A.G. Gancarski
The 2015 mayoral election between incumbent Alvin Brown and challenger Lenny Curry was decided by numerous factors. But one that shouldn’t be forgotten was Brown’s frayed relationship with the Jacksonville beach communities of Atlantic Beach, Jacksonville Beach, and Neptune Beach.
Brown, described as a “nonexistent” leader by beaches politicians, went to Jacksonville Beach last spring during a campaign appearance at the Beaches Watch forum at Fletcher High School.
It was not the strongest fifteen minutes of Brown’s career; it may have been the most catastrophic that didn’t involve questions on the expansion of the Human Rights Ordinance. He gave his standard stump speech, and wasn’t able to speak specifically about concerns the beaches communities had.
Curry followed Brown that evening, and he was a quick study; though Curry said nothing terribly specific, he did leave those in attendance confident that he would at least initiate the dialogue.
Curry visited Beaches Watch over 15 months ago campaigning for the office. And his return to Fletcher High School on Wednesday was likewise a campaign visit: one driven by the initiative in which Curry has put it all on the line.
Namely, the Aug. 30th County Referendum 1, an “important issue for the entire county” in the mayor’s words, which will extend the ½ cent sales tax until 2060 or whenever the $2.7 billion unfunded pension liability is paid off.
That is, if it passes.
And if it fails? Curry and Councilman Bill Gulliford were on hand to explain the perilous consequences.
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Curry warmed up the crowd with kind words.
“Beaches cities often weren’t paid attention to in the past,” Curry said, minutes before saying the audience was full of “high-information voters.”
It’s different now, Curry added, than it was under the previous mayor, an era of “divisiveness” in which budget “numbers didn’t add up.”
It’s different on the macro level, and different for the beaches also.
The Capital Improvement Plan, for example, reflects needs of and commitments to the beaches, such as the library and the pier and road resurfacing.
However, Curry’s second budget was “tough.”
There were a lot of things that he wanted to do in the budget, yet he had to say no to many of them.
Pension costs were the issue. $292 million, a number that is “simply not sustainable” in a billion dollar operating budget.
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From there, Curry went on to make the familiar points: the Better Jacksonville Plan tax will expire; if there is a yes vote Aug. 30, the tax will be extended; there will be reform so these issues don’t recur; the old plans will be closed; the employees will kick in a bigger contribution.
“We’re not meeting the obligations for the entire county,” Curry said.
“We’re all in this together,” Curry added, before explaining the difference between the Better Jacksonville Plan, which was about infrastructure, and his current initiative, “solving a problem we inherited.”
The inheritance, of course, is not something all beaches residents feel particularly responsible for.
One questioner voiced resistance early on, saying that he never trusted the city of Jacksonville to manage tax dollars. He said John Delaney “got us into the trouble,” and wanted some tangible benefit to voting for the plan.
Councilman Gulliford spoke up, describing the “preposterous position” the “30 year agreement” put the council in, which included having to bargain with the Police and Fire Pension Fund board, and the equally “preposterous” 8.4 percent guaranteed return.
The pension reform bill of 2015 rectified the worst part of these issues, Gulliford added.
Curry soon enough said his piece, saying employees were “promised benefits from folks of the past,” and that he’s not asking for a yes vote to “give something to existing employees,” but to “use tax dollars to do something here at the beaches.”
“Over $200 million that should be going to your priorities,” Curry added, “is going to pension costs.”
Another hard hitting question came from an audience member who billed County Referendum 1 as a “new tax that builds nothing,” saying that the pension problem was created by Jacksonville’s pension holidays and property tax cuts.
He noted that the beaches’ pensions were properly funded because there were no politically expedient property tax cuts, whereas the current scheme sought to “siphon millions of dollars into Jacksonville, and give nothing back.”
Curry said that the questioner was “right on numerous of those things,” vowing that with a yes vote, Jacksonville will have the “operating capital to do things we’re supposed to be doing.”
