Bipartisan effort in City Council considers independence for the Downtown Investment Authority
The City Council special committee examining the future of downtown will examine making the Downtown Investment Authority independent. City Council members are considering creating an independent Downtown Investment Authority (DIA) with the ability to negotiate and approve development deals. Currently, the DIA requires City Council approval to reach agreements, which is often delayed due to the need for City Council action. Rory Diamond, a Beaches council member, and Jimmy Peluso, a Democrat representing downtown, both agreed on reforming the agency. Changes could include giving the authority an annual budget for incentives and allowing it to prioritize projects as needed, instead of returning to council at the end of negotiations. The DIA already operates like JaxPort or Jacksonville Transportation Authority. Lori Boyer, the CEO of the agency, supports the idea for having its own lawyer for negotiations and suggesting a dedicated Office of General Counsel attorney.
Veröffentlicht : vor 10 Monaten durch Hanna Holthaus in Politics
City Council members crossed the political aisle Monday in support of an independent Downtown Investment Authority with the ability to negotiate and approve development deals.
The time it currently takes for the DIA to reach agreements is made longer by the need for City Council approval — and council members want to know how reforming the DIA and cutting the council role from the process could help.
“By reform, I mean that in the nicest sense which is to say ‘Let’s see what it’s going to look like in the next generation,’” Rory Diamond, the Beaches council member, said at a committee meeting Monday.
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Changes could include giving the authority an annual budget for incentives to prioritize projects as needed, instead of returning to council at the end of negotiations.
Jimmy Peluso, a Democrat, is not an appointed member of the committee, but he represents downtown on the north side of the St. Johns River. He and Diamond, a Republican, often vote in opposition of one another but agreed on the future of the DIA.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Peluso said. “Nineteen council members have very different objectives and goals. It’s very difficult in a consolidated city and county, right, we are so unique in the way we have our government functioning.”
The special committee studying downtown and the effectiveness of the agency will vet the idea over the next few months if Council President-Designate Randy White extends the committee past the summer break.
DIA could operate like JaxPort, JTA, Diamond says
The DIA already is the government agency that decides the strategy for the downtown area’s development, including the future of parks, apartment buildings and restaurants, but City Council currently approves each individual zoning change and most of the incentive packages the authority negotiates.
Three of the deals to be considered in the next few months include $244 million in cash grants, loans and property tax rebates for the Laura Street Trio, Gateway Jax and the Related Group.
To help streamline the process, Diamond suggested making the authority function similarly to the Jacksonville Port Authority or Jacksonville Transportation Authority: an independent board and staff with a budget approved annually by City Council.
The DIA would then have to plan projects in advance within the confines of each budget instead of asking council for the incentive funding for individual projects.
The potential problem, Council member Matt Carlucci said, is that important projects can be unforeseen. Politicians at the time of the DIA’s creation considered making it completely independent but ultimately decided against it, he said.
“Sometimes my policy is to have no policy, and the reason is because sometimes opportunities in politics, opportunities can change in 24 minutes, 24 hours, 24 months, whatever,” Carlucci said Monday. “I want to make sure that we don’t get boxed in because opportunities could come six months from now that we don’t even see.”
Lori Boyer, the CEO of the DIA, said the idea for independence had merits, but she shared Carlucci’s concern.
Additionally, some large-scale projects would still require council involvement because of the investment it would take over time from the city’s general fund and because of the long term tax incentives, Boyer said.
DIA CEO supports authority having its own lawyer for negotiations
Boyer suggested assigning DIA a dedicated Office of General Counsel attorney to help shorten the amount of time between when the DIA agrees to a term sheet with a developer and when council sees a full contract.
The attorney could be part of the negotiations to learn earlier in the process what each side wants to get out of the deal, instead of trying to glean all the information from a term sheet, she said.
“When I was a practicing attorney, I always thought if I could understand what their goal was, and understand what the other side's goal was, it's much easier to get to the finish line,” Boyer said.
She agreed that the current time constraints are a problem for developers and was open to solutions. But, she also said council needed to decide its strategy on tackling the problem as a whole.
Boyer said council could either invest millions upfront into incentive deals for a slew of projects in order to see them come online around the same time and reduce the need for incentives in the future; or, it could parse out the funding over the next few years, meaning development will be slower.
“And if we're going to do the one where ‘let's do it all at once,’ we need more resources because we can't process that many things at one time,” Boyer said.
With the amount of taxpayer spending already being considered — the $775 million in city money for the football stadium renovation, $1 billion new county jail and other big-ticket items — Diamond told the Times-Union some projects will have to wait.
“We've run up every credit card in the next year, so I would love to get a lot of projects done,” Diamond said. “I just don't know that we can rationally do it yet.”
The committee will likely not meet again to discuss the possibility further until after the council break in July.