A.G. Gancarski
The city of Jacksonville’s IOUs are starting to pile up from FEMA. The city is owed $26 million in reimbursements after Hurricane Matthew, and expectations are that Irma will cost even more.
Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry again addressed the shortfall Tuesday.
“We’ll get through this storm,” Curry told reporters, “but my team will be aggressively working with the team from FEMA” for the purposes of reimbursement.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott sees President Donald Trump as his partner in the White House, yet Jacksonville and other Northeast Florida cities haven’t seen the helping hand of general fund reimbursement from FEMA.
But help may be at hand, Scott told reporters Tuesday in Orange Park.
“I talked to the administrator of FEMA about this last week,” Scott said. “They can do advance payments.”
Scott noted caveats, such as “still having to go through the process,” and that — if the reimbursement is not approved — cities have to pay the feds back.
“What I’ve told everybody is get it to our office. I’ll get it to FEMA,” Scott added, “and what they’ve told me was they’d work with cities or counties to do advance payments.”
Jacksonville, at last count, has somewhere around $150 million between operating and emergency reserve accounts — a good chunk of change in a $1.27 billion general fund budget, but one with caveats — including statutory minimum levels that must be maintained.
Jacksonville is still awaiting reimbursements from the federal government — 75 percent of an approximate $50 million in storm related damage. Application technicalities, such as Jacksonville’s local commitments to small and emerging businesses and locational criteria for vendors, apparently are not honored by the feds.
“We have to front the money for years,” the Jacksonville city council auditor said in August, well before Irma’s onslaught. “We are probably $26 million negative cash even without doing repairs [with expensive] debris cleanup.”
While these impacts are real, Gov. Scott’s vow to help move things along should reassure Jacksonville — and other Florida cities that have been impacted by two major storms in less than a year.
Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry spoke to the possibility of advance payments Wednesday, saying that his Administration intended to make the case to House Speaker Paul Ryan — in town Wednesday — that Jacksonville should get money owed to it by the feds.
