Financial Priorities: Spending on Stadiums vs. Schools

[remc86007]

If you had $100M to spend over the past decade, where would you have spent it and in what way would the impact be better for Jacksonville overall?

My personal easy answer would be into a fixed transit system for downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods to have better access to downtown, the stadium district, and Riverside/San Marco/Springfield as a whole, but for the sake of argument let's assume that without the $100M going to the stadium, we also no longer have the Jags in town.

I'd love it if we had a fixed transit system, but I doubt it would have been worth the money.

If I could allocate $100M over the past decade, I would have started (and created a plan to continue the expansion of) a managed city trust fund that would accumulate money for future use in capital improvements. I believe several resource rich governments have done similar things. The idea would be to allow the fund's investment returns to grow (and be added to from the city budget) over a decade or so until it reached $1 billion (or any other arbitrary goal) at which point 80% of the investment income derived from it each year would be used by the city for capital improvements. The remaining 20%  would be reinvested. This would allow the fund to continue to grow and provide a steady stream of income for the city to use for major projects. It could eventually be used to offset the need to tax, but I believe the total elimination of taxes would have many negative consequences and therefore the money would be better spent on improving transit, funding revitalization efforts, incentive packages and loans for small businesses, tourism marketing efforts, education capital improvements, and arts and cultural programs.

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

If you had $100M to spend over the past decade, where would you have spent it and in what way would the impact be better for Jacksonville overall?

My personal easy answer would be into a fixed transit system for downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods to have better access to downtown, the stadium district, and Riverside/San Marco/Springfield as a whole, but for the sake of argument let's assume that without the $100M going to the stadium, we also no longer have the Jags in town.

I'd love it if we had a fixed transit system, but I doubt it would have been worth the money.

If I could allocate $100M over the past decade, I would have started (and created a plan to continue the expansion of) a managed city trust fund that would accumulate money for future use in capital improvements. I believe several resource rich governments have done similar things. The idea would be to allow the fund's investment returns to grow (and be added to from the city budget) over a decade or so until it reached $1 billion (or any other arbitrary goal) at which point 80% of the investment income derived from it each year would be used by the city for capital improvements. The remaining 20%  would be reinvested. This would allow the fund to continue to grow and provide a steady stream of income for the city to use for major projects. It could eventually be used to offset the need to tax, but I believe the total elimination of taxes would have many negative consequences and therefore the money would be better spent on improving transit, funding revitalization efforts, incentive packages and loans for small businesses, tourism marketing efforts, education capital improvements, and arts and cultural programs.

That's a total non-answer, and forgive me for simplifying this to the N-th degree, but the money used to fund things like the stadium and other tourism based projects is already collected from taxes and (correct me if I'm wrong) should currently be invested until they're ready to fund projects.

What would you actually spend the money on?  The question is based on the typical arguments given by the anti-stadium crowd:  we should invest more in the arts, we should invest into the schools (not permitted BTW, separate pots of money), we should activate more parks (which I agree with BTW, the relative chump change used to fund Hemming was doing wonders, but apparently was in and of itself forcing the city into default), etc. etc. etc....

And I'm not saying that those are bad things, but how does that better Jacksonville as a whole? 

[Tacachale]

If you had $100M to spend over the past decade, where would you have spent it and in what way would the impact be better for Jacksonville overall?

My personal easy answer would be into a fixed transit system for downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods to have better access to downtown, the stadium district, and Riverside/San Marco/Springfield as a whole, but for the sake of argument let's assume that without the $100M going to the stadium, we also no longer have the Jags in town.

I'd love it if we had a fixed transit system, but I doubt it would have been worth the money.

If I could allocate $100M over the past decade, I would have started (and created a plan to continue the expansion of) a managed city trust fund that would accumulate money for future use in capital improvements. I believe several resource rich governments have done similar things. The idea would be to allow the fund's investment returns to grow (and be added to from the city budget) over a decade or so until it reached $1 billion (or any other arbitrary goal) at which point 80% of the investment income derived from it each year would be used by the city for capital improvements. The remaining 20%  would be reinvested. This would allow the fund to continue to grow and provide a steady stream of income for the city to use for major projects. It could eventually be used to offset the need to tax, but I believe the total elimination of taxes would have many negative consequences and therefore the money would be better spent on improving transit, funding revitalization efforts, incentive packages and loans for small businesses, tourism marketing efforts, education capital improvements, and arts and cultural programs.

That's a total non-answer, and forgive me for simplifying this to the N-th degree, but the money used to fund things like the stadium and other tourism based projects is already collected from taxes and (correct me if I'm wrong) should currently be invested until they're ready to fund projects.

What would you actually spend the money on?  The question is based on the typical arguments given by the anti-stadium crowd:  we should invest more in the arts, we should invest into the schools (not permitted BTW, separate pots of money), we should activate more parks (which I agree with BTW, the relative chump change used to fund Hemming was doing wonders, but apparently was in and of itself forcing the city into default), etc. etc. etc....

And I'm not saying that those are bad things, but how does that better Jacksonville as a whole? 

Playing devil's advocate, it would only take a rewriting of some laws to allow bed tax money to be spent on something else. Schools would be tricky, as they have their own property tax allocations, but it could be spent on infrastructure, parks, etc. However, without the Jaguars there would be a lot less bed tax money coming in.

At any rate, I doubt any one project would ever get the widespread public support a stadium and major league team get. Even the "anti-stadium crowd" would never agree on projects. For every 1 anti-stadium Metro Jaxson who would presumably like to see the money go toward something else, there are 20 Mike Hogans who oppose stadium improvements because they oppose nearly any public spending in general, and would rather just slash the city budget instead.

[remc86007]

That's a total non-answer, and forgive me for simplifying this to the N-th degree, but the money used to fund things like the stadium and other tourism based projects is already collected from taxes and (correct me if I'm wrong) should currently be invested until they're ready to fund projects.

What would you actually spend the money on?  The question is based on the typical arguments given by the anti-stadium crowd:  we should invest more in the arts, we should invest into the schools (not permitted BTW, separate pots of money), we should activate more parks (which I agree with BTW, the relative chump change used to fund Hemming was doing wonders, but apparently was in and of itself forcing the city into default), etc. etc. etc....

And I'm not saying that those are bad things, but how does that better Jacksonville as a whole?

I wouldn't say it's a non-answer; I don't personally believe that the city could (or would) have spent the money in a more productive way a decade ago, but if the Jags weren't an option, I would propose creating a substantial capital investment fund (much larger than the current bed tax fund etc.) so that as opportunities arise in the future there would be plenty of money to cover them. If you don't like that answer, see the end of my previous post: "improving transit, funding revitalization efforts, incentive packages and loans for small businesses, tourism marketing efforts, education capital improvements, and arts and cultural programs."

Here are some more (specific) ideas: lay a municipal owned fiber network (and provide gigabit speeds to everyone for a nominal rate), fund significant incentive programs for bringing jobs to the northwest side of town, create a city funded vocational training program, increase funding for programs to combat homelessness, rehab all downtown (city owned) abandoned buildings so that they become financially viable for private redevelopment, install and maintain public restrooms downtown, fund the shipyards environmental remediation, create a light rail system that connects the airport to downtown, build a convention center, create a downtown marina, invest in solar for municipal buildings (if it has a viable ROI), create a municipal owned Jacksonville history museum downtown, build a downtown aquarium, hire more police (and monitor if it helps), give significant incentives to bring JU, UNF, and Florida Coastal downtown, fix any food deserts that exist in the city...