A.G. Gancarski
In Wednesday’s meeting of Jacksonville’s Downtown Investment Authority, resolutions were passed in support of the Neighborhoods Department reorganizationanization, and of the referendum to approve an extension of the half-cent sales tax past 2030 to address Jacksonville’s unfunded pension liability.
Both of these are key agenda items for the Lenny Curry administration. City Council should pass on Tuesday a bill authorizing the Neighborhoods reorganization. And Curry and city lobbyists are optimistic that Gov. Rick Scott will sign off on the pension tax referendum bill.
The parking piece seemed like it would be a simple, pro forma ask. However, the committee had different ideas.
The Neighborhoods reorganization puts parking enforcement under the purview and as a “function” of the DIA, which came up in Jacksonville City Council’s Rules Committee Tuesday as “the most significant operational change” of the reorganization.
Council President Greg Anderson observed in Rules, regarding the reorganization, that “the most significant operational change,” Anderson said, is the move of parking enforcement to the DIA.
In each of the DIA board’s 43 meetings, public parking has come up. And most of the public parking the city has is downtown, on the Southbank or the Northbank.
In Wednesday’s 44th meeting of the group, public parking came up also.
Chairmanman Aundra Wallace explained that the reorganization would move public parking to the DIA from the Office of Economic Development, and it was with his support.
While this does not require board approval, Wallace thought a discussion was “prudent.”
Wallace’s case for the move is that in 2011, when the DIA was being formulated, parking was always intended to be part of the DIA.
A 2014 ordinance (2014-560) gave the DIA “oversight” but not “enforcement,” which doesn’t allow the DIA to “address some parking rates” and drive parking off-street from surface spaces.
The previous mayoral administration would not make the move; now, Wallace said, the DIA has “grown as an organization” and can take the task on.
Wallace said, “90 percent of public parking is in downtown Jacksonville” with the remainder in Urban Core surrounding neighborhoods like Riverside and Avondale.
“This is a management issue,” Wallace said. And he intends to manage.
“The administration is committed to working with us on this,” Wallace added, saying that this was part of the implementation of the vision.
“There is the perception that we have parking challenges downtown,” Wallace said, and enforcement is the solution.
A possible addition to the DIA framework is a three-person Parking Committee, to handle these issues discretely.
Board Chairman Jim Bailey supported this expansion of powers: “I have pushed and pushed for parking all the time … and the previous administration didn’t see the value of it.”
Bailey cautioned that the DIA would have to “very responsive” to parking issues in outlying neighborhoods, if this reorganization comes to pass.
Council President Greg Anderson noted that the board would have responsibility for collecting money, employees, and capital improvements … “new fiduciary responsibilities.”
He also didn’t want public parking to obscure the larger mandate of the DIA to improve downtown, and to ensure that the governing documents allowed the assumption of this function.
Anderson’s request was a resolution of support.
Surprisingly, there was some pushback, because of the language of the ordinance, with board members quibbling with ordinance language. Anderson, who was running 20 minutes late for an appointment outside the building at the Supervisor of Elections office, said he’d make cleanup as needed.
That offer, which seemed like it would suffice, didn’t quite work, as new board member Brenna Durden chipped away at the organizational language in the ordinance, for which the Board was intended to offer pro forma support.
Anderson was able to escape the room, as the board quibbled over which verb to use relative to the DIA and the relationship to public parking, and about the placement of “whereas” in the ordinance, which was a much easier sell to Council committees than it was to the DIA Board.
As the board moved to pass the resolution, DIA head Aundra Wallace wanted the General Counsel to make a “complete, thorough check” of the ordinance to ensure that it didn’t conflict with previous ordinance.
The resolution to support the sales tax extension, said Chairman Jim Bailey, was considered in light of Jacksonville CAO Sam Mousa‘s comments that no new downtown projects would happen until the new funding source for the $2.7 billion unfunded pension liability in line.
“Downtown would probably be one of the largest [beneficiaries] to a resolution of the pension issue,” Bailey said, and “it’s important to let people know we do support it.”
“The sale of this referendum is a tough marketing project,” Bailey added, and the resolution is one of simple conceptual support.
Mercifully, the DIA did not choose to rewrite this ordinance. It passed the resolution.
