A holdover action item from earlier in the month presented some tense exchanges between Jacksonville Mayor Andy Ezard and one of the city’s alderman during the city council workshop.
The city’s appropriations budget was pulled from the Jacksonville City Council agenda two weeks ago. The city finance committee chair, Ward 5 Alderman Don Cook said at the time that a few more tweaks to line items were being completed and that the rest of the alderman hadn’t received a full draft of the budget prior to that night’s schedule. Cook said an email would be sent within the week for the appropriations budget prior to last night’s meeting so a vote could be taken.
Cook also noted that this was City Clerk Angela Salyer’s first budget process, and she was still working through the final steps of the process.
During the presentation of last night’s budget discussion, Cook said that the only major changes compared to previous years was at the line item level in certain departments. Cook said that some line items had been reduced or eliminated because they had not been used in many years and the appropriations had been moved to other areas of need.
One area of need was capital improvements. Mayor Andy Ezard said that the capital improvement budget had $2 million worth of requests but only $800,000 available to fill those requests, with most of the requests coming from Public Protection. Ezard said he didn’t believe it was fair that Public Protection eat up most of the capital improvement requests, so there was a decision to pick and choose certain requests from each of the departments. Ezard some moves had also taken place to put street overlays and parking plot resurfacing into a possible Motor Fuel Tax expense.
Ward 3 Alderman Kent Hannant, Jr. then got into a tense exchange with Cook and Ezard over a lack of discussion on the decisions, as well as a lack of a city finance committee meeting prior to the budget’s presentation. Hannant, who was the lone ‘no’ vote on the first reading of the budget last night, says that he felt the process was all wrong: “We didn’t have a finance committee meeting. I don’t believe we had one last year before the budget [was presented]. We are still adding to this, and then, we’re going to talk about it. If I hadn’t said anything, no one is going to care what’s in that budget. Then, we are going to come over here [to the council chambers] and vote on it. I don’t think that’s having the best interest of the people’s money in hand if we are not going to sit down and discuss it as a whole. I thought that was the idea of having a finance committee is that they discussed it and if there was any questions among them, then they voted ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on whether to recommend it to the council. There was no recommendation from them. Apparently, Mayor Ezard and Don Cook run the city and they just pick what they want to do.”
Hannant took a particular shot at the city-owned Links golf course budget. He said during the meeting that he didn’t understand why there was $281,000 worth of account transfers from various places in the city’s finances to cover losses at the golf course. The golf course has long been a point of contention among members of the Jacksonville community – balancing a recreation option with severe monetary losses, staffing concerns, and rising maintenance. Hannant was particularly upset by the apparent promotion of Links’ golf pro Keith Ward to golf course superintendent, along with Ward also receiving a $16,000 raise in salary. Mayor Ezard said both decisions were a personnel issue and it was his prerogative on the salary increase
Hannant says both decisions were not brought before the council: “Yeah, $281,000 to a golf course that can’t maintain itself and then, we are going to promote an individual who has been working there for years. Apparently, [the mayor] is just going to take it upon himself to promote this individual. He’s not going to explain this to us – what the promotion was and why it justifies a $16,000 raise. That’s $16,000 for one employee. I think that’s a significant raise. I don’t even know if this employee is qualified to do that. Apparently, he’s been working there for years and the golf course keeps losing money. Why would we promote somebody within the ranks of the golf course that’s already over this – it’s the golf pro.”
Hannant’s final parting comment on the issue before the workshop session moved on was that he believed the $281,000 would “buy an awful lot of radios for our first responders” – in reference to a $6.1 million overhaul of the public safety radio system for West Central Joint Dispatch services for area first responders. The city is on the hook for nearly 25% of the cost of the project, joining in with other area municipalities who use joint dispatch services.
Mayor Ezard felt personally insulted by some of the tone and questioning that Hannant took on the measure. Ezard said that the joint discussions between the City Clerk, Treasurer’s Office, himself, and Alderman Cook had been the way the budget process had been performed over the last 15 years of his tenure in office. He then asked anyone on the city council if they would like to change and refine the process. Mayor Ezard said that the city clerk’s office would forward all of the alderman the list of capital improvement requests from the city’s department heads after the meeting. He said he wanted the alderman’s input on any possible changes, additions, or corrections prior to the budget’s second reading and vote before the city’ council’s first meeting in February. He welcomed any ideas on how the city could close the gap between the number and dollar amount of requests and the amount of money available.
Hannant said he would likely be having a one-on-one meeting with Mayor Ezard in the coming days to continue discussing their differences.