Let’s Get Back to the Basics at JTA

[Steve]

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/news/2026/nov/05/city-council-member-corner-lot-named-in-latest-jta-subpoena/

Attorney General Third Supoena List is interesting:
Greer Gillis, formerly JTA Chief Development Officer
Rahman Johnson, Council Person
(this is in regards to something with Corner Lot - alluded to it being Artea on the Southbank)

Jessica Shepler, JTA Chief of Public Affairs
Jordan Elsbury, Mayor Curry's former Chief of Staff and now a lobbyist
Michael Junco, Mayor Curry's former Chief of Staff
(this is in regards to Bread and Board, which closed a while back)

They are digging hard......wow.

[tufsu1]

^ Rahman Johnson is till on Council - he is the former council liaison to JTA

[marcuscnelson]

Johnson was a very strong supporter of U2C as well, to the point of being played on screens inside NAVI vehicles:

[Steve]

^ Rahman Johnson is till on Council - he is the former council liaison to JTA

Yea I knew that. Duh lol

[CityLife]

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/news/2026/nov/05/city-council-member-corner-lot-named-in-latest-jta-subpoena/

(this is in regards to something with Corner Lot - alluded to it being Artea on the Southbank)
They are digging hard......wow.

JTA and Corner Lot partnered on the Artea multifamily transit-oriented development on the Downtown Southbank, where the authority and development group signed a 99-year lease adjacent to the Kings Avenue Station of JTA's Skyway overhead tram system. The attorney general's office did not identify if that was the issue at hand with Corner Lot in the subpoena.

The terms of the lease could be viewed as being on the favorable side to Corner Lot. The annual ground lease is $272k, increases 10% every 4 years, and then 2% annually after year 12. The lease was agreed upon in 2021, but payments didn't start until 2025 when the C/O was issued. Inflation is at about 22% since 2021, so $332k is the current equivalent to $272k in 2021. JTA is at risk of getting worked over badly by inflation on the deal. If hyperinflation ever happens, the rent is basically worthless. 

That doesn't mean anything sketchy happened. We all know JTA was great at making bad deals in the Ford years, but it's definitely another thing that makes you scratch your head.

[jaxlongtimer]

Looking at who got subpoenaed, it would be interesting to see if they are looking at any quid pro quos with the Curry administration a la JEA backroom dealing.  Would be surprised if the GOP AG would go after Curry but would be happy to be surprised if so deserved  .

[jaxlongtimer]

The damning testimony continues...

Ex-CFO at JTA says she gave many reports showing agency problems

A former chief financial officer for the Jacksonville Transportation Authority said she was "transparent as Saran Wrap" when she gave information to then-CEO Nat Ford and other top administrators information about the dire state of the agency's finances as the agency headed toward a $40 million budget blowout.

Heather Obora told Jacksonville City Council members on Nov. 2 that she presented an analysis in January to Ford and the rest of the agency's executive leadership team that showed unless JTA made a mid-course correction, it would be "$45 million upside down" when the fiscal year ended Sept. 30.

The JTA board approved $14.2 million in budget cuts in February. Obora said both Ford and the agency's executive leadership team knew that reduction needed to be followed by another $11 million in cuts. It's not clear how many of those additional cuts were made.

Obora, who was CFO from July 2025 to this June, said she gave monthly reports that showed projections of JTA spending exceeding revenues.

"In my professional opinion, the information that was presented to the CEO and to the ELT (executive leadership team) was as transparent as Saran Wrap," Obora told the City Council's Finance Audit and Oversight Select Committee. "They got all the information that they needed to make sound strategic decisions."

The select committee is examining what went wrong with JTA's finances. JTA is laying off up to 200 employees, cutting low-ridership bus routes and reducing frequency of service on others, indefinitely halting Skyway service as of Nov. 2 and doing the same by the end of the year for the NAVI autonomous transit shuttles in downtown.

For the 2025-26 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, JTA spent $181 million and collected $141 million in revenue, resulting in a $40 million deficit. JTA had a nearly $19 million deficit the previous year.

While Obora said she gave top JTA administrators projections for deficit spending, her reports to the City Council Auditor's Office on the agency's finances did not show a forecast anywhere near how the fiscal year turned out.

In a May 15 quarterly report at the halfway point of the fiscal year, Obora showed JTA was on track to end the year with a $2.25 million deficit. Asked about that projection, Obora told the select committee that JTA executives were continuing to look for ways to bring down spending.

After Randall Barnes joined JTA as chief financial officer in July, he submitted a report to the City Council Auditor at the nine-month mark of the fiscal year that showed the agency would end the year with a nearly $32 million deficit. That turned out out to be a $40 million deficit after the full 12 months.

In a May 15 quarterly report at the halfway point of the fiscal year, Obora showed JTA was on track to end the year with a $2.25 million deficit. Asked about that projection, Obora told the select committee that JTA executives were continuing to look for ways to bring down spending.

After Randall Barnes joined JTA as chief financial officer in July, he submitted a report to the City Council Auditor at the nine-month mark of the fiscal year that showed the agency would end the year with a nearly $32 million deficit. That turned out out to be a $40 million deficit after the full 12 months.

Obora said she gave both Ford and executive leadership team members an 18-month projection for cash flow that "showed month after month how our expenses were always going to be over the revenue that we had projected to come in."

Obora said she does not know how much of her financial analysis made its way to JTA board members.

Obara did not give any financial projections during JTA board meeting. She said she did not have "one on one" meetings with board members so she could not say what information they received in those sessions.

Ford left JTA in October for a new job as CEO of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit agency. City Council member Rory Diamond said Ford could appear before the Financial Audit and Oversight Select Committee in January. An exact date has not yet been nailed down.

The select committee's meeting Nov. 2 was aimed at talking to the three chief financial officers who preceded Barnes.

Greg Hayes, who served from March 2017 until September 2023, told the committee that during his tenure, JTA had seven straight years of surpluses totaling more than $135 million.

He was succeeded by Raj Prinath who was chief financial officer for the next two years. Srinath did not accept the committee's invitation to the Nov. 2 meeting. Diamond said Srinath has agreed to come to a future meeting.

Obora said when she became chief financial officer in July 2025 after Srinath left JTA, she quickly found the finances were "a disaster" with reserves drained by $20 million and the agency "in a deficit scenario every month."

JTA then spent another $10.76 million operating NAVI for the fiscal year that ran from October 2025 to September 2026. Obora said if JTA had cut back another service, such as stopping the Skyway and eliminating its operating costs, that could have offset the full-year expense of NAVI in the 2025-26 budget. But that didn't happen "and the revenues were just not there to sustain that."

Obora no longer works for JTA. She was an executive in the procurement division at JTA before and after her tenure as chief financial officer. She was laid off on Sept. 18 when JTA eliminated her position.

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/local/2026/11/04/former-jta-cfo-tells-city-council-about-what-she-saw-in-finances/92579348007/

[thelakelander]

Its clear as day, the NAVI experiment and a refusal to accept its reality as a failure ultimately put them in this hole.