The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office is requesting more money from the city this year ahead of Mayor Donna Deegan’s budget proposal presentation on Monday.
The agency’s budget is always one of the biggest items the city pays for each year.
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Last year, it accounted for more than one-third of the $1.75 billion total city budget.
The sticker shock tends to grab headlines each year, especially when an increase is requested.
This year, JSO is seeking a $32 million budget increase, bringing the agency’s total proposed budget up to $630 million.
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It’s a big chunk of change, but as Sheriff T.K. Waters explained, more than 80% of the funding goes straight to salaries and benefits.
“About 5 percent of our overall budget is discretionary spending. The rest of it is salary, benefits, contractual costs that are there and other operating expenses. Stuff that has to be done,” Waters said.
This year’s increases include more than $1 million to hire 40 new officers to help meet the sheriff’s goal of hiring 200 additional officers during his first term.
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Waters argued those new officers are necessary to ensure the success of the new patrol districts he rolled out last year, and also to keep up with the city’s growing population.
“We want to make that traveling time and response a lot quicker to make sure we have people in that area basically 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Waters said.
Additionally, there’s nearly $3 million to help facilitate the move of JSO headquarters out of the Police Memorial Building and into the Florida Blue Building.
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Waters said the move is expected to be complete within 12 to 18 months, and will ultimately save the city money by not having to build a new headquarters from ground up.
“Right now, the projections for a new administration building, $300 to $400 million. That’s a lot of money and we don’t want to have to do that,” Waters said.
We’ll find out how closely aligned the mayor’s budget proposal and JSO’s asks are on Monday when Deegan presents her proposed budget to the city council.
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Thanks to a new state law passed this year, Waters noted he’ll have the flexibility to move money around throughout the year to ensure the agency’s needs are met.
“We’ll use that to make sure that we don’t run short in certain places and listen, if we have to cut some place within our own agency then we’ll have to look at the best place to do that,” Waters said.
The pay raises and pension benefits in the new police union contract the mayor negotiated are not factored into JSO’s $630 million budget ask.
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