By state statute, Nassau County Clerk of the Courts John Crawford Clerk can refuse to release money that County Commission voted to spend. He is the county auditor and caretaker of county funds and he takes the job seriously.  But last week Crawford took his guard dog role so far it’s beginning to look like he’s snarling and bearing his teeth just to remind commissioners of his power.

During its regular meeting on April 26, the Nassau County Board of County Commissioners voted to take $20 apiece from their discretionary fund to buy $100 worth of candy. They’d buy candy in bulk so that it could be tossed to crowds during the Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival and at other community parades.

Commissioners engaged in a brief discussion on whether candy had a public benefit. “I think the public benefit can be measured by the smiles that we put on kid’s faces,” said Commissioner Daniel Leeper.  Apparently the others agreed. The vote to approve was 5-0.

But three days later, Crawford was scolding. He fired off a letter to board members in which he complained they took the action after he’d left the meeting. He also said buying candy gives the public a bad impression of politicians. See: crawford-letter

“As you must be aware, the taxpayers who pay our salaries are living in very difficult economic times. In fact, in response to declining revenues, you advised your departments to be prepared to cut budgets,” Crawford wrote. “I think that even minimum discretion should lead political figures away from making expenditures with public money for purchases, the appearance of which only serves to improve the image of the politician and does not directly benefit the public in the same way as spending to improve transportation, public facilities, public safety and so forth.

Crawford closed by saying he would be unable to sign the check.

– Susan Eastman

Turner Construction won the contract to design and build a new Duval County Courthouse because it guaranteed the company could do it for $224 million. When the company put out bids for 21 subcontractors to do the work, it weighted bids heavily in favor of those who quoted the best price. But it seems as though their frugality may have encouraged the hiring of illegal workers. 

On Monday, U.S. Border Patrol arrested four undocumented employees on their way to the courthouse construction site. Since September, a total of 19 employees from the courthouse job have been arrested for being in the U.S. illegally. Also Monday, the Florida Times Union reported that 100 courthouse construction employees provided the city with false information when it tried to collect additional documentation of U.S. citizenship, permanent resident status or the possession of work permits.

After the arrest of 15 illegal workers from concrete subcontractor United Forming in September, the city required that all 240 employees at the site reapply for city badges by filling out a new form documenting their status. But the discovery that almost a third of those workers gave false information indicates the problem continues. And not even the city’s threat to cancel Turner’s $350 million contract over the use of illegal workers has been an effective deterrent.

Jobs for Jacksonville, a coalition of area construction trades workers, asked the city in October to require contractors use E-Verify, an Internet-based employee verification system run by the U.S. government. Turner and United agreed use the system to check the status of new employees, but it wasn’t clear Monday if E-Verify had in fact been implemented.

The lure of cost cutting has troubled several Better Jacksonville Plan projects, including the Baseball Grounds and the Veterans Memorial Arena in 2002. According to John C. Parker, business manager of the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association AFL-CIO, Local No. 435, undocumented workers tend not to complain about, or even know about safety standards, building code requirements and fair labor laws such as paying overtime. Unionized trades workers are educated about construction and labor laws, but the city didn’t want to contract with local labor unions to construct the courthouse. “We offered the city a project labor agreement that guaranteed local workers, who are legal, at a fair market rate, that didn’t discriminate against anybody, whether union or not, and the city flatly refused it,” says Parker.

(Pic of Courthouse site from downtownjacksonville.org)

— Susan Eastman

… And he doesn’t care who knows it. In a surprise appearance on this morning’s Week In Review program on WJCT 89.9, Peyton blasted City Council President Richard Clark and the council’s Finance Committee, saying that budget discussion had descended into “chaos” and revealed “how little they [councilmembers] know about this process.” Peyton added that the council’s efforts were “shameful,” “ridiculous,” and “very disappointing.”

Although Peyton insisted the issue was “not personal … just a severe policy disagreement,” he railed against Clark for creating a Finance Committee interested only in “cutting for the sake of cutting” and said Clark was alone among the six Council Presidents he’s previously dealt with in his unwillingness to meet the Mayor halfway on budget matters.

“The [Finance] Committee was stacked to get this result,” the mayor said. “We’re getting what the Council President created.”

Peyton also mocked councilmembers for refusing to cut their own paychecks to balance the budget. They’re willing to cut things, he said, “except for their salary and benefits and the things they enjoy as elected officals — and that’s the irony I think.”

Budget battle getting uglier? Um, yes.

– Posted by Anne Schindler

A press release from the state Department of Transportation that it will dedicate a portion of State Road 9A as “Ronald W. Reagan Memorial Highway” tomorrow morning makes me long for the days when such a ceremony would be greeted with indignation and outrage. Those days actually existed, right?

