TU: Jacksonville to participate in IBM Smarter Cities grant to focus on downtown development

Hang on to your wallets guys. These folks may be "free" but I am betting the plan they come up with won't be for the residents and tax payers of Duval County. I would think, right now, we might have bigger problems than trying to fix the downtown (which many may remember has been in the works for well over the 25 years we have lived here...............and so far, they have spent millions and there is nothing much down there and everything looks pretty much the same). The only thing our elected representatives have done is spent a huge amount of money for projects that seem to never materialize or ever be "compete", and they have bought up most of the property downtown, so it is no longer on the tax rolls and the rest of us are kicking in the money to not only make up for tax dollars not coming from the downtown but also for all the so called improvements.

A team of the company's consultants will help craft an action plan - at no cost.

A team of IBM consultants will help Jacksonville, at no cost, create a plan for developing downtown.

Jacksonville was one of eight cities in the country Thursday to receive the IBM Smarter Cities program grant, which will have about six consultants spend approximately three weeks in the city in coming months.

The result, Mayor Alvin Brown said, should be an action plan that his new downtown development agency will put into practice.

“This is not another white paper,” Brown said. “The mayor is excited about it.”

Although IBM sells technological systems that assist in managing traffic, analyzing crime data and providing social services, buying such products is not tied to the grant.

Worth about $400,000, the grant is the first big win for the city’s office of public-private partnerships, which Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida executive Renee Finley is heading up as an executive on loan.

The city’s grant writer, Cherrise Wilks, was in the process of applying for the program when Finley came aboard in December and saw its value.

“We’re at a tipping point when it comes to developing an urban center,” she said. “We need to figure out how to best utilize our assets.”

As part of the application, the city talked about the metrics it would like to see improve, including increased occupancy rates, a larger tax base and more visitation downtown.

“We create a blueprint based on what the city wants to concentrate on,” said Steve Swaim, IBM Jacksonville’s senior location executive.

During their visit here, the consultants will meet with stakeholders and help the government prioritize its needs and examine solutions used by other cities. The process has not been finalized, but there is expected to be some room for public input.

In the past two years, 33 cities — including 13 in the United States — have been selected for the IBM grant program, to which the company has committed $50 million.

Comment by Patricia M. McBride on March 20, 2012 at 6:54am: Thanks Debbie, somehow, I didn't see this as a good thing really. And free always has strings attached. Smarter cities does sound like a catch phrase for more control over people and apparently, it is. The centralized government approach was used by the mayor from day one. I am not saying he is a bad guy because he has made some real effort to reign in things, but he wants total control over everything, and that should never be allowed. I am quite surprised we were accepted for this grant or whatever......................

Comment by Debbie G on March 20, 2012 at 5:30am

It is much more than efficiency that this effort is under way. The smarter cities program implements more micro-management, surveillance, and new pay for use options for the city to curb citizen behavior. The more centralized we allow our local, state, and federal to become the quicker our liberties and freedoms wane through legislative actions. Each and EVERY grant or subsidy has egregious strings attached that are never addressed as our elected officials that approve such are like addicts at the drug abuse center just looking for that quick fix to get them through the "moment of NOW."

This is one of the segments of the IBM smarter cities effort:

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/industry/government/transportation/i...

Transportation Information Management – Enables transport authorities to integrate and analyze multi-model information in real time and develop tools to improve system operational efficiency and provide enhanced traveler information.

Multi-modal Mobility - Adopt customer-centered approaches to improve services, understand customers and integrate service delivery across transport modes.

Integrated Fare Management

Traffic Demand Management - Enables transport authorities to influence customer behavior pattern, optimize revenue streams, and manage aging infrastructure.

Road User Charging (PDF, 1.23MB)
Parking Management

Comment by Patricia M. McBride on March 19, 2012 at 8:10pm: No Amanda, I am not happy with the way things are, but spending more money on a downtown no one goes down to is also not an option. I go there to go to city hall and not often due to the cost of parking your car anywhere downtown. We just had out of town guests who wanted to see the downtown, and we tried to think of some way to plan the 15 minute drive past the convention center, the landing and city hall/hemming plaza and make it feel like more than it was............then we realized we had to drive by all the empty lots .... you know the ones where they drove out small businesses by condemning the buildings or buying them out and leveled the buildings because one of the mayors didn't want people just coming into the downtown maybe for the first time to see the "ugly" buildings. So for as long as I can remember, now we see the "ugly" empty lots which were also taken off the tax rolls. Literally millions of dollars have been spent on the "downtown" and what is down there if anything is worse than it would have been if they had left it alone and in the hands of tax payers. If you think IBM can make our elected officials efficient, I am waiting with baited breath.

Comment by amanda choate on March 17, 2012 at 6:12pm: It is about efficiency Patricia. You use information and technology to make things more efficient. Now we can choose to do nothing but that is not why the citizens of Jacksonville elected Brown. They had doing nothing as an option and voted that option down. If you are happy with the way things are, then don't change. Perhaps there is better uses for your money. That is what this is about. Open your mind.

Comment by amanda choate on March 17, 2012 at 4:51pm: Then failure is the only option.

Comment by Patricia M. McBride on March 17, 2012 at 3:04pm: The government has no money, the state has no money, and the city has no money, and you think taking on an entitlement type "free" program is a good thing for our city, because heah what the heck, it's free even if it means the city will want to spend more money we don't have and the federal government will be spending money on this give away program that we don't have and probably will borrow from China. You truly have moved much further to the left Amanda......................I want smaller and less not bigger and more. No I don't want them spending any more money on the down town. Most of the money they have spent thus far has left us with nothing we can point to and exclaim, this was paid for by our money. Instead, we are still driving by empty lots and partly finished projects including the courthouse and the road in front of it. The city has now moved from paying 17% of the overall tax receips to roughly 3% of the tax receipts and has tons of parking lots and emptly lots, they need to sell them to someone who will develop them.............and not a partnership where they city has no skin in the game except to tell others how to run their businesses as ineffectively and inefficiently as the city runs everything. Getting our "free" resourse (and most of us understand, it isn't free except perhaps for you because money does not come from air and someone is definitely paying for the "free"), simply because they are free when we have no money and plenty of bills is lunacy.

Comment by amanda choate on March 17, 2012 at 11:55am: I say congratulations. If we are not trying to use all available resources, then shame on us. Jax was one of thirty+three cities worldwide chosen. How can a better understanding of ourselves not be useful. Might it require we spend money, yes. But we are always going to spend money, let's be smart.
Congratulations Ms. Wilks and Mayor Brown. Good luck.

TU: Jacksonville to participate in IBM Smarter Cities grant to focus on downtown development

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