The mayor’s budget is out and Tony Bates called a meeting of about a dozen citizens to weigh in on the city’s use of taxpayer money. Suggestions for review were given, specifically to the subject of reducing the cost of the city’s operations. The following are a list of areas for budget cutting or elimination. Although we have had some time to see the budget and think of “opportunities”, the list is not exhaustive or prioritized.

Later, more will be expected of us to weigh in, to let it be known where we stand. Now is the time to speak up and to get our city on track. You are welcome to comment on the list and to provide your own ideas.

1. Human Rights Commission

2. Discretionary non profits

3. Central purchasing

4. Size of the Office of General Counsel

5. Jacksonville Journey

6. Reduce City Council budget by 10%

7. High contingencies in prior year with low contingencies in current year falsely appearing as a reduction in current budget

8. Reduction of employees/expenses

9. JEDC

10. Public libraries

11. SMG deficit spending

12. Fleet maintenance

13. City/ County cars not for public use

14. Special interests restrain spending on construction (dog park)

15. Change law on Rev grants

16. Failure to transfer funds from Police/Fire Pension and loss of interest on money

17. Look at CIP, pay off principal

18. Transfer of funds, closing down one and moving to another

19. School Budget

20. Code enforcement, cut budget

21. Children’s commission

22. University of No. Florida (small business program)

23. Cut middle management

24. Cut budget of public works- personnel

25. Jacksonville Journey

26. Overtime

27. Central Operations

28. Redundancy of functions/personnel

Coalition participants were from First Coast Tea Party, Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County, Libertarian Party, Argyle Area Civic Council, Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC), and Duval Country Republicans and Mike Jackson kept the list and greatly contributed to this listing. Below is the compacted IMPORTANT to get cut items.

 The short list below that are what we felt should be our main focus, but I want to make it clear to those who read the above list, we would really appreciate all of you choosing anything you feel inspired about and feel you can defend as a cut in an Email, phone call or before the city council.  WE REALLY, REALLY NEED YOUR HELP.............ALL OF YOU IF WE ARE TO GET BUDGET CUTS TO MAKE UP FOR THOSE ITEMS THE MAYOR TRIED TO DEFER THAT THE COUNCIL CAN'T DEFER (because they were already deferred last year).  Roughly, we are looking at about 20 million dollars we still need to cut and there is a great deal of porky in the budget.

1.  JEDC (we should be using our Chamber of Commerce to find companies who are interested in moving to Jacksonville and creating jobs and not just across town, and the city council already has to do the leg work to vet every bill that comes from JEDC anyway and approve them.  They might as well have the Chamber bring their candidates for any assistance that cam be offered for new companies moving into the city and creating jobs).

2.  Human Rights Commission (the budget for these people grows every single year and this commission is duplicating another one at the state level.  This commission is a pure waste of taxpayer money.  The people of our city are not so different from everyone else in the state that the folks that need the assistance of a human rights commission can't go to the state group.  We are paying millions for a group of folks to sit around and talk, and we pay for a staff as well.  This needs to go)

3.  Public Library (I love the library.  We all do, but they are right over the top for employees and COST.  Some means needs to be found to cut back in a meaningful way.  One thing we thought was to put them on a 4 day week and make it 10 hour days which would give anyone who needed to get into the library plenty of time to do so.  Understand, I have nothing against the library, it is just that they do what all public entities do, they grow and expand and grow some more and expand some more and pretty soon, the taxpayers are against a wall.  We just can't keep allowing for the unchecked growth any longer in any department or part of city government.  We may not get everything this year, but we need to begin the process of cutting back the size and scope of the library .. and the cost).

4.  Non Profits (all those groups the mayor's over time think of deserving of donations made from our tax dollars and this includes the Children's Commission and the Journey program.  The children's commission pays the full amount if only one child shows up and there are a number of other real problems with the way these folks do things from what someone, who would know, told me several months ago when she said this group needed to be defunded and shut down.  The Journey was started......bet you didn't know they have their own little police force now taken from the larger JSO, and there is no way of knowing whether the drops in crime are as a result of the Journey Program, the police or our state attorney, Angela Corey...........I suspect it is Angela's hard line and tough on crime stance.  The lady is a dynamo.)

Well, that's it.  I have tons more information I can give you on various items on the list, and boy would we all really appreciate your help.  If you chosse something to write about or should you write about several of these cuts post something and let us know.  Any suggestions, let us know, any really good ideas for why we need to cut these programs, let us know.  WE NEED EVERYONE TO HELP WITH THIS, SO WE CAN BACK UP OUR FINE NEW CITY COUNCIL IF WE LET THEM KNOW WE SUPPORT THESE PROPOSED CUTS.  WE NEED TO BE THERE IN A SHOW OF SUPPORT TO OFFSET THOSE WHO WILL BE THERE TO SAVE THEIR GRAVY TRAIN AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE ONCE THE WORD REACHES THEM THAT MORE CUTS MUST BE MADE.