Anyway, writer David Corn summed it up best in his 1998 piece written shortly before Washington National Airport in D.C. was renamed in honor of the Gipper. For those of you who didn’t catch it then, it’s still essential reading:

66 Things to Think About when Flying Into Reagan National Airport

The firing of the air-traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, colluding with Guatemalan thugs, pardons for FBI lawbreakers, voodoo economics, budget deficits, toasts to Ferdinand Marcos, public-housing cutbacks, red-baiting the nuclear-freeze movement, James Watt.

 

Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals, tax credits for segregated schools, disinformation campaigns, “homeless by choice,” Manuel Noriega, falling wages, the HUD scandal, air raids on Libya, “constructive engagement” with apartheid South Africa, United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers, attacks on OSHA and workplace safety, the invasion of Grenada, assassination manuals, Nancy’s astrologer. Drug tests, lie-detector tests, Fawn Hall, female appointees (8 percent), mining harbors, the S&L scandal, 239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut, Al Haig “in charge,” silence on AIDS, food-stamp reductions, Debategate, White House shredding, Jonas Savimbi, tax cuts for the rich, “mistakes were made.”

Michael Deaver’s conviction for influence peddling, Lyn Nofziger’s conviction for influence peddling, Caspar Weinberger’s five-count indictment, Ed Meese (”You don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime”), Donald Regan (women don’t “understand throw weights”), education cuts, massacres in El Salvador.

“The bombing begins in five minutes,” $640 Pentagon toilet seats, African-American judicial appointees (1.9 percent), Reader’s Digest, CIA-sponsored car bombing in Lebanon (more than eighty civilians killed), 200 officials accused of wrongdoing, William Casey, Iran/Contra.

“Facts are stupid things,” three-by-five cards, the MX missile, Bitburg, SDI, Robert Bork, naps, Teflon.

 – Posted by Anne Schindler

The e-mail inboxes of Jacksonville City Councilmembers have been filled with constituent concerns over the recent millage increase and other budget concerns. District 3 Councilmember Richard Clark has taken full advantage of technology and deftly employed automated responses to field many of his district’s resident emails.

Earlier this week, any time an e-mail message addressed taxes or budget items, the sender received the following formatted reply from Mr. Clark:

“Thank you for your email. I hope you can attend our Town Hall meeting on the City Finances/Budget Wednesday, July 15th at 6:00pm at the FCCJ Deerwood location.  Many of my fellow Councilmembers will be in attendance with me and would like to hear from you. - Richard Clark” 

Several area residents who have compared notes are worried that their concerns aren’t being heeded and feel that Councilmember Clark is brushing them aside. One area husband and wife were both thrilled when they received the seemingly personal invitation to this week’s town hall meeting. However, they quickly realized that Mr. Clark just cut and pasted his response to both of their emails; even though they wrote him on separate, unrelated issues. 

It is always good to see the discourse of representative democracy at work, but the use of rote replies calls into question the industriousness and sincerity of a representative’s response.

Posted by Nick Callahan, District 3 Constituent

When asked how he would balance the budget without a property tax increase, Jacksonville City Councimember Clay Yarborough offered a vision of self-reliance not heard since the Clinton-era vilification of “Welfare Moms.”

Facing a $50 million shortfall if taxes aren’t raised, Yarborough says he would cut funding for social services and cultural programs. In his view, that wouldn’t be a one-time cut to get us through hard times. Fundamentally, Yarborough believes it’s not the proper role of government to spend taxpayer money on arts and social welfare.

“The investment needs to be from the community at large,” he said in a interview with Folio Weekly. “It’s up to the community, for businesses and individuals to decide which organizations to support.”

Yarborough said government funding lessens the motivation to give because people think government will take care of the nonprofits, and that the nonprofit community isn’t motivated to prove their worth because they can depend on public dollars. ”While it may sound beneficial and helpful, there is a dark underside to it,” Yarborough said.” It creates more and more dependency to have your way paid by others. I believe it’s my responsibility to give, to invest where I believe it will do good, but I don’t believe it ought to come out of the public trough.”

Yarborough introduced an amendment at the Finance Committee meeting on Monday, July 21, to keep the millage rate at 8.5 rather than raise property taxes by 12 percent as Mayor Peyton has requested. Yarborough says keeping the millage rate the same will force City Council to make difficult choices as it looks for $50 million in cuts to balance the budget. After the amendment passed with Council President Richard Clark casting the deciding vote, the Finance Committee voted 6-0 to keep the property tax rate the same as this year’s rate.

Mayor Peyton proposed increasing the millage rate to 9.5 after cutting $40 million from the budget, a move that still left the city $50 million in arrears. Peyton proposed the millage increase because without it, he says, the city will have to make drastic cuts to city services. He warned that the city would face closing fire stations, libraries, community centers, slashing children’s programs, closing the Ritz Theatre and LaVilla Museum, closing the Jacksonville Equestrian Center and discontinuing community events such as the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. And the city would have to cut funding to emergency shelters, crisis centers, job training programs, and grants to food banks.

