At
the corner of 21st and Main streets, where the tractor-trailer
rigs clamor down the road as much as morning shoppers,
neighborhood leader Ron Pauline points to the signs of life in
a flagging part of Jacksonville.
Two old buildings have bright blue and green awnings, fresh
paint, a police substation and eateries. The street soon could
have new traffic lines, and ramps, and landscaping off Martin
Luther King Jr. Parkway might be spruced up.
"There was a time this was quite a neighborhood," Pauline
said while surrounded by maps and plans in his office there.
"It was well maintained. A lot of prominent people lived
here."
The mayoral candidates mean neighborhoods like these when
they speak about neighborhood redevelopment. Although they
give more attention to discussions on schools, jobs and crime,
the candidates have linked revitalized neighborhoods to
helping solve problems associated with those issues.
The most specific proposal comes from Republican Matt
Carlucci, a city councilman from San Marco who has a long
record supporting suburban revivals. He would offer new
funding of $25 million to $50 million from a bond issue to
help revive decaying commercial shopping centers and
commercial strips in older neighborhoods.
| 7 areas targeted
City Hall's Town Center Initiative has selected seven
areas for its first phase, which involves planning what
needs to be done to revive struggling business areas.
Grants of up to $25,000 will be awarded. Design and
implementation come later. The seven locations are:
Fort Caroline Estates South: Rogero Road between
Arlington and Fort Caroline roads
Metro North Community Development Corp.: Main Street
from 21st to 36th streets
Murray Hill Preservation Association: Edgewood
Avenue south and north of Post Street
Northwest Jacksonville CDC and Myrtle Avenue
Neighborhood Improvement Association: Myrtle Avenue,
Moncrief Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Expressway
North Riverside CDC: McDuff Avenue from Interstate
10 to Dignan Street
Riverside Avondale Development Organization:
Stockton Street from Myra to Post streets
St. Nicholas Preservation Area: Intersection of
Beach and Atlantic boulevards
|
The
five other major candidates said they like his goals but did
not offer similarly detailed counter proposals, except for
Democrat Tommy Hazouri. Some question the city's financial
wherewithal to pull off his plan.
Carlucci's proposal spins out of City Hall's fledgling Town
Center Initiative, which offers taxpayers $12 million to plan
and pay for sidewalk and street improvements if private
businesses improve their shops along commercial stretches and
centers. The city picked the northern Main Street stretch and
six others to participate first.
The city offers relatively small neighborhood matching
grants, which gave Metro North $5,000 in 2002, for example.
The $25 million Northwest Jacksonville Economic Development
Trust Fund -- created by the Better Jacksonville Plan -- helps
businesses with building improvement grants. The city also
provides grants from federal funding for a variety of
neighborhood projects.
Most notable
The most notable program involves the five Intensive Care
Neighborhoods, a program under Mayor John Delaney that slowly
is helping those battered communities shore up streets and
fight crime and litter. The candidates all support expanding
it.
"You ask a non-profit if city services are to up where they
should be, [and] you know the answer is no. However,
I'm 64 years old so I've learned to be thankful for what I
have," Pauline said.
If Metro North, which formed in 2001, succeeds through all
three phases, the city will pay to improve sidewalks and
landscaping, essentially the city-owned parts for more than a
dozen blocks north of his office on Main. Private businesses
must improve their own buildings under the current Town Center
program, although about $250,000 in city loans and grants was
spent from the trust fund on one building. It was a former
strip club.
However, Carlucci's plan would allow at least twice as much
Town Center money to be used as grants and low-interest loans
to improve the actual businesses, such as putting on new
facades. It would also work with the Intensive Care program.
"It's bigger and it's broader in scope," Carlucci said,
though he could not pinpoint which neighborhoods would get the
money until the program is fleshed out.
He would issue bonds from general revenues, such as sales
or excise taxes, to pay for the proposal. He promises no new
taxes will be needed.
That hasn't satisfied others. Most pointedly, Republican
Ginger Soud and Democrat Nat Glover said the next mayor must
make sure the city's finances are solid, and Republican John
Peyton suggested he wants to measure the effectiveness of the
current program.
"I'm not going to put a bunch of money on the table, and
say, 'Go do good," Peyton said.
The next city budget should have enough funding to allow a
bond issue, as long as the state and federal governments do
not cut funding too much, City Council auditor Bob Johnson
said. That should be known by the end of spring. Given that,
Carlucci said bonding would be available sometime during the
next four years.
Operational costs
But Glover noted the city will have to begin paying the
unbudgeted operational costs of the new arena, ballpark and
libraries built under the Better Jacksonville Plan.
The city also has an unfunded pension liability that now is
estimated at $200 million over the distant future, said
Johnson, though it's nearly impossible all of that money would
be due at once. But the city has to start finding ways to
cover it.
Glover noted a recent quarterly financial report that
warned a 1/2-cent sales tax that goes into the general fund
could be short of expectations by $3.7 million this year.
However, city Chief Administrative Officer Sam Mousa said the
tax had met revenue expectations in previous years, but with
only two months of receipts tallied, it's too early to tell
this year.
"It's just kind of uncertain economic times, and we just
need to be cautious," Glover said, though he supports the
grants and low-interest loans Carlucci wants.
However, none of the other candidates gave a plan as
specific as Carlucci's, save for Hazouri, who wants to expand
a tax increment financing district massively in the Northside.
The proposal would take a sliver of increased tax revenue from
building improvements to create a fund for other upgrades in
the district. But the boundaries are vague -- between
Interstate 95 and the St. Johns River -- and the financing
uncertain.
"That bond money runs out, but the tax increment does not.
We don't have enough options, and that's the problem. I think
Matt's could be proven to be a model, but mine is proven,"
Hazouri said.
Soud's biggest proposal so far is expanding the Intensive
Care program, and she wants more emphasis on helping schools
improve as part of it. She also said more adequate housing has
to be provided because it's "essential to family stability,
and it is essential to the education process."
Republican Mike Weinstein, the city's former economic
development chief, supports expanding the Intensive Care
program to neighborhoods with failing or struggling schools.
He also supports partnering with more faith-based groups,
despite some constitutional critics who argue for separation
of church and state.
"Faith-based organizations are close to the pulse of the
community," he said.
"They take years and years and years to make any funds
available," Weinstein said of Hazouri's proposal. "Tax
increment districts have been successful mostly downtown and a
couple at the Beaches. If you're looking at a tax increment
district as a way to develop economic investment, you're 10 to
15 to 20 years away," he said.
Peyton most specifically says he wants to improve code
enforcement, making sure the neighborhood code is tight
enough, properly enforced and push for the local judiciary to
make sure the violation cases have a bigger priority. How that
would be done is uncertain, he said, until a review is done.
But he said he was unaware of a critical audit last summer of
the department's performance.
Staff writer David DeCamp can be reached at (904)
359-4699 or at ddecamp
jacksonville.com.
