Mayor Donna Deegan gives her annual budget address to City Council on Monday, July 14, 2025, as President Kevin Carrico looks on. (Mike Mendenhall / Jacksonville Today)

Calling her proposed budget not just “balanced,” but “urgent,” Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan exhorted the City Council to approve her plan and maintain municipal “momentum.” In the budget proposal unveiled Monday, Deegan is seeking about $50 million more than she asked for last fiscal year (a request the council reduced by nearly $140 million). As promised, it contains few surprises, focusing on many of the same things she campaigned on and emphasized in her first term:  public safety, health care, housing and infrastructure.

Guest:

• Local attorney and government expert Chris Hand.

And, whether you love perusing old Duval County school yearbooks, listening to audiobooks for free, or just checking out the scale model of the Great Fire of 1901, the Jacksonville library meets a broad range of extant needs. This week, the library needs you. Friends of the Library are invited to fill up on low-priced used books to support their favorite public institution. We explain how you can participate and what kind of records, DVDs and books of all kinds are available. The event runs Thursday through Saturday at the nonprofit Friends of the Library headquarters at 3435 University Blvd.

Guests:

• David Smith, president, Friends of Jacksonville Public Library.