Before City Council determines whether Friends of Hemming Park should receive $250,000 to operate next year, it will have to decide whether to give the group $150,000 to finish out this year.
Before even that, though, will come a more daunting question: Should Friends continue running the Downtown park at all? And if not that group, then who should take over?
“That’s a big decision,” said council member Greg Anderson, head of the Special Committee on Hemming Park that meets Wednesday.
It will be a decision members have a more-informed opinion of since the last time Anderson convened a Hemming-related meeting June 10.
Since then, the Council Auditor’s Office released a report and media coverage outlined expenses the nonprofit running the park made thus far in its $1 million contract.
Many on the eight-member special committee said they were surprised by the expenses, which ranged from more than $10,000 in meals and snacks to close to $25,000 for paid musicians in the park.
“I was disappointed in some of the spending patterns,” said council member Anna Lopez Brosche, who noted “a lot of meals” as one of her biggest surprises.
That’s especially true given that food and beverage expenses are heavily reviewed during annual budget sessions.
Council member Scott Wilson said he was bothered by the thousands of taxpayer dollars spent on a trip to Orlando to purchase office furniture at Ikea.
“I don’t think that was what we intended,” said Wilson of the public money.
Overall, he said, he was concerned about the amount of money it’s taking to operate the park. It needs to be “more with less” given the tight budget the city is facing, he said.
Anderson said the auditor’s office will present its report to the committee, which will then allow Friends to respond before decisions are made about moving forward.
For council vice president John Crescimbeni, it would be an extremely hard sell.
“I don’t know if I can go forward with this group,” said Crescimbeni, who was in “complete disbelief” over the expenses detailed in the report. “I’m not sure I can give them a second chance.”
Crescimbeni said he would like to hear what the city’s Parks, Recreation and Community Services Department can do with the park if it were to be the oversight agent.
Council member Sam Newby said the nonprofit has done a “great job” improving the park in terms of how it looks from a year ago. Still, he was bothered by some of the items in the report but doesn’t want to rush to judgment until he hears both sides of the story this week.
Newby will have a closer relationship with Friends. He’s the first council liaison the group has had, though the contract called for one from the start in September 2014.
Several others on the committee also praised the improvements in the park, but still thought more should have been done with the public money.
Anderson said there’s clearly a gap in what council members and the Friends deemed success.
The contract stipulated private fundraising benchmarks and attendance for a predetermined number of programmed events, which Friends met.
There weren’t stipulations within the contract on how the public money could be spent.
Anderson said the gap comes from activity and approachability.
Success, said council member Bill Gulliford, comes when he isn’t told by a man that he would never bring his wife or child to the park because of the behavior of some in the park. Swearing, public urination and other acts, Gulliford said, deter people from fully enjoying the public space.
Programming alone, he said, wasn’t the answer and he puts the onus of curbing that on the Friends and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
If the Friends or whoever operates the park can’t fix that, Gulliford suggests pulling out seating and other amenities and simply making it a passive greenspace.
Friends sought $500,000 in Mayor Lenny Curry’s budget for operations in the year ahead.
Curry’s senior staff initially suggested a $250,000 budget with a matching $250,000 should the group raise that amount.
Curry instead gave Friends a flat $250,000.
The decision surprised some of the Hemming committee members, but not necessarily because of the cut.
“I’m surprised he gave them $250,000, to be honest with you,” said council member Danny Becton.
He called the predicament involving the Friends in the past year-plus an “opportunity lost.”
He doesn’t agree with the “entitlement mentality” of the group and said he suggested to Friends early in the contract to do everything they could to be as self-sufficient as possible.
“Don’t have that mentality that to survive, you have to live off the city,” said Becton. “Otherwise, you put yourself at the peril of budgets.”
Becton considers himself a supporter of the group and its mission, “but errors in (Friends’) judgment have not helped.”
“I love the big dreams,” he said, “but you have to start executing your small dreams first.”
Before dreams of any kind are reached, Friends will have to survive the year.
Council has a bill to provide a $150,000 subsidy to help make it through the rest of this fiscal year. It’s another issue Anderson said will be addressed in the first meetings, given the time crunch.
And like other things involving Friends, opinions vary on whether the group should get that funding.
Wilson said he’s ready to hold off and take a step back until he receives more information. Crescimbeni is against providing even the short-term funding unless “radical changes” are made to the group’s board and leadership.
Gulliford is on the other side of the aisle. He said he hopes council approves Friends receiving the $150,000 with conditions on how it’s spent.
The first, Gulliford said, is to pay back almost $75,000 toward a Project for Public Spaces grant the group used to cover operating expenses. The money is intended for a Black Sheep restaurant in the park.
“I want to save us a big black eye,” said Gulliford of the possible ramifications if the money isn’t properly spent.
Anderson said there needs to be a “clear understanding” about the money this year and about the situation in general before council can move forward.
The special committee, he said, can help lead to those decisions.
Brosche said the meetings will provide a valuable opportunity for some of the members to really understand the contract and situation, as many on council weren’t in office when the partnership was created.
Anderson said getting everyone on the same page is vital. That means Friends or another group, the city parks department, Downtown Vision Inc. and others have to determine a solution and make it work.
He’d like the special committee to meet every couple of weeks, although it could be more frequently depending on the issues and conclude by September.
“We can’t wait too long,” he said.
@writerchapman
(904) 356-2466