The Jacksonville City Council Finance Committee held its fourth budget hearing for fiscal year 2026-2027 on August 21, 2026, from 9:00 AM to 1:40 PM. The committee reviewed budgets for multiple independent authorities, city departments, and funds, including significant discussion on JTA's financial challenges and several amendments proposed by Chair Lahnen to remove certain budget items requiring supermajority approval.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to meeting four to discuss the fiscal year twenty-six and twenty-seven proposed budget by the finance committee. Let's start off with introductions to my left. Angela Moyer, budget officer. Mike Weinstein, Mayor's Office. Billy Peterson, Council Otter. Brian Parks, Council Auditors Office. Mary Stefopoulos, Office of General Counsel. Good morning, Rockmont Johnson, District 14. Good morning, Rory Diamond and George from District 13, the beaches. Good morning, Chris Miller at large group five. Will Lane in District 3. Terrence Freeman at large group one. Mike Gay, District 2. Randy White, District 12. Nick Holland at large, group three. Ron Salem, group two at large. All right, good morning, everybody. And happy game day. A couple admin notes. First off, we have no excuses for today. So because of that, our quorum is five. George does not count. I asked, he does not count as a part of our quorum. We have uh three of the independent authorities this morning. Immediately following that, we're gonna bring up the Wolfson's request for approximately two million dollars. This is one of our loose ends from uh day one. Again, there's no action on this unless someone makes uh a motion. But I did want to come back to that because we uh agreed to table that so council members could have more meetings to discuss that. So Wolfsons will be right after we finish the three independent authorities. Uh like I've done every other day. Just want to give a summary of where we are are at, specifically with the general fund budget. Uh so again, the mayor submitted a budget of 2.027 billion dollars. Uh already we have reviewed 88% of that budget, about $1.786 billion, and of that we have amended approximately 1% of that overall budget. So uh we uh we are down to uh today and then next Wednesday to go department by department, and then next Thursday, the agenda will be JAA coming in here to present their budget, and then it'll be wrap up day, which I will get more communications out to uh not just finance committee but all of our colleagues on how that process will work. Uh so with that I see no committee members in the queue. So I'll turn it over to uh Mr. Peterson to kick it off with Jack's port. Uh thank you, uh Mr. Green and uh Mr. Greavy for uh being here uh with us this morning as well. All right, so that takes us to page three of our handout. This is the JAX port uh proposed budget for 2627. Um it does show the 2526 budget, their actuals through eight months, where they project to finish the year, and then the 2627 budget along with comparisons. I'm gonna start on page four with explanations. Umperating revenues, their autos budget of 20.4 million is an increase of uh a little over four million year over year. That's primarily due to a new tenant that was planning to uh operate in the break bulk category, converting their line of business to autos. Uh, this will expect to generate an additional three and a half million um in auto revenue. There's also growth at the new Blunt Island Marine Terminal, Southeast Toyota facility, uh projected to increase revenues almost 500,000. Within the break bulk category, there is a decrease of a little over 800,000, and that is due to the conversion of that tenant to autos. Um that has a decline of 1.9 million in this category, uh, but there is an offset of 700 700,000 due to increased vessel activity for another tenant.