Carrico calls Deegan ‘elitist’ on taxes. She says he ‘cheers’ axing help for people in need

The Jacksonville City Council’s Finance Committee stripped millions of dollars for affordable housing and healthcare from Mayor Donna Deegan’s proposed budget in order to carry out the committee’s goal of lowering the property tax rate.

The cuts have already put the Finance Committee and Deegan at odds after two days of hearings on her proposed $2 billion budget.

Deegan said she hopes the full City Council will have “less performers and more statesmen” for decisions on the budget. City Council President Kevin Carrico said Deegan is “out of touch and elitist.”

“Maybe it feels performative to someone who gets chauffeured around by a taxpayer-funded driver and doles out six-figure salaries to her friends, but it sure doesn’t feel that way to the working-class residents I represent,” Carrico said Aug. 8.

Deegan said Carrico’s “disingenuous and divisive statement” supports her point about performers versus statesmen.

“People across the city are hurting while he cheers on millions of dollars in cuts to programs that make housing more affordable, reduce homelessness, and improve healthcare access,” Deegan said.

Deegan proposed a $2 billion budget that keeps the property tax rate at about $11.32 per $1,000 of taxable property value. The seven-member Finance Committee, which gets first crack at the budget, voted to cut the millage rate to about $11.19 per $1,000 of taxable property value, which would trim the city’s total property tax collections by around $13 million.

The owner of a $200,000 home with a homestead exemption would pay about $19 less at tax time under the Finance Committee’s rate than with Deegan’s proposed rate.

Council committee pulls plug on Jacksonville telehealth service

Deegan, who founded the Donna Foundation that raises funds for breast cancer research and treatment, made improving access to the city’s health care system a major plank in her campaign for mayor.

The biggest health care-related increase since she took office in July 2023 has been the city’s subsidy for treating poor patients at UF Health Jacksonville. The city provided a $40 million subsidy in the final year of Lenny Curry’s term as mayor. Deegan and City Council boosted that to $56 million in the current budget and Deegan proposes the same amount next year.

But Deegan’s other health care initiatives have met opposition from the Finance Committee. City Council member Ron Salem said Deegan is going beyond what the role of local government should be.

“I’m seeing health care creep in this budget that we need to roll back because if we don’t now, we’re going to have big problems going forward,” Salem said.

The Finance Committee eliminated $2.1 million Deegan sought to continue Healthlink Jax, a telehealth program that gives residents who lack health insurance a way to call a hotline connecting them with doctors for virtual care. The pilot program also can set them up with doctors for non-emergency appointments if they don’t need to go to the emergency room.

Telescope Health CEO Matt Thompson, whose company has a contract with the city to run Healthlink Jax, told the Finance Committee last month the service costs money on the front end, but it keeps uninsured patients from going to the emergency room for high-cost treatment that eventually drives up costs for paying patients.

“In reality, this is a true DOGE program in the health care setting,” he told the Finance Committee, referring to the acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency that’s been used by at the local, state and federal levels.

Salem said if the telehealth service really saves money for hospitals on uncompensated emergency room treatment, hospitals should be paying for the service, not the city.

Other health care cuts by City Council included the JaxCareConnect program created by the Duval Safety Net Collaborative that refers people for care to a network of community clinics. Deegan sought $1.75 million for it. The Finance Committee cut it to $500,000.

City Council member Michael Boylan, who is not on the Finance Committee, said funding the JaxCareConnect clinics helps keep uninsured residents from turning to costly emergency room visits for their care.

“Let’s stop the cycle,” he said in arguing against the Finance Committee’s cut. “We found a better solution to dealing with indigent care and that solution is getting these people out of our ERs, getting them to a primary care service.”

Council erases money for housing a second year in a row

For the second year in a row, the council’s Finance Committee eliminated millions of dollars that Deegan proposed for housing programs. This year, the cuts total $7.8 million for programs aimed at helping people finance the purchase of homes, get rental assistance to avoid eviction, and move from homeless shelters to housing.

Joshua Hicks, the city’s affordable housing director, told the Finance Committee a previous round of city funding for the programs helped tackle the affordable housing crisis.

“It’s designed to remove the very barriers keeping residents from staying in their homes, building new ones or buying their first,” Hicks said.

He said Jacksonville has a shortfall of 50,000 housing units for households at or below 50% of the area’s median income. He pointed to a recent University of North Florida poll that shows the cost of housing is the number one concern among Jacksonville residents.

City Council member Rory Diamond, who voted against the funding, said the programs are a case of drawing money from all taxpayers and then “picking and choosing a small handful of people with a ton of money.”

He compared it to Deegan’s proposed $280,000 for a dental care program, which the Finance Committee also cut, that Diamond said would have served a small number of residents “and the rest of Jacksonville gets toothpaste.”

Committee keeps $9.4 million for council’s ‘strategic initiatives’

While City Council made cuts to programs proposed by Deegan, council left untouched a $9.4 million pot of money that council would be able to use during the 2025-26 fiscal year for “strategic initiatives” that council has not yet identified.

Deegan included that funding in her proposed budget at council’s request.

Diamond, who is pushing for an even bigger property tax rate cut than what the Finance Committee approved, wants to eliminate the $9.4 million in order to allow more property tax relief. Arias said in an interview that the money controlled by City Council should remain.

“The budget is a $2 billion budget so to leave $9 million in there for council strategic priorities, I don’t think is a tall ask,” Arias said. “I think if anything, that should stay there and we should identify other items to remove from the budget.”

The Finance Committee will have four more meetings through Aug. 22. The committee’s recommendation then will go to the full City Council for a vote in September. In the run-up to the final vote on the budget, Deegan plans to have a series of town hall meetings after Labor Day.

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She said she expected the Finance Committee would axe items from her proposed budget and she will seek support from the full council to restore spending for items like the Health Link Jax telehealth program.

“Everybody has agreed that the telehealth program has been extraordinarily successful,” she said. “So I will always be a voice for the people who are most vulnerable in this city.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Mayor Deegan and council Finance Committee battle over budget