A.G. Gancarski
The second transition team budget review of Wednesday: the Regulatory Division. This was hard to watch at times.
1:57: Starts off with discussion of General Fund activity, and departmental rollup, then goes into revenues.
1:58: Sam Mousa wonders why fewer permit applications are expected year over year. The fee has been reduced, yet there are fewer permit applications. Perhaps a sign of slowing economic development?
2:01: The owner surrender fee, regarding animal shelters, is down. This is a good thing. It costs $1K per animal for an animal shelter to get an animal adopted.
2:03: Overtime is up $36K, mostly in the animal care area, due to staffing shortages.
2:04: Cruelty investigations, dog bite calls, strays being brought in. Adoption events.
2:07: Onto hazardous duty pay, involving potentially disease-ridden or dangerous animals. Mousa thinks this is basically everyone in animal care; refers to this as “hocus pocus.”
2:12: Discussion moves to how fuel costs are tabulated.
2:12: “The ferry comes out [of the budget] one day, and goes in the next day. The ferry is still ferrying.”
2:15: Mousa plays hardball on some numbers, reducing them to previous year. “This puts the heat on you to get us correct numbers.”
2:16: A discussion of the department’s lone security guard. A lot of jacked up numbers being discussed right now.
2:17: Public Works has changed its allocation. “It screws everything up… you can’t get a projection, you can’t get an estimate… because they changed it every year.” Mousa wants Jim Robinson and some others to come see him with documents to show him and explain the year over year variation. Sounds delightful.
2:19: A rental budget line item has disappeared from the budget. Two aircraft were sold, so the hangar rental is no more.
2:21: More discrepancies. More distortion. “I need you to get with the budget office as soon as possible… and show documentation of why you need nine times more… than what you spent [through] March.”
2:24: Mike Weinstein is urging a “policy decision” to handle gaps between real expenditures and projection. “There’s a glitch somewhere in the system that’s not picking up your expenditures.”
2:25: If Mousa doesn’t get numbers, he will “help balance this budget.” Weinstein is playing Good Cop as Mousa glowers.
2:27: Apparently, there is an uptick in expenditures, such as mosquito control, as the year progresses. Weinstein: “these are monstrous gaps.” Mousa wants a year over year comparison with last year’s budget.
2:28: “You spent $60 [thousand], through March it’s $28, and you’re asking for $160; fix it!”
2:30: On to enhancements in the General Fund.
2:31: “Are these enhancements in any sort of priority? You have too many #1s and too many #2s… and that’s not going to work.”
2:32: The bonhomie seems to have faded. “We’re holding up on any enhancements” until a reprioritized list emerges, handled “departmentally not divisionally.”
2:34: Helicopters, used for pest control, are end of life. They are looking at a $1.4M 2 year old helicopter, as it is the high end of the range. A spirited discussion ensues of what happened to money from the auctioning off of previous airplanes. $47,000 was the auction price. Note to self: get my next airplane from a City of Jacksonville auction.
2:40: “They re-programmed that $19,000… I want that $19,000 in the General Fund.”
2:47: “We take on these grants, and it winds up costing us more… we need to have a policy that you spend what you get.”
2:51: Mousa is hammering away at this operational budget issue. “The fund balance should be for one-time expenses.” His contention is that they will run out of cash if they keep tapping into the fund.
2:55: There apparently is an EPA account with half a million dollars in a reimbursable grant fund. Paging Lori Boyer.
3:00: Weinstein: “In the last three or four years, have you been through an exercise like this? No? Enough said.”
3:00: Mousa is now talking about “coaching and learning,” about people who come “crying for cash but don’t know what they’ve got… you can’t be upset; you just can’t.”
3:02: “This is a false projection.”
3:05: I can hear what sounds like Alvin Brown through the wall, talking about something he “just learned to pronounce.”
3:06: A discussion of hazardous waste and meth labs, and how to allocate cleanup funds.
3:07: A discussion of training-related travel budgets.
3:10: If this budget meeting were a movie, it would have been best directed by John Cassavetes.
3:12: A discussion now of pet license fees and the permissible uses. The first eight dollars goes into the General Fund. The remainder goes into other funds. This includes spaying and neutering fees.
3:13: “We’re spending $129K, we’re only making $112.”
3:16: Looks like that by 6/29, there will be some clarity about the General Fund, for the Curry budget team purposes. Fresh expense paper with all appropriate charges, and internal services allocated out. It seems like this is going to be on schedule.
3:19: State gaming tables and internet cafes, which are not legal anymore. City Council is using fund balance to pay JSO’s costs related to shutting down internet cafes. Mousa and Weinstein wonder why they can’t sweep this fund. Weinstein is incredulous that “we’re paying JSO to do what they would be doing anyway.” There is an ordinance requiring this.
3:23: Mousa: “We can buy twenty police cars… this is one-time money.”
3:24: A quiet conversation between Mousa and Weinstein. I believe I heard the phrase old-school.
3:34: Mousa: “This conversation… has been taking place since Consolidation, except for the last four years.”
3:34: Weinstein: “We’re back.”
