JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — It was a rocky start Tuesday night for the proposed Lot J development after Jacksonville City Council leadership found the legislation supporting the project was incomplete as filed by the city's administration.
The expectation was that the bill from Mayor Lenny Curry's office, Ordinance 2020-0648, would be introduced Tuesday and the first public hearing on the proposal would be on Oct. 27.
But when the bill was brought up to be introduced toward the end of the meeting, there was a snag: the parking agreement between the city administration and the developers was missing.
According to council rules, legislation must be filed completely before it can be introduced to the entire council. Once bills are introduced, they can be teed up for a public hearing at a subsequent council meeting.
"This is not my choice. It's what we have in our rules," said Council President Tommy Hazouri as he announced the bill would be deferred to the next full council meeting. "The bill is not complete."
Before the deferral, Hazouri and other councilmembers discussed whether the legislation could be introduced and the parking agreement added later.
"It's insufficient notice to the public if all the documents are not there," noted Councilwoman Brenda Priestly Jackson. "It doesn't conform to the council's rules."
Priestly Jackson, Hazouri and other councilmembers seemed taken aback that the legislation was not filed completely.
"[The administration] certainly needs to brush up on their PR skills when introducing major legislation," said Councilman Matt Carlucci, chair of the council's Finance Committee. "This has not been very smooth, and it makes our job more difficult to a very cynical public."
In an interview with First Coast News on Wednesday, Carlucci said the details surrounding how parking will work at the proposed Lot J development are a significant piece of the deal.
"Revenues go with the parking. Who does the revenue go to? We won't know until it's attached to it," he said. "I don't know what the revenue piece says when it comes to the parking agreement. Are the Jaguars getting all that revenue? Are they splitting it with the city? That's an important piece."
Now that the bill has been deferred, it likely won't be brought up for introduction until the next whole council meeting on October 27. If that timeline holds, the first public hearing at the city council would be Nov. 10.
There is an option for Council President Tommy Hazouri to call an emergency special meeting of the council to introduce the bill, but it would have to happen within days.
"We have to do better than this on large pieces of legislation that involve a lot of the public money," Carlucci said.
First Coast News reached out to Mayor Curry's office for a response and received the following statement from Chief of Staff Jordan Elsbury:
“From the announcement of this historic development project, the goal has always been to educate the City Council and public on the merits of the investment and secure successful passage before the end of the calendar year. The lawyers negotiating this deal and the City Council that is evaluating it decided it’s in the best interest of the public to introduce the legislation at a subsequent City Council meeting. Working with Council President Hazouri, who the Mayor co-introduced the legislation with, we are confident that our original goals of educating the citizens of Jacksonville and the successful passage of the agreement before the end of the calendar year are very much in attainable.”
Carlucci said he and Councilwoman Randy Defoor are planning to hold a virtual town hall later in October to allow representatives from the Jaguars to present and the public to ask questions about the project.