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Staff identifies roughly $19.4 million that could meet cityCommunity Benefits Agreement; council minimums clarified
Summary
Auditors and council staff presented a draft tally of budget items they believe meet the Community Benefits Agreement criteria and corrected a prior report on the required countywide minimum.
City budget staff told the Jacksonville City Council Finance Committee on Aug. 5 that roughly $19.4 million in the proposed 2025 budget could meet the categories defined in the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA).
The auditor's office distributed a handout ahead of Thursday's budget hearing showing items scattered through the city's proposed budget that staff believe match the CBA categories: affordable housing, workforce housing, homelessness and workforce development. "You have a total of 19,400,000.0 that potentially could count," Kim Taylor, council auditor, said during the committee meeting.
Taylor also corrected an earlier figure the office had provided: the contractually required countywide minimum is $2,500,000 per year, not $2,000,000 as she had stated earlier in the meeting. "I wanted to correct that. It's $2,500,000, not $2,000,000," Taylor said.
Council members said the handout is a preliminary tally and asked staff to keep updating it during budget hearings. "If you see something as we go through the hearings that you think can count, we can add that as well," Taylor told the committee. The handout identified $2,500,000 budgeted for countywide and $4,000,000 for east-side priorities in the proposed non-departmental citywide budget line; staff said they had not found additional east-side-dedicated dollars beyond that point.
Council members pressed for clarity on how the proposed allocations are funded and how they will be tracked. Councilman Nick Howland noted that the Lane-Howland protection amendment did not trigger this year because collections were higher than the assumptions used when the amendment was adopted. "We had significantly higher revenue collections than we anticipated when we created that amendment last year," Howland said, adding that council would scrutinize how the additional revenue is spent during upcoming hearings.
Some members also raised implementation questions: whether items listed in the handout should count toward the CBA and whether council members should indicate in advance whether they intend to use their discretionary allocations for capital or operating projects so the city can budget those sums appropriately.
The auditors and council research staff said they will continue to refine the chart and welcome direction from council on what should be included. Taylor said staff will add items as they are identified during upcoming hearings and can remove items the council disagrees with.
The committee did not take a formal vote on the CBA tallies; the discussion was informational and intended to guide the council's budget hearings later in the week.