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Gulliford was a useful tag team partner for Curry at the beaches, as his buy in from the locals and his ability to break down concepts is something most politicians in Jacksonville no longer have.
Throughout the meeting, Gulliford overcame conceptual resistance, such as talking about how it would take a 2 mill hike just to get a reduction in the overall unfunded liability, how that money couldn’t be obligated in the future, and how a property tax hike would spur more people to move to St. Johns County.
He also made the case that it was no longer business as usual with Curry as mayor.
“You don’t know what it was like to get that bill passed,” Gulliford said about the pension reform of 2015, dealing with Mayor Brown, John Keane, and council members who were opposed to it.
Gulliford also described how one night at Council, a “group of ministers were demanding to know what’s in it for them,” regarding the pension tax.
There were, Curry and Gulliford concurred, no side deals to be made; at the beaches, or anywhere else.
Gulliford also reminded beaches residents of how pension costs have cut down the city’s ability to invest in resurfacing roads, at the beaches and throughout the city.
“We should spend $20 million a year resurfacing roads,” Gulliford said, but the number has been closer to $5 million.
“We’ve got infrastructure problems all over.”
Gulliford also reviewed other options that had been discussed for generating revenue, such as raising millage for a fire tax to generate roughly $60 million yearly, then lowering the rate and calling for a sales tax referendum; these moves, he called “gyrations.”
And he discussed raising the JEA franchise fee, which would have generated roughly $30 million yearly, but would have hiked utility bills up more and driven more people to move to the suburbs.
He also talked about when he was president of the council, and he asked about a ½ cent sales tax in Tallahassee, only to be told “no way” by the Senate President at the time.
“I would have been willing to commit political suicide,” he said of his commitment to secure dedicated revenue to deal with the unfunded pension liability.
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The discussion of “political capital” and other meta-discourse comments has been a running feature of Curry’s pitches on this subject, and he returned to that theme late in the program Wednesday night.
“There’s no political upside” to a tax extension, but it’s the “right thing” to do, Curry said.
The “easy thing” to do, he added, would have been to “cut ribbons” for his first year, his first four years in office.
But that, he said, was a fiction.
“The city’s been pretending for many years,” Curry said, and the unfunded actuarial liability has to be “solved now.”
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If the referendum passes, there are issues that will be worked out in collective bargaining, a process that could get ugly as it has in other places reconciling 20th century promises with 21st century realities.
One such, said Gulliford: the “surviving spouse” benefit of 80 percent, which Gulliford said has a “significant impact” and “would be part of negotiations.”
Council, Gulliford added, could function as a quasi-judicial body and “impose its will.”
However, Gulliford added, “it’s not easy to impose your will with an auditorium full of people with [badges and] guns.”
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Curry and Gulliford bringing this message to the beaches was notable for several reasons that required a deep dive write-up.
Going back to the consolidation discussions of the 1960s, the beach communities always prioritized their independence, and consolidation would not have passed if they hadn’t gotten a functional autonomy, including the maintenance of their own city governments and associated services.
However, the unspoken reality is that the beaches have been able to maintain their sense of localism while at the same time being shielded from some of the impacts of consolidation, including the absorption of economic burdens that bedevil the county at large.
Consolidation was a tough sell at the beaches. However, the advantage that the administration has, in this case, is that the beaches voted for Curry over Brown by roughly 40 percentage points last year.
Thus, there is a convergence of “political capital” and a meaningful metric of buy in and popularity for the mayor.
The George W. Bush line – “what good is political capital if you don’t use it?” – comes to mind here.
In Bush’s case, his political capital was vanquished, via Hurricane Katrina and a popping of the housing bubble, not too long after he made that declaration as his second term started.
There’s always a risk in talking political capital.
But at the same time, the previous mayor also seemingly enjoyed political capital, with polls showing 70 percent favorability for much of his term.
He didn’t marshal it, and in the end found himself not able to make the case for his re-election.
So there’s a risk, politically, in inaction.
And if you believe Curry and Gulliford, the real risk isn’t to the politicians, but to the city itself.