Yarborough counters that Peyton’s list is a manipulative ploy to scare the public into pushing the City Council to raise the millage rate. “The mayor hasn’t been forthright,” he said. “He has given this emotion-evoking list so that the public response will be to advocate for the budget increase. But it is no longer in the mayor’s hands. The City Council will decide what to cut and what to maintain. That’s where the rubber meets the road. It’s not right to scare the public like that. And it is just not true.”

Asked where he would make cuts, Yarborough said that funding for essential city services must be maintained. Among those he listed funding for the police, fire, road maintenance, libraries, parks, and solid waste. If the full City Council votes to hold the line on a millage increase, Peyton could veto the bill. But Yarborough says that wouldn’t be the end of it “I would want us to take another vote and override it,” he says.

How embarrassing. When approached for an interview for an upcoming documentary on Jacksonville punk rock mainstay Ray “Stevie Stiletto” McKelvey, Folio Weekly managing editor John E. Citrone, who played drums on two tracks for Stiletto’s “Pickled Liver” release, flips out. Seems he was under the impression that Stiletto had actually died — ironic considering Folio Weekly ran a cover story a few years back with the headline “Stevie Stiletto is Dead,” a reference to his health problems stemming from years of drug and alcohol abuse. Citrone, imbecile that he is, thought he was contributing tracks for a tribute album, so he recorded his session for free. Watch as he realizes he just got shafted from alive-and-well McKelvey, who obviously has no problem exploiting local musicians for personal gain.

Jacksonville City Councilman John Crescimbeni sent this letter out yesterday. Seeing as it’s one of the most cogent descriptions of the current budget crunch I’ve seen, I thought I’d post it here:

From: Crescimbeni, John
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 4:14 PM
Subject: RE: NO MORE NEW TAXES IN DUVAL

Thank you for your email.

Although I have never campaigned on the promise of no new taxes, I did campaign on a promise to cut wasteful city spending. Unlike the mayor (who suggests belt tightening is a slogan for a bumper sticker), I think there is still waste in city government that has to be eliminated before the citizens are asked to pay higher taxes.

As you know, the mayor presented his proposed budget (for 2009-10) to the City Council on Monday. He is requesting a millage increase of 1.02 mils (about a 12% increase over last year’s rate). Now that the proposed budget has been submitted, the City Council will begin the long and arduous task of examining the same in an attempt to find additional savings or efficiencies. Generally, this review process will continue until late September at which point the City Council must finalize and approve a budget for the next fiscal year (which begins October 1).

There is no question that recent actions in Tallahassee have reduced revenues for cities and counties throughout Florida. The millage rollback mandated by the 2007 Legislature resulted in an adjustment to our local city millage rate from 9.64 mils (in the 2006-07 fiscal year) to 8.48 mils in the 2007-08 and 2008-09 fiscal years. The aggregate value of the mandated rollback reduced city revenues (from property taxes) by $67.2 million in the 2007-08 fiscal year and $68.8 million in the current (2008-09) fiscal year. As an attempt to offset some of that revenue loss, the City Council approved the following three new fees in September 2007: garbage fee, stormwater fee and the JEA franchise fee. In fiscal year 2007-08, approximately $29.8 million was collected in fees. In the current (2008-09) fiscal year, the city projects it will collect $75.8 million in fees. Unfortunately, the city incurs additional costs in collecting the stormwater and garbage fees (which are billed separately from property taxes). Those collection costs are estimated to be $740,000 for the current fiscal year.

In addition, the 2007 Legislature also created (for the first time) a $25,000 exemption for Tangible Personal Property Tax. Tangible Personal Property Tax is a tax levied against business assets such as equipment, furniture, computers, etc. A business owner with assets of $25,000 or more now saves $212.10 in city taxes. In the current fiscal year, the aggregate value of the $25,000 exemption reduced city revenues by $2.9 million.

Finally, Amendment 1, approved by Florida voters in January 2008 resulted in an additional $25,000 homestead exemption for homesteaded properties with an assessed value of $50,000 or more. Each homestead exemption is worth $212.10 in the current (2008-09) fiscal year budget. The aggregate value of the additional exemption is projected to further reduce city revenues from property taxes in the current fiscal year budget by $32.5 million.

It is also true that the city has not increased the millage rate in more than 17 years. For the 1991-92 fiscal year, the millage rate was set at 11.53 mils. As stated above, the present millage rate is $8.48. Over the years, the declining millage rate has resulted in an aggregate savings to taxpayers (and reduction in city revenues) of more than $725 million.

