Hurricane Matthew had $53M impact on Jacksonville city coffers

In the wake of Hurricane Matthew, estimates were that the storm could have inflicted as much as $100 million in financial impact to Jacksonville’s treasury.

However, asserts the latest auditor report from the Jacksonville City Council (discussed in the Finance Committee Thursday morning), things weren’t as bad as initially feared.

“The Finance Director’s report projects the financial impact of Hurricane Matthew will be approximately $53.0 million. As of December 31, 2016, the City incurred expenditures of $22.3 million related to Hurricane Matthew,” the report asserts.

The money is sitting in a special revenue fund. The other $30M + will go to repairing the pier and the dunes, and insurance reimbursements will go to that fund also, said Angela Moyer from the mayor’s budget office.

“It is important to note that only 87.5% of the total allowable expenses are subject to reimbursement, leaving the City to fund the remainder. This could result in an estimated $6.625 million negative impact to the GF/GSD that is not included in the first quarter projections,” the report adds.

Notable: the city of Jacksonville had a good budget year last year, and the city council’s finance committee pushed recently to boost the emergency reserve fund to 6 percent of the general fund. The city’s part of the financial hit can be absorbed, as it looks now.

Other highlights of the auditor’s report:

— More evidence of a surfeit of public safety workers was provided, with a total of $8.6 million in overtime costs at the end of 2016 between the police and the fire & rescue departments.

In the Finance Committee Thursday, Council Auditor Kirk Sherman confirmed that phasing in replacements for vacancies created the overtime hit.

Regarding the fire department, Councilman Matt Schellenberg said “there are plenty of applicants, but the diversity is not there.”

“I understand there’s plenty of people for the class,” Schellenberg continued, “but diversity is an issue.”

Attrition and retirement/DROP have created issues throughout public safety, and because of the training of classes taking months, these problems won’t be resolved soon.