Hemming Park Shocker: Friends of Hemming Out of Money

[whyisjohngalt]

yawn

[tufsu1]

FOHP is a startup, you don't know if you are going to have money for NEXT WEEK, let alone 3 years from now. You don't buy the 3-year warranty, cause you don't know if you will be around in 3 years.

You do when your contract with the City is for 5 years!

[whyisjohngalt]

What if the FoHP breach the contract by not raising stipulated private $?

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

What if the FoHP breach the contract by not raising stipulated private $?

Breach of contract because reading is hard?

Friends' future in the balance

One thing that is fairly certain is the contract will be amended.

There's no question Friends met the terms of the contract.

But the vaguely written contract did not put stipulations on how taxpayer dollars could be spent, nor did it prohibit public money and private dollars from being commingled. (There are specifics attached to how the $100,000 released last month can be used.)

[whyisjohngalt]

Obviously that's not the original RFP.

If you want to read some investigative journalism, instead of paid for shills, read FoHP's spending here: http://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/investigates/action-news-jax-investigates-questionable-spending-by-friends-of-hemming-park/375218952

$22,000 petty cash expense and $1,300 to One Spark as a "service fee"?

[KenFSU]

Come on, guys. Just give our city nice things. At no cost. With immediate success. And a two-week learning curve. And no growing pains. Under extreme micro-management. That are 100% self-sustaining their first year. Is that too much to ask?

Seems like we just need to answer two simple questions:

1) Is Hemming Park a better place now than it was when FHOP took over?
2) Is sustaining or improving Hemming Park, as it is today under FHP, worth the incremental increase in annual expenditures?
- If yes, continue funding FHP, offering support, not micromanagement and "Gotcha!" plays
- If no, determine how much money you are willing to give them for the next 12 months of operation, and determine next steps from there.

Could they keep a tighter leash on finances? Sure. But have they made big strides, under a lot of scrutiny, in the face of obstacles placed in front of them by the city, with Jacksonville's best interests in mind? Absolutely.

[whyisjohngalt]

In the article, Cavin is quoted as saying that this petty cash was to buy alcohol and pay bartenders.

If you're saying it was used to make change, and that the leader of this group didn't know what was going on, then I guess I finally agree with you.

Does that mean I get paid off now, too?

And as far as the value of this park to downtown, I would argue that these funds would be better used developing housing.  It looks like most months they lose more than $40,000 operating this plaza.  Over 5 years that's $2.4 million.......

[HisBuffPVB]

If hat I saw on TV is correct, a 20,000 unexplained with receipts petty cash fund,would not give them another penny from city funds!

[KenFSU]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, I think people are throwing around the terms "city funds" and "taxpayer money" a little bit too loosely in terms of FHOP's expenditures. Friends of Hemming Park is a private entity funded by a combination of earned revenue, sponsorship and grants, and public subsidies from the city of Jacksonville. There's no way of knowing whether that $1,000 sink, for example, or a $500 funeral donation, or salary for the grounds crew, was paid for using privately raised funds or public money. The city didn't stipulate that FHP needed to make an accounting distinction between public and private spending in their contract with FHOP, and now they're retroactively upset about it, and going through the books line item by line item and insinuating that every single questionable purchases were made using taxpayer money.

It's also worth noting that we probably wouldn't even be having this conversation if the city didn't sabotage a $250,000 win-win deal with Community First to build and sponsor a permanent stage at Hemming Park.

Again, not saying FHoP haven't made mistakes. $8,000 in meal expenses is pretty egregious for any startup, let alone established small business. But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. These guys have brought a lot of positive momentum to Hemming. Sit down, communicate stipulations for expenditures before the fact, rather than after, set realistic benchmarks, and see what happens.

[TheCat]

Also, maybe you could type a few pages on your extensive business success.  reading about your great grandparents was real interesting and all, but you must have countless examples of your own acumen given that you know how absolutely everything works.

not really countless. but there is an about page that you can look at.
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/about

[whyisjohngalt]

They average over $40,000 a month loss.  Unless these lunches are over $1,000 / day, that's not the issue.  Neither is the sink.

It's been more than two years and the plans and direction needs to change.  Present something that shows some experience and insight and give the city an opportunity to prioritize.  FoHP isn't currently even close to sustainable and it isn't worth the negative press for downtown to have to do this every quarter.

The spending reminds me of One Spark and it had 3 years to die or change, too.

[whyisjohngalt]

Ouch.

The pension continues to hold the city hostage instead of renegotiating reasonable pension that would allow Jacksonville to move on.

Speaking of moving on, did we ever find out if anybody from MetroJacksonville was taken to lunch by anyone from FoHP?

[dukes_forge]

Speaking of moving on, did we ever find out if anybody from MetroJacksonville was taken to lunch by anyone from FoHP?

Stephen is right though.  He mentioned that he gave them advertising on MetroJax at a big discount, and even if that took a lunch at black sheep, it still saved FoHP money.

I don't think the big deal is the little discrepancies.  By buying a cheaper sink, eating lunch at quizno's, skipping out on the one spark passes, etc, what do you save?  $25000 out of a million dollar budget?  $50000? 

If they were nailing the private matching contributions they said they could get, none of this would be a problem.  As is, it doesn't look like the city is willing to fund the current level of programming at hemming park on it's own.  I like what has been done with the park, but spending $25000 a week on a city block does seem high. 

I'm not sure what average park budgets are though, and Stephen insists this is a deal, so I'd be open to hearing some comparisons.

[dukes_forge]

that seems like a fair enough question, dukes_forge.  Let me track down that answer for you.

And keep in mind that the organization has already raised 400k in private dollars.

$400k is what percent of what they are supposed to have raised by now?  I was under the impression they were falling well short of goals, but haven't followed too closely until this latest imbroglio.

[tufsu1]

And now the city has budgeted them for half of its $500,000 request.


http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=547965

yes and no...the City is incentivizing private funding....if FOHP gets $250k in private funding, they get more City money