With that said, I still think there is opportunity for some belt tightening. Like most Americans who are now trying to get by on less, the city needs to participate in the same exercise. There is no question that the city’s three pension funds (city employees, correctional officers, and police and firefighters) are approaching unsustainable levels and need to be reformed. There is no question that salaries for every city employee need to be examined as does the need for the position itself. And there is no question (at least in my mind) that some wasteful spending in city government still exists and needs to be eliminated.

In closing, I thank you again for your email and I welcome your continued input as the City Council proceeds with the process of examining the mayor’s proposed budget. In addition, keep me posted on any more party invitations you receive!

John R. Crescimbeni
City Councilman, At-Large, Group 2

Ziyhana Williams, 5, Alyla Barnum, 10, and Janiyah Williams, 7, at the Project New Ground community fair

To persuade the public to support a tax increase, Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton’s staff is launching a unprecedented public relations push. From brown bag lunches to podcasts and blogging, they’re doing it all. The mayor’s staff even went guerilla and stenciled (in water-soluble paint) “Fix It Now!” on sidewalks around City Hall (a reference to the fixitnow.cc website).

This mass-media campaign and the attention it’s getting contrasts starkly with the efforts so far to inform residents about the $98.4 million city cleanup of toxic ash sites. Under a consent decree approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, part of the plan is for the city to remove two feet of contaminated soil in the yards of private residences and replace it with two feet of clean soil.  The city needs permission from residents to test and to clean their private property. The city hired the PR agency Hester Group (owned by former JAA CEO John Clark’s wife Hester) through a $415,000 contract to get the word out and to secure the access agreements. The city also hired the Dalton Agency for $358,990 to manage the public relations campaign.

The campaign has been dubbed, “Project New Ground.” There’s a website, ProjectNewGround.org, with a Q & A and a sample access agreement, and not much else. But a recent press release from the city about the first of a series of community fairs, which arrived a couple of days before that first fair at Bob Hayes Sports Complex on July 11, said that very soon Project New Ground will be opening an office at 1605-8 N. Myrtle Ave. (The press release conspicuously lacked an exact opening date.)

Folio Weekly attended the Saturday fair aimed at the Washington Heights neighborhood. Attendance was dismal. The event was set up for a big crowd, with face painting for the kids, a DJ blasting songs, an inflatable jungle gym, food and drinks, health department screenings, information about lead poisoning, and a full phalanx of city staff equipped with maps of the ash sites and access agreements.

“They have all this,” observed Sherwood Forest and Paradise Park Community Association President Eunice Barnum.  ”They spend this kind of money … and nobody came. There were more of us out here giving out information than there were residents to give it to.”

Only one resident signed an access agreement during the fair, according to the city staff.

Barnum said the problem is that the city (or the Hester Group) isn’t using media that reaches the people they need to reach. Email, Internet, advertising and notices in the Times Union, even announcements on the local news only catch a smattering of people, she said. Barnum suggested the best way to reach residents in the ash site communities is through radio spots or on local radio newscasts and talk shows on stations people in those communities listen to. She then called over her grandchildren and a couple of other people in the general vicinity to rattle off radio stations that play everything from rap to gospel. She said putting it out on on WSOL 101.5-FM, WZAX 1400-AM, WJBT 93.3-FM would reach people.  

“If they do the same thing over and over and the masses are not coming,” Barnum said, “it should be a clue to the educated ones that this isn’t working.”

FLOG is proud to introduce Nick Callahan, an 11 year resident of Jacksonville City Council District 3, who will be posting periodic updates on legislative proceedings in City Hall. Callahan closely follows city appropriation bills, and as a Political Science Major and Masters Candidate in Public Administration at the University of North Florida, has a keen interest in ensuring open and transparent government, particularly in lean budget times. Look here for future installments from Nick: 

On June 09, 2009, the Jacksonville City Council approved Ordinance 2009-410-E, a $994,562.50 settlement with Kernan R. Hodges for land blocked by the recent Kernan Boulevard improvements. According to city records, the condemnation of one parcel for a retention pond landlocked another parcel owned by the Hodges family. The legislated settlement wound its way from committee to a floor vote in less than a month with seemingly little discussion. Whether it was poor site planning or the City General Counsel’s reluctance to take on a prominent landowner, the city of Jacksonville is now faced with having to pay nearly an additional million dollars for the project.

When asked why the ordinance was approved so quickly with little opposition, the District’s councilmember, Richard Clark, didn’t recall why he voted in favor of the bill. As a resident of Clark’s district, I’ve asked him to look into the matter and get back to me. It remains to be seen if the city’s position was so untenable that settlement was their only option — or if City Council and the General Counsel’s office opted not to fight for taxpayer dollars.

Nick Callahan, 
District 3 constituent