The Neptune Beach City Council will hold a special meeting next week to address deficiencies identified in the proposed budget. City officials held a workshop Monday to review the budget, but Mayor Cori Bylund pulled the item from the agenda for further discussion.
Bylund said she was not comfortable presenting the budget as written. She called for the workshop to address the findings and suggested officials meet weekly until all issues are corrected.
“I know that we have people here because of this item on the agenda. When I reviewed the budget, I found several deficiencies. I discussed it with staff and they agreed. They also found several deficiencies,” she said.
“We will continue to have budget workshops every Monday until we get a budget that we can pass. I do not want to be up against the deadline in September, so we have to have something that we can pass and we need to be able to pass it on our second read. We are not there.”
While Bylund did not detail the nature of the deficiencies or explain the delay, she mentioned her recent attendance at the Florida League of Cities annual conference. She and council member Tim Horvath joined delegates from more than 400 cities on panels discussing statewide issues. Bylund said the property tax initiative was by far the most widely discussed topic.
She said city staff will issue information about the proposed measure and its potential impact on both Neptune Beach and the city of Jacksonville, which is expected to face a $300 million deficit if the legislation passes.
“Money that we typically get from the city of Jacksonville because they are our county, we won’t be getting that anymore,” she said. “That will be a deficit that we also need to consider. It’s not just going to be the deficit that we will suffer as an impact to Neptune Beach but also whatever happens with the city of Jacksonville, so we will be putting out additional messaging.”
The information is expected to be released in September, “well in time for everyone to have some nuggets that they can use to be informed for the November vote,” she said.
“I wanted to be perfectly transparent about why we are not presenting the budget tonight. It is just not ready,” she said.
