Hemming Park Shocker: Friends of Hemming Out of Money

[Murder_me_Rachel]

  This is disheartening and frustrating.

[KenFSU]

tl;dr of the situation:

1) The city set aside $250,000 to fund FHP from April to September.
2) FHP brokered a deal with Community First, where Community First would finance a $250,000 stage in Hemming Park in exchange for naming rights.
3) FHP worked out an arrangement where, instead of the city paying them $250,000 to run through September, the city would pay the $250,000 to build the stage, and Community First would pay FHP $250,000 for operating expenses through September. The plan made sense, as the city would then own the infrastructure improvement flat-out, Community First would get naming rights, and FHP would technically be self-sufficient through September.
4) The city, in typical city fashion, somehow screwed up the naming rights deal and scared Community First off.
5) Without Community First financing their operating expenses in exchange for naming rights, FHP once again needs the $250,000 that the city had already set aside in order to continue operations through September.
6) While this has all been playing out, FHP has avoided asking for any additional funding and has burnt through their war chest. The group only has enough in the coffers to sustain itself for another two weeks.

I'd like to know what happened between the city and Community First that caused the naming rights deal to go south.

Don't know the specifics of FHP's expenditures, but there is no universe where 1) they haven't done a remarkable job in short order turning that block around, 2) the long-term ROI of what they're doing isn't astronomical.

Fix the problem, and get back to work on building that stage and finding a tenet for Snyder Memorial.

[KenFSU]

P.S. Also worth noting that if the City Council doesn't release the $250k to FHP today, all planned projects for the park, including the Black Sheep kiosk, are effectively dead.

[Live_Oak]

Found this when I was looking through the coj public email.

From: Roger Rassman <rogerr@c1cufl.org>
Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Subject: Hemming Park Stage
To: "JSawyer@coj.net" <JSawyer@coj.net>
Cc: Vince Cavin <vince@hemmingpark.org>


Mr. Sawyer,



I understand that the bill 2016-198 is scheduled to go before the full Council for vote on Tuesday, May 24 after passing the Finance Committee on Monday and the Recreation, Community Development, Public Health and Safety Committee yesterday. I am writing to make sure the City of Jacksonville is clear on our position regarding the proposed Hemming Park stage and our prospective naming rights sponsorship of that stage. The discussion at Finance Committee on Monday especially concerns me. As I am sure you recall, the conversation at that meeting included the provision for the City to have the option to cancel the contract after three years and pay us $100,000 instead of honoring the final two years of the agreement. That isn't acceptable to us. As I said on the phone on Friday and have said numerous times, for us to agree to convey to Friends of Hemming (FOHP) a $250,000 lump sum we need a written guarantee that we will receive the full five year sponsorship benefit of that $250,000. The agreement we created with FOHP in late March includes the language we prefer. It appears at this point that bill 2016-198 assumes that upon its passage we will sign the sponsorship agreement and convey $250,000 to FOHP. That won't happen without the aforementioned guarantee.



Thank you for your time and attention.



Roger





Roger G. Rassman
Vice President, Marketing
Community First Credit Union
Love Where You Bank
rogerr@c1cufl.org  www.CommunityFirstFL.org

So it looks like the city wanted to be able to cancel the deal after 3 years and pay community first back $100k ($50k times 2 years).

Community first wanted a guarantee of 5 years of sponsorship.

Maybe the city thought they could get more money from someone else after 3 years.

[CCMjax]

Hmmm, can they meet in the middle somewhere like normal business negotiations do?

[KenFSU]

Or trust FHP throughout the initial 18-month period without trying to micromanage every transaction.

Community First desperately wanted to invest in the city and help out in the rehabilitation of what is perhaps Jacksonville's most important city block.

They had a quarter of a million dollars in hand to help out Friends of Hemming Park and build a permanent stage that could be used to host more special events and draw more visitors to the park.

