A.G. Gancarski
It appears that the Jacksonville City Council will not be deliberating the pension deal as an entire body until two weeks from tomorrow, given that health-related scheduling conflicts have pushed the requisite deliberation by the Rules Committee back twice now.
When last we checked in on this, the agreement had gotten through two committees. Ordinance 2015-54 was passed by Finance by a 5-2 margin, and the Recreation, Community Development, Public Health and Safety Committee passed it 5-1.
The bill was slated to go to the Rules Committee Friday morning, which would have put it on track to be considered Tuesday night, but two factors have delayed the Rules Committee consideration.
The first: the death of the father of Committee member Matt Schellenberg, which led to him being out of office for the balance of last week, and led Rules Chairman Bill Gulliford to postpone the meeting.
The hope from the Administration was for an expedited Rules meeting; however, that hope was dashed by Gulliford today in a pointed email to the Mayor’s Chief of Staff, Chris Hand.
“Even though I have no requirement to explain my decisions as Rules Chair since you are pushing hard to re-schedule the special meeting let me explain why I am not going to do so”, Gulliford began.
“I am at my business today which is the first full day I have been here this week. The rest of the week was taken up with city obligations even though this is deemed a ‘part time’ job,” continued the Rules Chair. “That has been the case throughout my term of office and my loss of significant personal income, even with the money paid to me by the City, is easy to document by review of my financial disclosure forms.”
Gulliford goes on to describe having to leave town on Wednesday, to see his sister in West Palm Beach who has cancer, a trip that will take him out of office for the remainder of the week. He cites a full schedule on Tuesday as a reason that the Rules Committee meeting cannot happen then.
The Councilman goes on to say that the meeting is not urgent because, as he and certain others on Council see it, there is a lack of resolution of how the proposed pension deal will be funded.
I do not deem calling a special Rules Committee meeting to be “urgent” and intend to take it up as the first item on the agenda at the next regularly scheduled meeting. Two weeks [the time between Council meetings] does not make a significant difference because we have not formally identified a funding source which is indeed the real gorilla in the room, and triggers the implementation of anything we pass.
If all goes as scheduled, the soonest this deal will be considered by the full Council would be March 10: exactly two weeks before the election.
The Rules Committee is expected to consider the deal next Monday.
