The Jacksonville City Finance Committee met yesterday for the first of several all-day budget hearings. Of particular interest to nonprofits are the committee’s actions regarding an across-the-board 3% cut to operations and salaries of all City departments and a series of votes on the Cultural and Public Service Grants. Though Councilman Yarborough offered 2 amendments to cut the Cultural Service Grants by 25% (the amendment failed) and then both the Cultural and Public Service grants by 50% (no one on the committee seconded his amendment so it was not allowed to be discussed), only an amendment by Councilman Bishop to cut the PSG amount by 1.89% (approximately $46,000) prevailed.

What next?
First, remember none of these actions are necessarily the final work of the Council. For that reason no one should assume that our advocacy work is done. Finance committee has more meetings scheduled and the full Council will review, deliberate on, and vote on the Finance Committee’s recommendations.

Next, the 3% across-the-board cut, if approved by the full Council in September, will be left to the discretion of City administration to determine where the cuts fall and in what proportion. In other words, it is conceivable that the cuts could be made to the JCC, the PSG, the CSG, and other contractual partnerships the City has with nonprofits. While the Mayor’s office isn’t prepared yet to say how they’ll execute the proposed cuts, the nonprofit community needs to be prepared to make the case that the Council’s intention was to cut operating costs, not services. The grants programs are direct service expenses.