For the San Marco edition of this article with relevant budget items, click here.
Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan presented her proposed 2024-25 budget during a special address held July 15 in city council chambers.
The proposed budget includes $1.92 billion for the general fund – a $165 million increase from the previous fiscal year. The five-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) proposed budget for 2025-2029 is $1.95 billion, with $489 million allotted for 2025.
The city council must approve the budget proposal before it goes into effect Oct. 1.
“This balanced budget creates generational investments in our key priorities, infrastructure, health, economic development and public safety,” Deegan said in her address. “Our budget proposal confronts the unexpected reality of ad valorem revenue increases that are significantly lower than projected.”
Jacksonville saw exponential population growth last year, welcoming an additional 70,000 new residents – making it the fourth largest population growth nationwide. This population increase, Deegan said, necessitates allocating virtually all of the city’s ad valorem taxes for “critical public safety needs.”
Other factors, such as increased insurance rates and commercial property vacancies to the rebalance of the residential rental market, resulted in the city receiving $62 million less in property tax revenue than anticipated.
“We already knew it was going to be a year that was going to be lower than last year,” Deegan said.
A list of budget highlights, provided by the mayor’s office, includes renovations for city venues like the Ritz Theater, 121 Financial Ballpark, VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena and Performing Arts Center ($25.1 million in 2025); infrastructure updates to the downtown riverfront, including the Northbank Riverwalk and bulkhead and the Northbank Marina ($15 million in 2025/$115 million total) and two docks and riverwalk development for the Southbank Riverwalk ($13.2 million in 2025). For a full list of the budget highlights, please visit residentnews.net.
“Now is not the time to withdraw from our bold vision,” Deegan said. “It’s thinking small that has kept us mired in mediocrity, a city with more potential than progress. We were elected to do hard things; we have to be smart, and we have to lean in.”
Capital Improvement Plan – District 7
Deegan said the proposed $1.95 billion five-year CIP budget has been combed through to remove inactive projects that never went beyond the conceptual phase, the inclusion of which posed a threat to the city’s financial strength and credit rating.
“Today our CIP is leaner, more responsible and more representative of reality,” she said.
District 7 City Councilmember Jimmy Peluso said with the recently executed stadium deal, Deegan prepared for a “slimmer, more agile” budget than previous years.
“…[It’s] still pretty tied in to a lot of the priorities that she had in the first budget,” he said.
Peluso said he’s looking forward to the completion of several projects currently underway within the CIP, including Artists Walk and the new skatepark beneath the Fuller Warren Bridge in Riverside.
Additionally, he is eager to see the completion of the Park Street Road Diet, which began construction earlier this year.
The proposed CIP also outlines recurring infrastructure maintenance projects involving road resurfacing and sidewalk construction.
“We have some critical areas here in Riverside Avondale that I kind of want to take a look at,” Peluso said.
Affordable housing and homelessness programs remain a priority for Peluso, who served on the council’s Special Committee on Homelessness and Affordable Housing, particularly in light of Florida’s new law HB 1365, which “prohibits counties and municipalities from authorizing or otherwise allowing public camping or sleeping on public property without certification of designated public property by DCF (Department of Children and Families)…” Beginning January 2025, under this new law, residents, business owners or the attorney general, will be able to file a lawsuit against the city alleging a failure to comply.
Deegan has allocated $10 million in her new budget proposal for homelessness programming to comply with this new law.
“I think that $10 million will get us a long way to where we need to go on that front,” Deegan said.
