Council and developers want to change the mobility plan again?

[Jumpinjack]

Actually, there was before and probably will be again an attempt to buy off the bike advocates.

Putting down a line of paint on a road with no connection to anything is easy - and cheap. The places where bicycists and pedestrians suffer the most casualties are the high speed multi-lane highways with no facilities for miles and miles. Or those places where shopping centers, college and school facilities  or industrial manufacturing close to working class homes and apartments promote walking across unsafe roads:  Beach Blvd, Union & State Streets, Moncrief Road.  No strip mall developer, LA Fitness center developer gives a damn about those places. 

[thelakelander]

I figure the average strip mall developer will probably want their mobility fee money to go to improving an intersection, traffic signal or widening something adjacent to their particular piece of property. What I don't know at this point is if the other projects eligible for being selected are those included in the mobility plan that were not identified as priority projects or if Joe Blow developer can pick and choose whatever they see it.  If they can pick and choose, then the question becomes how does their solution rationally fit into the overall goals of the mobility plan, which included a lot more than just mobility and concurrency concerns.

The bike community made their voices known in the last mobility plan debate, so the council president will break them off some cash with the gas tax renewal issue. A larger concern should be the impact of anyone being able to pick and choose whatever they want to do on the urban core. I believe this may have a huge negative impact on transit projects and market rate denser land use development in particular.

If you can't predict when priority transit and road projects will come online, then you'll have a much more difficult time leveraging those transportation investments to spur infill economic development on land where the comp plan was modified to attract growth to underutilized areas of the city. 

Unfortunately, with a significant chuck of the institutional knowledge of the original purpose now working in cities like Tallahassee, Denver and DC, I'm pretty sure what I just explained is the least of the concerns of those in favor of the change.

[L.P. Hovercraft]

Actually, there was before and probably will be again an attempt to buy off the bike advocates.

Putting down a line of paint on a road with no connection to anything is easy - and cheap. The places where bicycists and pedestrians suffer the most casualties are the high speed multi-lane highways with no facilities for miles and miles. Or those places where shopping centers, college and school facilities  or industrial manufacturing close to working class homes and apartments promote walking across unsafe roads:  Beach Blvd, Union & State Streets, Moncrief Road.  No strip mall developer, LA Fitness center developer gives a damn about those places. 

Will the "new and improved" mobility plan include funding for complete streets if the developers are the very ones deciding which public projects actually get funded?  I somehow seem to doubt it...

I think it's a bad deal and should be opposed...I just don't understand why the city would want to relinquish any power it might currently have over developers and privatize decisions that impact public infrastructure.  To mix metaphors, it's selling the farm down the river. 

Or to put it another way, what sort of insight will a private developer that lives in suburban Clay or St. John's county (or even farther away) have regarding public infrastructure or transportation--or the lack thereof--in the urban core of Jacksonville?  Will they even care about such things, or will any non-autocentric projects benefitting the core simply fall by the wayside?

[Bridges]

To mix metaphors, it's selling the farm down the river. 

Or letting the fox design the hen house.

[thelakelander]

I think it's a bad deal and should be opposed...I just don't understand why the city would want to relinquish any power it might currently have over developers and privatize decisions that impact public infrastructure.

The city still has power.  The biggest change is structure. With the modification, a developer has the power to make their own suggestion for how their mobility fee money should be used and council has power to approve or deny those suggestions on case-by-case basis.  In other words, a political Pandora's box is opened.

[jcjohnpaint]

Who knows for sure.  I'm sure those advocating for the change have their reasons.  I just wonder how the change benefits the community and aligns with the community supported visioning process that the mobility plan grew out of. Right now, I just don't know how you can rationally tie any guy's alternative proposal, for what his share of mobility fees should be spent on, with the core purpose of developing the plan in the first place.

They are slowly dismantling the safeguards to make the plan weak.  The biggest thing these corrupt politicians fear is that THE PEOPLE like the plan.  Once a watered down plan is implemented, it will not work... making our corrupt politicians look like fortune tellers.  Our time to vote can't come fast enough. 

[jcjohnpaint]

Somehow I have a feeling the Sleiman Landing proposal is very strategic along with this bill. 

[thelakelander]

^ I doubt it. The way the bill is written, I'd suspect suburban developments where additional roadway infrastructure is needed, to get the project off the ground, are probably the culprits.

For example, say you have 500 to 1000 acres of raw poorly accessible land that you would like to develop. You're going to need new roads to get your project off the ground. My guess is anyone having to build new roads to make their project feasible is probably going to want their mobility money used for that instead of something that might actually relieve traffic off an existing constrained roadway and improve the surrounding community as a whole.

I figure the average strip mall developer will probably want their mobility fee money to go to improving an intersection, traffic signal or widening something adjacent to their particular piece of property. What I don't know at this point is if the other projects eligible for being selected are those included in the mobility plan that were not identified as priority projects or if Joe Blow developer can pick and choose whatever they see it.  If they can pick and choose, then the question becomes how does their solution rationally fit into the overall goals of the mobility plan, which included a lot more than just mobility and concurrency concerns.

[jcjohnpaint]

Right, which is most of what he does.  I can see him using this to try and say he can't get this project off the ground because the Mobility Fee is hurting him in other places. 

[thelakelander]

Doubt it. The mobility fee won't factor into the Landing situation.  The real driver will be the amount of public money thrown into making the numbers work.

[edjax]

Is bishop term limited?

[LetoileLopes]

Yes, Bill Bishop is term limited.

Section 5.041. Limitation of Term of Office.
No person elected for two consecutive full terms as a member of the council shall be eligible for
election as a council member in the next succeeding term. A council term ending on or prior to June 30, 1991, shall not be considered a consecutive term for purposes of this section. (Referendum of
May 21, 1991; Laws of Fla., Ch. 92-341, § 1)

[edjax]

^^ thanks for the info.  I don't know just seems like the biggest people lately backing the demise of the mobility plan (Clark last time around) are term limited.  Perhaps they see it as their last big opportunity to get in the pockets of the big money developers. 

[Mtn_Biker]

Rest assured, the bike community is following this.

[Bridges]

Where is the bill in the process?  I tried to look it up, but couldn't find where it was in committee.  I did see that it appears to have been introduced back in November 13th. 

Also:

Background Information: The mobility fee system enacted by the City in 2011 to replace the former "fair share" system of private developer contributions to road construction and improvement provides that a private developer may only receive credit toward a mobility fee calculation for construction of a transportation improvement if that improvement is already listed on the City's adopted 2030 Mobility Plan.  This bill provides that transportation projects that are not listed on the Mobility Plan, but which nevertheless help to increase overall mobility efficiency within a mobility zone, as demonstrated by professionally accepted standards and criteria, may be used to obtain mobility fee credit upon approval by the City Council.  The amendments regarding mobility fee credit for right-of-way donation being transferrable from one landowner or developer to another within a mobility zone and the requirement that an improvement be dedicated to the City are clarifications of existing practices that are not explicitly stated in the Code.

Is that correct?  I thought the current bill just calculates the fee for the developer, and they have no say in the project that the money funds.  This makes it sound like the developer is at the mercy of what mobility project the money goes to.