The Finance Committee held its sixth and final full-day budget hearing on August 27, 2026, to review the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget proposal. The meeting began with a 90-minute session on the Jacksonville Aviation Authority (JAA) budget and the Cecil Field development plan, followed by a wrap-up where the committee considered and voted on numerous amendments and enhancements. Key themes included accelerating Cecil Field investment, managing budget uncertainty around Amendment 3, and maintaining fiscal discipline while supporting community programs.
JAA Budget Overview
Cecil Field Development Plan
Wrap-Up and Enhancements
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the sixth and final full day budget hearing to discuss the fiscal year 26-27 budget proposal. We'll start off with introductions to my left Angela Moyer, budget office. Mike Weinstein, Mayor's Office. Philip Peterson, Council Otter's Office. Brian Parks, Council Auditors Office. Mary Stefopoulos, Office of General Counsel. Matt Large, Visiting Council Member. Matt Carlucci at large. Try that again. Group four. Thank you. Good morning, Chris Miller, at large group five. Will Lane in District Three. Good morning, and thank you all for the kind words and the prayers for my my baby girl. She is home in a lot of pain, but uh she's she's recovering. This is Terrence Freeman at large group one. Mike Gay, District Two. Randy White, District 12. Nick Howland at large, group three. Ron Salem, group two at large. Good morning, Raw Aries, District 11. All right, good morning, everyone. Uh, I did want to know Councilmember Diamond does have a uh approved excuse for part of the day, and uh it looks like Councilmember Johnson is running late, but we do have quorum for now, and we will require five for quorum at this point in time. Uh today uh excuse me. So today uh JA is gonna get the first 90 minutes. They're gonna discuss both uh budget and Cecil Field. Uh and then after that, we will I imagine we'll have a number of uh council members outside of finance here where we will uh I'll start off by giving a summary as to where we are at through the end of yesterday, and then entertain and debate any additional requests that we will then put into the finance substitute to go to committee this coming Tuesday. Uh JA, the way we're gonna do this, just like the other independent authorities, we're gonna have Mr. Peterson walk us through their auditor notes, and then if we have any questions, uh we will uh uh let you know and ask you uh any specific questions about the budget based on the auditor notes. So uh with that, Mr. Peterson, I'll hand it off to you. Okay, that takes us to our handouts on page three of the handout, similar to the other independent agencies. You'll see uh JA's 2526 budget, eight months of actuals where they project to finish the current year, and then their proposed budget for 2627. I think it would be helpful to just have that in front of you uh while we go through this handout. Um JA uses aircraft landing fees, terminal rental charges, concession fees, and other rental charges, including those for parking and rental car companies to cover their operating costs. Capital costs are covered by uh grants, customer facility charges, passenger facility charges, excess revenues from operations, and then debt. Um, and then obviously they have the four airports that they operate at. Um should be noted that the new parking garage is expected to open October of this year, concourse B to open either in December or January, and then the hourly garage is expected to be completed or fixed rather uh June-July of next year. Uh within their operating revenues, they have 161.2 million budgeted uh for the upcoming year. That's an 11.5 million dollar increase year over year. Uh within that concessions budgeted at 27.1 million, uh up nearly a million dollars due to um mostly uh expected increased activity with the opening of concourse B. That's in their retail and food and beverage uh lines, and then also 227,000 in fuel flowage fees based on higher sales at Cecil. Within their fees and charges revenue line item, uh budget at 29.2 million. It's an increase of 1.4 million year over year. Uh a lot of that is seven almost 700,000 in landing fees for signatory airlines, uh 290,000 in aircraft parking fees, 180,000 in operating permits for their grand ground handling services, and then another 140,000 in their landing fees for fixed-based operators. Space and facility rentals is increasing 9.8 million year over year. Uh 5.9 is within space rental for their signatory airlines, and then a little over 2 million in joint use space for the signatory airlines. 1.5 million in the rent-a-car ready return spaces and facility rentals due to additional car rental spaces being available once the new garage opens. Uh, this increase is partly offset by decrease in the joint use space charged to non-signatory airlines to better align uh with the actuals they are experiencing uh while accounting for the anticipated rate increase.