The following essay was written by Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County member Joe Andrews, Candidate for City Council, District 12 in opposition to City Council bill 2010-856.  To find out what you can do to stop this bill, go to the meetup on the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County meetup group.

I do not understand why City Council is so hell bent on repealing the Law of Supply and Demand.  Throughout history, governments around the world have tried this and they have failed every time.  The closest to succeed were the Communist governments of the Soviet Union and China, but they only managed to drive their free economies underground where supply and demand flourished.  Eventually, even these governments realized the folly of their efforts and returned to at least a partial capitalist free market system.  Now our city government is trying to perpetrate the same foolishness that those governments did.  And this is not their first attempt: It was tried with 2005-091, the seafood Bill, again a couple of years ago with the Local Preferences bill and this past year with the Residency Requirements bill.   All of these bills were ultimately withdrawn.

The Law of Supply and Demand cannot be repealed  because it was not legislated into existence.  The Law of Supply and Demand is manifested by the actions of people who produce, trade and consume goods.   Passage of 2010-856 will be nothing more than a disruption of a working market system, causing higher prices, reduced production, reduced trade and reduced consumption, none of which, does one want in a down economy.  Think about it.

I call on this City Council to abandon this legislation and then advise those constituents who initiated this movement that they are now free to compete.

Joe Andrews
Candidate for City Council, District 12

Recently, there has been a lot in the news about competitive bidding for government contracts in Jacksonville. First, the city is considering awarding a landfill operations agreement with Trail Ridge Landfill, a subsidiary of Waste Management of Florida, without competitive bidding. Waste Management of Florida is using the the carrot and stick approach of lowering the base costs of its landfill services along with an intimidating lawsuit threat to force the city to give it a 40 year contract for about three quarters of a billion dollars without looking at other companies.

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Accusations of special treatment provided to U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown and City Councilwoman Denise Lee have embarrassed the Peyton administration once again.  According to a recent Florida Times Union article, it only took a phone call from Brown’s area director to start the ball rolling on the delivery of sandbags to Brown’s house to protect it from flooding.  Apparently, this assistance was not provided to anyone else in her neighborhood. Lee did not even have to ask for help when city trucks also showed up to her house with sandbags.  It was not until her neighbors complained that the sandbags were removed from her property.

We have to ask if this is standard operating procedure for all houses threatened by rising water or do you need to hold the purse strings to the federal and city money that finances city operations to get this kind of response from the city?  Mayor Peyton seemed oblivious to the implications of the city Public Works Office’s actions when he said that he was “delighted our public works employees were able to help save these homes”.