
The Alachua County Children’s Trust Board of Directors voted to adopt a strategic plan and tentative budget after making strategic plan revisions on Monday.
The Trust’s steering committee named three goals in its strategic plan draft for how to serve children and youth in the area from 2023-2026: making sure they are healthy and have nurturing caregivers, giving them what they need to succeed and thrive and providing them a safe community.
Before, the Trust had four goals, but it combined the first two to address youth in the full range of childhood, not just the youngest end of the spectrum, staff told the Board of Directors in Monday’s workshop.
At the board meeting following the workshop, the Children’s Trust board also approved its tax rate for the 2024 fiscal year (FY24). The Trust will keep the millage at .4612, which will effectively increase income for the coming year. The other two options were to raise the rate to its maximum of .5, or to set a rollback rate of .4015.
The tentative budget set forth is $13,915,430, which includes $40,000 to be spent on task forces which were not in last year’s budget. Another $3 million is planned for the capital projects fund, as the Trust is in the process of finding and purchasing a new building.
The FY24 budget plans for a $1 million decrease in grants and awards, which led several board members to assert the importance of keeping service to the community as a top priority.
“I know it’s not the Trust’s responsibility to fill in the gaps for other areas… But the needs are there for our community,” Chair Tina Certain said, pointing to the United Way Fund’s lack of donations to match their grant requests.
Certain said that is even more reason to leave the millage rate at .4612 instead of rolling it back, because she said once it is rolled back it can only go lower.
Board member Nancy Hardt stressed that anyone getting funding from the Trust should also be working in concert with the newly adopted strategic plan.
Children’s Trust treasurer and County Commissioner Ken Cornell said that while he agreed the millage rate should remain the same, he plans to fight back against the current tentative budget.
“Programming should not go down while we add more money,” Cornell said.
Several other board members agreed and voiced their opposition to decreasing the programming budget.
The millage rate and tentative budget passed unanimously, with one abstention. The budget will be up for further review at upcoming meetings.