You have to be on your toes at all times with this city council and city government.   Here is yet another bill that should never have passed making it through the finance committee and probably headed to the full council for a vote (more letters and phone calls required), but it made it through the finance committee as another of those public-private partnerships which is isn't.  John Cresimbeni was the only vote against it (we need to thank him for remembering the taxpayers and his constituents). 

As I recall, all these public/private partnerships where they give money taken from the residents of Jacksonville, many of whom are unemployed or underemployed, and give the money to very well off organizations for heaven knows what, are supposed to be either going downtown or creating jobs or doing something useful, but apparently this one was just a favor to yet another organization that really didn't need our money to begin with.

This is quoted from the article and below the link is ordinance 126 which covers competitive bids:

"Proponents of the measure said such intersection improvements were of benefit to the general Southside area through traffic relief, but Crescimbeni voiced reservations about the project.

He said the project is not competitively bid and is not an intersection on the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office list of dangerous intersections needing attention.

“If the name of the company was different, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking about this today,” said Crescimbeni.

“This is politics, pure and simple, and I just can’t support. I think if we’re really serious about safety, we have a whole list of intersections that we ought to be talking about. This one isn’t on the list,” he said.

Council member Don Redman is not a member of the Finance Committee but attended the meeting as the district representative and urged his colleagues to support the measure to assist the overall area.

 

Crescimbeni then questioned whether Blue Cross had plans to expand its campus, and if so, would the intersection improvements end up negating any of the fair share payments that would be owed for such an expansion. Blue Cross attorney Brenda Ezell said there were no current plans for expansion."

 

 

THIS SORT OF THING MUST STOP!

ARTICLE HERE:  http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=533768&sea... committee