A.G. Gancarski
In the Tuesday morning meeting of the Jacksonville City Council Public Health and Safety Committee, the panel voted to hold the funding level at $26.275 million for fiscal year 16/17.
But there will be changes this year.
Penny Thompson, vice president of government affairs for UF Health, noted that the money will be sent directly to the state this year.
“Something totally different has occurred. The state divided all of the hospitals into three tiers based on indigent work,” Thompson said, and UF Health is guaranteed 15 percent of the pot.
There are three letters of agreement this year, including $6 million for disproportionate care, that goes into the state pool and gives UF Health $14 million.
The other $20 million will be dispersed to the state when the city confirms “adequate participation” by the rest of the state, to ensure Jacksonville gets back what it puts in.
It’s not a done deal yet, of course. Finance will have to pass this bill on Wednesday, then the full council on Sept. 27.
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In other news from this committee, despite the deferral of a bill stiffening penalties on false residential and commercial alarms in a previous committee, PHS took it up.
JSO Chief Larry Schmitt made the elevator pitch: of 45,000 alarm calls for service, 98 percent are false, requiring the equivalent of nine officers spending 12 hours a day to do nothing but address false alarms.
The bill summary asserts that the “ordinance stiffens the penalty provisions for false alarms, as the current provisions are insufficient to compel payment of citations.”
The bill would also require a registry, which would be maintained online by an outside vendor.
“It will look to the citizen like it’s the sheriff’s office, but it’s actually a vendor … When people don’t register alarms, there’s no penalty … no incentive,” Schmitt said.
A registry is needed, Schmitt said, given that many people have defunct landlines associated with alarms.
The bill would require annual registration in the new system, with a 90-day window after the bill passes to register.
Currently, six false alarms are required before a fine kicks in; the bill, as amended, would allow one false alarm, then escalating fines of $50, $100, $250, and $500 for subsequent false alarms. After six, the JSO would cease responding to alarms at that address, except for panic or robbery-in-progress alarms (which would incur $500 fines for each false alarm).
The current setup offers no “incentive to fix alarms.” Adding more teeth to enforcement would offer such incentive to fix them within 30 days.
There would be, pending passage of the bill, a list maintained of 55 authorized vendors.
Councilman Tommy Hazouri, the bill sponsor, said this bill is not intended as a “moneymaker,” but a way to avoid wasting resources on false calls.
The concept behind this bill, added Councilman Bill Gulliford, has been discussed since John Rutherford was sheriff.
Gulliford believes this is long overdue.
Four committee members added their names as co-sponsors, and the bill cleared the committee without a no vote.
As with the UF Health bill, this moves to Finance Wednesday. It will still need to clear the Neighborhoods committee at its next meeting, however.
