ORANGE PARK – Plans for the Town of Orange Park’s 2018 fiscal year budget include many ongoing and new projects that, in tandem, may bring the town into the 21st Century.

Among the projects approved by the town Budget and Finance Committee Aug. 15 to be included in next year’s budget include many additions that would in some cases replace processes unchanged for decades.

Committee members voted to direct town staff to investigate the cost to install two static cameras within the council chambers to allow meetings to be recorded.

The town currently records audio for all meetings, a system some council members believe works poorly for those who have never attended a meeting.

The full council also voted last month to appropriate $30,000 into next year’s budget to refurbish the council chamber’s acoustics system.

The board also voted to include $17,000 in technology improvements for government software. Part of that money will be used to upgrade its current building permitting system, which requires a representative in town hall or over the phone, into an online permitting process.

Town Manager Jim Hanson said that he has received complaints that the current system slows down the building process and is just not user-friendly.

The council has paid a part-time worker since last year to digitize old building blueprints and documents three days a week for posterity – as well as to remove a daunting fire hazard created from a mountain of heavy paper blueprint rolls.

These in tandem could make the town run more efficiently.

Among the most startling revelations to be included into next year’s budget is a 5 percent business tax increase. The startling part is, according to Town Manager Jim Hanson, the town has not updated its business tax code in more than three decades.

“I was flabbergasted to hear this,” Hanson said. “The fees are as low as $30 for a beauty shop…$10 per realtor, every individual realtor needs to pay us $10…we can’t issue the tax for $10.”

To send the initial informational letter and subsequent follow up letters to receive the, say, $10, would mean both staff time and the cost for shipping the letter. All told, Hanson said, there are many in the town not paying their businesses taxes and if town staff continue to pursue the businesses for nonpayment, then even if the town were to receive the businesses taxes, the end result would be money lost from taxation.

Hanson said he believed the failure to raise the business tax may have been an oversight – a very long and large oversight.

“We’re not getting enough revenue for our staff time,” Hanson said.

However, this raises an issue. Florida law mandates that businesses taxes be raised only five percent every other year. Until the revenue generated from finding the businesses and issuing the payment requests were to exceed staff time and overhead – taxpayers will subsidize businesses within the Town of Orange Park.

“It’s a start,” Hanson said.

The blunder will iron itself out over time.

The Budget and Finance Committee’s recommendations will go before the council in regularly scheduled meetings this fall. Town Council is on track to adopt its new budget in mid-September.