The title of this post is from the song Downtown sung by Petula Clark in the mid 1960s.  The song was inspired by composer-arranger Tony Hatch’s visit to New York City in which he extols the vibrant atmosphere of Broadway and Times Square.  Having been to New York City, I would agree with this characterization of Manhattan.  With its museums, nightspots and Central Park, New York City truly is the city that does not sleep!

If you read the recent Florida Times Union series on downtown Jacksonville, you get a sense that Jacksonville’s political leaders really want to transfer some of that vibrancy to Jacksonville’s city core.  According to the Florida Times Union, downtown Jacksonville is essentially dead in the weeknights and weekends and is short on residents and workers. What city leaders envision is a walkable downtown full of shops, restaurants, condominiums and lots of people frequenting and living in them. As usual, this vision requires tax money and city government planning.

Before we go flying off the cliff in our enthusiasm to keep moving forward with this vision, let us pause for a second and ask why we need a vibrant downtown.  Even if we agree that the downtown area should be different from what it currently is, is it possible for realize this new vision for downtown? How should we realize this vision? How much taxpayer money are we willing to sink into downtown to realize this vision?
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If you want to know what is wrong with city government spending in Jacksonville, take a look at bill 2009-403 that is coming up for a public hearing on Tuesday May 26th.  It spends $5,800 of taxpayer money to restore the Lakeshore Entrance Arches (see the picture to the left).  According to the bill summary, “the Lake Shore entryway at Blanding Boulevard, Appleton Street and Bayview Road was designated as a historic landmark by the City Council earlier this year. The entryway was constructed in 1925 in the Mediterranean style at the height of the Florida land boom.”  So basically what we are talking about is spending taxpayer money to fix up some old structure because someone decided that it has “historic” value.

If this is not bad enough, the money is being awarded to Rhodes Stucco without competitive bidding. The exemption is based upon Section 126.107(g) of the Ordinance Code which stipulates that “supplies or services to be provided by those specifically prescribed within authorizing legislation that appropriates the same” can be exempted from competitive bidding. You would think after the uproar over the no bid Trail Ridge contract to Waste Management that competitive bidding would be the way to go.  But apparently the City Council thinks that the amount is low enough that no one will notice. As you can see, Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County has noticed!

This is also touted as an emergency expenditure. Emergency?! Unless this structure is about to collapse and take out a busload of nuns, this is hardly an emergency!

I do not see how this repairing this structure could be considered a valid government function. If anything, it is a waste of taxpayer money!

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Two City Council Bills that will likely come up before the full City Council on January 13th have caught our attention here at Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County.  The first one is bill 2008-1021. This bill appropriates $109,000 from the Special Council Contingency/PSG/Cultural Council account to pay for the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra’s rental of Jacoby Symphony Hall at the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts for the 2008-09 orchestra season.  So the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra cannot pay its rent.  It provides a valuable service, right?  Why not let the taxpayers help it out of its financial bind?

As Councilman Stephen Joost pointed out at a recent Finance Committee meeting, the number of people attending performances by the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra for the past budget year was 110,000+.  If one more dollar had been charged per ticket, there would be no need to burden the Jacksonville taxpayer with this bill.

The second one is bill 2008-1055.  This bill sets a graduated point system for evaluating the proximity of businesses seeking city government professional service contracts to Jacksonville.  The pecking order for favoring contract candidates is businesses that have headquarters in Jacksonville followed by businesses with branch offices in Jacksonville followed by business with branch office elsewhere in Florida followed by business with no offices in Florida. So isn’t favoring local businesses who pay local taxes a good idea?

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