Duval County

Community leader talks next steps following Jax City Council’s budget passage

This fiscal year, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office will have more than $480M to work with.

This comes after Jacksonville City Council passed the budget in a vote, 17-2 Tuesday night.

Action News Jax Courtney Cole spoke to community leader Ben Frazier of the Northside Coalition.

He was hoping for a different outcome, especially after demonstrators walked and marched along Jacksonville’s streets in June following George Floyd’s death.

One of the things they called for is reevaluation of how much money the City of Jacksonville budgets for the sheriff’s office.

“Let’s be clear: we weren’t exactly happy with the result with the vote by city council,” Frazier told Action News Jax.

Of the 19 council members, 17 voted “yea” and only two voted “nay”—Garrett Dennis and Rory Diamond—on a $1.34 billion budget.

That includes the $484.6 million for the  JSO, an increase of $3 million from last fiscal year.

It also represents 36% of the overall budget.

“The city council has shown that it is not listening, and they have turned a deaf ear to our demands,” Frazier said.

The local activist supported the Jacksonville Community Action Committee’s call for 20% of the city’s budget to be used for JSO.

“What’s troubling to me is that there was a move to defund the police last night,” Mayor Lenny Curry said.

People’s Budget wanted to see the money used to create more jobs, and to expand access to money for Black-own small businesses, preventing food insecurity and infrastructure.

Curry said more than 30% of the city’s budget goes for sidewalks, roads and resurfacing in districts 7, 8, 9 and 10.

“We have a long way to go, when you have decades of neglect, but I’m going to continue to invest in those issues,” he said.

Tuesday night’s setback hasn’t discouraged community leaders like Frazier. “We’re going to continue to collaborate with each other. We’re going to continue to agitate, continue to educate, continue to march, protest, demonstrate, (and) we’re also going to continue to negotiate.”