City Manager Steve Kennedy sat quietly during the first reading of the millage rate, final budget, and electric, water and stormwater rates at the Sept. 3 Green Cove Springs City Council Meeting, quietly listening to a lot of confusing and misguided information.
He heard residents complain the rates were too high. Like everyone else in the standing-room-only crowd, he probably was the first to agree.
Many argued the rates were increased in secrecy and without regard for the residents. Some wondered why they weren’t allowed to be part of the process.
They cried foul.
They smelled a rat.
Kennedy had enough, and he said, in part, what should mentioned at every Town Council, City Council and Board of County Council meeting.
“I don’t say this to insult anyone’s intelligence,” he said. “We are held to a standard of open meetings and open records. Every meeting we have is published and advertised, and the agenda is published before the meeting occurs. The meetings are broadcasted on livestream. The meetings are recorded. And then, if you want to come out and get a transcript of that and take it home with you and watch, the idea is not even possible that we as a city and staff can function over here and sneak in this meeting. This meeting is the meeting date we’ve had for decades. This is not a sneaking meeting. Except for a holiday, we meet on the first and third Tuesdays. The information is available. To come over the comment, what’s this for? We’ve been working on the budget since June. All those meetings that we’ve had where we’ve talked in detail about details in the various budgets there’s a meeting that you can go and look up, and you can hear exactly what was said, the discussions that were there some of these, we’ve had studies that supported this from consultants. Consultants' reports were received, presented, and adopted by the Mayor and Council in a public meeting, throwing out the idea that we’re sneaking around or are not being open about these sorts of things and these critical issues are not true.
“Our meetings, we can’t have a meeting without it being publicized, and we’ve had budget meetings with one person outside of staff in the Council to show up. I’m not sure what some of you may feel like is a solution. Our staff is open. We’re available. And I was going to ask how many of you were, just curious, reached out to any of our staff members about some of the questions or comments tonight. OK, if you want to know what’s happening and have a question, please reach out.”
Not only were the budget numbers posted on the websites for Green Cove Springs, Orange Park, Keystone Heights and Clay County in advance of their regularly scheduled meetings, the numbers from their budget workshops are also included. In Green Cove Springs’ case, the Council met on Aug. 8 and 13. Residents could have looked at those numbers weeks before reading the budget. If so, maybe the meeting wouldn’t have lasted 6 hours, 15 minutes.
Indeed, Keystone Heights, Orange Park and Clay County didn’t increase the millage rate for 2024-25, but they don’t face the infrastructure challenges like Green Cove Springs. Massive development will require expanding the city’s water and electric departments. The Council said once developers start applying for building permits and paying assessment fees, the city will recoup some of its upfront millage costs and will be able to reduce rates in the future.
That still wasn’t good enough for some, who suggested the city could keep the rates low by cutting costs, such as getting rid of a grass cutter or two, shutting the police department or not spending any more money on beautification projects like Walnut Street.
Costs are out of control everywhere—not just with taxes and insurance but also at the gas pump, grocery store and restaurants. The problem is that wages aren’t going up that fast. Instead of raising the millage rate from 4.7 to 6.0, it fell back to 5.3. That will barely be enough to complete necessary projects but not raise city employees above the 50% salary threshold compared to cities of similar size as originally planned.
The final reading of the budget will be on Tuesday, Sept. 17, at 7 p.m. Details are at greencovesprings.com. Click on Agendas & Minutes, then City Council and City Council Regular Session. You can see every document's PDF or HTML packet there, so know before you go.
And if it’s like the last meeting, bring a sleeping bag.
