other cases he’s heard from City departments – the departments have a difficult time getting a firm cost from ITD about what a project will cost if done in-house as opposed to buying an off-the-shelf product that has a definite purchase price. ITD needs to be allocating its charges based on actual use, not on ITD’s need to find someplace to bill all of its budget. In response to a question from Council President Bishop about whether it’s common for ITD to do work in one year and bill for it in subsequent years, Mr. Sherman indicated that it was and that is how ITD accounts run deficits. There should be a better way to budget these expenses in the years in which they are incurred. Council Member Boyer asked for information on other pending ITD programming projects that may be planned for
Motion (
Mr. Sherman reported that the Special Council Contingency fund stands at a $1.6 million deficit, which includes the $600,000 for the Beaches landfill tipping fee and the library funding restoration of $830,000.
The committee will tentatively schedule a meeting for Friday at 9:00 a.m. to deal with items that are not completed tomorrow.
Meeting adjourned: 5:09 p.m.
Minutes: Jeff Clements, Council Research Division
8.29.12 Posted: 5:30 p.m.
Tape: Finance budget hearing 8.29.12
Legislative Services Division
Attachments: Council Auditor’s Handout for Meeting #7, August 29, 2012
Council Auditor’s Handout – Wrap-Up Items, August 23, 2012