A.G. Gancarski
The one scheduled public notice meeting at Jacksonville’s City Council on Wednesday: Councilwoman Katrina Brown meeting at 3:00 p.m. with Councilman Tommy Hazouri on the subject of having the city’s annual budget bills considered by the whole Council for deliberation and vote.
This would significantly alter the process, which involved seven day-long deliberations by the Finance Committee this year.
Even with a smooth budget process, the point-by-point iteration and hashing out of line items was a taxing, exhaustive affair for that committee.
Brown’s proposal: to have all 19 members of Council in the mix.
Though Brown did not respond to a phone request for comment after her bill was filed in late October, a review of minutes of another public notice meeting on the subject provides insight into her thoughts, as well of those of other council members.
According to the minutes from her October 27 meeting, Brown was “excited to be a part of the budget process, for the entire city.”
Brown’s beef: though she attended the Finance Committee’s budget-palooza, and could “comment,” she “wasn’t able to vote because she wasn’t on the Finance Committee.”
Since the mayor “involves his entire team, why not the Council of the Whole in the budget process,” which would be more “inclusive,” requiring ten votes.
Finance Committee member Reggie Gaffney, at that meeting, said that he liked the process the way it was, adding that “maybe the texting situation would have been minimized because others weren’t part of the voting process from the beginning.”
Gaffney, new to Council and the Finance Committee both, groused at one point during the August hearings that he was coming out on the short end of a lot of discussions on a particular day near the end.
An interesting look into the process and Brown’s frustrations: when asked if 19 participants would slow up the process, Brown asked “what the difference is if one person speaks about one things for a very long time.”
[Here is where Council fans can take some guesses as to which parties that might describe.]
“If this wasn’t an issue,” the Minutes quote her as saying “there would not be as many amendments and as many fights about money as there are presently.”
[Wait until the inevitable macro-economic recession, if you want to see “fights about money.”]
Present at that meeting: Councilwoman Brown and Councilman Gaffney (who are close allies on Council) along with Councilman Sam Newby and a host of Executive Council Assistants.
Notable about Wednesday’s meeting: Hazouri (as a former Mayor, State Legislator, and School Board member, with a lot of governmental budget background) would have been a logical fit on Finance, and, like Brown, was an active participant in meetings of particular interest to him.