And the fucking city goes and ruins it, turning their back on what is basically a free major infrastructure improvement to Hemming because they may want more money for the sponsorship rights of a nonexistent stage in years four and five of the proposed agreement.

FHP had an agreement written with terms that everyone could agree to, that would vastly improve Hemming without spending a dime of taxpayer money (minus the operating costs for FHP already earmarked in the mayor's budget), and the city screwed it up.

Unbelievable.

[KenFSU]

http://player.theplatform.com/p/IfSiAC/bcvO7ry5GnGV

[UNFurbanist]

Not funding FHP would be the dumbest thing the city has done in a whole couple of weeks! It's been a bit of a trend.

[edjax]

They received 100k to keep them in operation through 8/15.  Council will review their books and either will give them more money at that time in conjunction that is proposed in the new annual budget.

[TheCat]

Not funding FHP would be the dumbest thing the city has done in a whole couple of weeks! It's been a bit of a trend.

Ha!

[mtraininjax]

They received 100k to keep them in operation through 8/15.  Council will review their books and either will give them more money at that time in conjunction that is proposed in the new annual budget.

How does Cavin "leak the news that the FHP only has a couple of weeks of funds left.....to a reporter" then go in front of CC and ask for more funds? Both he and Dr. Wood deserved the grilling tonight. If Community First does not come through with funds or they do not raise enough to be self-sufficient, you can bet John Cresembini and others, who publicly shamed both Cavin and Wood, will not be so kind in the future.

Classic Cavin: "This will carry us through the next four months. Then we have some events planned, which should bring additional funding," Cavin said. "I'm sorry if we didn't disclose earlier on. We'll do a better job in the future. I promise you that."

http://www.news4jax.com/news/local/jacksonville/council-committee-slashes-friends-of-hemming-park-funding-request

"There is something wrong, and it needs to be fixed," Crescimbeni said. "We can't keep throwing money over there without a solution."

Tick tock, tick tock....

[Dapperdan]

Or trust FHP throughout the initial 18-month period without trying to micromanage every transaction.

Community First desperately wanted to invest in the city and help out in the rehabilitation of what is perhaps Jacksonville's most important city block.

They had a quarter of a million dollars in hand to help out Friends of Hemming Park and build a permanent stage that could be used to host more special events and draw more visitors to the park.

And the fucking city goes and ruins it, turning their back on what is basically a free major infrastructure improvement to Hemming because they may want more money for the sponsorship rights of a nonexistent stage in years four and five of the proposed agreement.

FHP had an agreement written with terms that everyone could agree to, that would vastly improve Hemming without spending a dime of taxpayer money (minus the operating costs for FHP already earmarked in the mayor's budget), and the city screwed it up.

Unbelievable.

I actually understand the city's position on this. The city wants to work directly with Community First so the deal isn't tied to FHP. I do believe they have been very flaky with their money. Other groups want to come in and do a  better job. They need to be held to the fire. Somehow even the full 250K only gets them through to September. The money needs to be tracked and spent more wisely. No one doubts the results are nice, but the money is just not adding up.

[FRANTZ46]

The city is getting tired throwing money in that tiny little park. Why are they asking for  so much money to maintain that tiny little park anyway? Really don't get it. What the park needs is a few cops to keep those homeless and those bums away

[Dapperdan]

The city is getting tired throwing money in that tiny little park. Why are they asking for  so much money to maintain that tiny little park anyway? Really don't get it. What the park needs is a few cops to keep those homeless and those bums away

More is needed than that. We need a good space that is well programmed. We just need to make sure the money is being used efficiently.

[camarocane]

The city is getting tired throwing money in that tiny little park. Why are they asking for  so much money to maintain that tiny little park anyway? Really don't get it. What the park needs is a few cops to keep those homeless and those bums away

This pot has been stirred a few times.

Would the park be more attractive to a larger group of people without the bums? Yes.
Would the park's success or failure be directly related to the removal of said bums? No.