A.G. Gancarski
Good news: Rick Scott signed the “pension tax” bill, allowing a referendum on extending the 1/2 cent BJP tax until 2060 to deal with the unfunded pension liability.
Now, the question: how to sell it to the people?
Selling a sales tax referendum has been done in Jacksonville before. In fact, selling a ½ cent sales tax was done before.
The year: 2000. The pitch: the Better Jacksonville Plan. The architect: Mayor John Delaney, who had strong poll numbers in a second term, driven by a strong local economy and a policy of inclusion in terms of staff and board appointments.
Though a sales tax referendum has been sold before, Delaney noted in an interview last week that the pitches are a “little bit different.”
The Better Jacksonville Plan, for one thing, had tangible benefits. $1.5 billion in infrastructural projects, four downtown vertical projects, environmental projects, branch libraries, and the zoo among them.
Finding money to market the plan was not a challenge, Delaney related.
“We originally were kicking around half a million dollars. We ended up with $2 million.”
That generosity came in the form of fat checks from engineering companies, road building companies, and contractors… perhaps hoping to get a cut of the building bonanza that would and did follow the passage of the BJP.
Noting that the Curry administration believes they need three to four million dollars to sell the plan, Delaney issued a note of caution.
“I’m not sure they’re going to be able to raise as much as they think.”
Another factor working in the favor of Delaney and his team in 2000, that likely won’t benefit Curry’s effort, is increased media scrutiny.
“The newspaper didn’t pay attention to us,” Delaney related. “I was able to meet with every major constituency, the heads of the Democratic and Republican Executive Committees, every elected official, every candidate in the 2000 election.”
And that was before the press really paid attention.
And it paid off. No local elected official opposed the plan. The only candidate who voiced opposition was from Ponte Vedra.
“There really wasn’t an organized group in opposition either. Andy Johnson was about it.”
The tailwinds continued via earned media. Delaney said that they announced the plan at 5:30 one afternoon in the old Jacksonville Coliseum in front of 1,000 people or so. And television carried twenty minutes of it.
“We had great momentum in the beginning.”
From there, Delaney spent the next four months campaigning for the plan, 14 to 18 hours a day, with “hundreds of speeches and talks” detailing the advantages of a new courthouse, a new arena, armed with renderings and cost projections, and a media that was willing, especially initially, to present the plans at face value.
The end result? 57 percent of the vote. Delaney’s team had hoped for 60 percent, but a heavy rainstorm in Mandarin dampened turnout.
Still, Delaney says it was a “landslide.”
Curry does have some advantages that may help him achieve a similar result.
“I doubt there will be any opposition,” Delaney said, “and he’ll be able to define the debate.”
And on the merits, Delaney added, the referendum is the “best solution out there.”
As well, Curry has a “disciplined team,” one that won him the election via “getting Republicans to vote Republican.”
But there will be challenges.
For one, Curry has to “say to the public what they will get out of it.” Without a tangible infrastructural payoff, the plan to extend the ½ cent tax to “free up cash” is a “harder sell.”
Curry will have to be able to say what he’s going to do.
Delaney had the advantage of being able to say that the amenities and the improvements proposed would lead to a Better Jacksonville.
Can Lenny Curry make that sale by explaining amortization schedules in the quick hit segments of television news?
And will Curry be able to count on meaningful help from local Democrats on this issue… the same Democrats that Curry has, time after time, put in check during his nine months on the fourth floor of City Hall?
These are the open questions. And time will answer them.
