The county’s final budget carried 4 to 1, and the chair was the one voting no.

That is on page 3 of the minutes of the Sept. 15 special meeting, which the Clerk posted this week, twenty-four days after the hearing it records and three days after the board approved it. The county announced the budget on Oct. 5 and did not say how it passed.

Resolution No. 2026-313 set the final millage rates. Commissioner Christian Whitehurst moved it, Commissioner Krista Joseph seconded, and it carried with Chair Clay Murphy against. Resolution No. 2026-314 adopted the budget itself, at $1,939,752,566 on a certified taxable value of $63,056,698,242. Whitehurst moved that one too, Vice Chair Ann Taylor seconded it, and the roll came out the same way.

Every figure in those two resolutions matches what this paper published on Oct. 6 off the Sept. 3 first hearing, which is what the county’s budget page had said would happen. The aggregate rate is 6.7559 against a rolled-back rate of 6.6143, and the resolution prints the consequence on its own face at 2.14 percent.

The motion that died

Before either vote, the chair tried to go lower.

The minutes record a motion by Murphy “to reduce the millage rate by 0.0469 percent below the flat rate.” The sentence after it is that the motion failed for lack of a second.

So the record now shows what that option looked like when somebody reached for it, which is the thing an announcement of a finished budget can never show. Nobody else put a hand up. The rate the board had held flat since the first hearing stayed flat, and the only commissioner who voted against the budget is the one who had just tried to cut it.

Two waivers, one day

Board Rule 4.304 governs funding on an item that was not published on the agenda, and the board set it aside twice on Sept. 15, once at nine in the morning and once after five.

The morning request came first and it was the smaller one. In commissioners’ reports, on page 14 of the regular minutes, Taylor brought a funding request for the Nourish Kids Center’s six-month pilot program and asked for a one-time transfer out of the General Reserve Fund. The deputy county attorney explained what Rule 4.304 requires. The board waived it 5 to 0, then moved $65,000 the same way. Nobody dissented on either.

The evening item was the larger one, and it arrived before the meeting started. The minutes open with the chair asking that discussion on funding for the Black History Museum be added as Regular Agenda Item No. 2. That request sits on page 1, under the heading “DELETIONS TO THE SPECIAL AGENDA.” Which is fine.

It came up after the budget had already been adopted. The president and chairman of the Foundation for the Museum of Black History spoke on the need for the money. Murphy moved to waive Rule 4.304, Commissioner Sarah Arnold seconded, and it carried 4 to 1 with Joseph against. Then the money: a motion “to remove $125,000 from the General Fund Revenue for the Black History Museum,” carried 3 to 2, with Taylor and Joseph against.

Add the two and the board moved $190,000 in one day, on items no agenda carried. Rule 4.304 is the board’s own rule and the board is the body that can set it aside, which it did on a recorded vote both times.

Who came to talk, and what about

The minutes list seventeen people as speaking at the budget hearing, and fourteen of them are recorded as addressing the license plate cameras, by a count of the minutes’ own list.

One asked about the millage rates on the way through and another spoke about the 4-H youth program. The rest of a budget of nearly two billion dollars drew nobody at all.

Arnold raised concerns about the cameras and about artificial intelligence capability. Hardwick explained how the Flock system worked. Discussion followed on where the cameras are, on a workshop to address them, and on state compliance.

Then this, on page 3. The chair “requested Board consensus to direct staff to bring back options for funding Flock cameras in County rights-of-way within the next few weeks. Consensus was given.”

Those are the minutes’ words for the clock the board set itself, and they are looser than the two weeks reported at the time. One of them now has a date. The St. Johns Citizen reported on Oct. 8 that Whitehurst asked for an agenda item on county permitting at Tuesday’s meeting, that the board agreed, and that it is set for Oct. 20.

The dates on one hearing

Called to order at 5:01 p.m. Adjourned at 7:18 p.m. Announced to the public twenty days later. Approved as minutes on Oct. 6, as item 24 on that day’s regular agenda.

The record of how a two billion dollar budget passed was inside the building the whole time, in a document the deputy clerk finished within days of the meeting and the board did not take up until Oct. 6.

It is eight pages long.