“As mayor, I can’t sit idly by. It is my job to help lay the foundation for Jacksonville’s strong post-recession recovery, by creating new job opportunities and a stronger financial foundation, improving our city’s quality of life and ensuring the safety of our citizens.” - Speech given by Mayor John Peyton at Snyder Memorial Church on Jan. 20, 2010.
When you read the above excerpt from Mayor John Peyton’s speech, you get the sense that Peyton has a rather ambitious view of his role as Mayor. Rather than running an efficient government that provides an essential but limited set of services to local taxpayers, Peyton instead want to be the savior of Jacksonville dispensing job opportunities and improved quality of life to everyone like Santa Claus on Christmas day. While this may seem noble to many, you have to question whether Peyton has the godlike powers to make this happen. Cities are complex social organizations that defy top down control by politicians no matter how sincere or self confident they may be. The reason that free markets work is that they do not presume that one person or even a committee of people have the knowledge and available tools to manage the complex web of personal and economic relationships that take place within Jacksonville. Free markets rely on the decentralized decision making by entrepreneurs trying to discover what their customers need and then meeting that need before their competitors beat them to the punch.
Recently, the Jacksonville Charter Revision Commission proposed that the mayor develop a four year strategic plan that includes a “vision statement, mission statement, financial plan, goals and measurements for annual performance reviews”. While strategic planning is important for any organization including city government, we need to be careful to identify what the goal of this foray into strategic planning should be and should not be. It should not be a strategic plan for Jacksonville. Instead, it should be a strategic plan for Jacksonville city government. There is a difference. The former assumes a godlike remolding of a city of 800,000+ people while the latter is more realistic in its desire to do just a few essential things and do them well.
A savior mentality seems to be inherent within the politician psyche. Efficiently provide a limited set of services that the free market finds difficult to duplicate is way too mundane for politicians like Peyton. It is more fun for Peyton to throw around taxpayer money in a vain attempt to transform Jacksonville into his vision of what he thinks that it should be regardless of whether Jacksonville residents want to go along for the ride. My advice to Mayor Peyton is to get the city budget under control without another tax increase, reform the city pension system and leave the quality of life issue to the private sector which is more responsive to its customers than governments tend to be.
It’s a no-brainer: Cut taxes!