A.G. Gancarski
It’s been a rough stretch for the Jacksonville Children’s Commission, and the week before Christmas brought even more coal for its stocking.
This month had already seen the Jacksonville City Council’s Finance Committee taking JCC CEO Jon Heymann to task for an unusual amount of “emergency” appropriations bills in recent years, and keeping the council in the dark as to shifts in or need for additional programming resources.
And that was followed last week by revelations at a JCC meeting that over half a million dollars of contract dollars appropriated to JCC were unspent.
Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, as of Monday, had seen enough, and demanded a third-party audit of the JCC in an email related to that fund balance.
“Given finite resources, my public safety priorities and my specific focus on providing opportunities for kids, it is critical that JCC be aligned w/ those priorities AND demonstrate measurable, positive results for the young people served,” Curry wrote.
JCC Board Chair Matt Kane said, per the Florida Times-Union, that “we should be ecstatic about this.”
Time will tell if ecstasy is the dominant emotion, however.
