by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Mayor John Peyton wants Jacksonville voters to reconsider their 2000 vote in favor of Florida’s high-speed train.
A majority of Duval County voters supported a constitutional amendment that year that called for the construction of a rail network that would connect Tampa, Orlando and Miami with a 125-mile-per-hour train. Thursday, with state Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher sitting to his right, Peyton said the multi-billion-dollar project wouldn’t benefit Northeast Florida and could take away State funding for local transportation.
“The bullet train, as it’s programmed today, does not benefit this area, this region,” said Peyton. “Here we are talking about major improvements needed in Northeast Florida, and here we have a ballot initiative that would divert untold millions, billions possibly, for a project that benefits very few, particularly no one in Northeast Florida.”
Peyton supports Gov. Jeb Bush’s attempt to use a second ballot-initiative to remove the bullet-train amendment from Florida’s constitution.
State Secretary of Transportation Jose Abreu told Peyton in a June 9 letter that the State had no current plans to extend the train to Jacksonville. The project lacks funding to build the system’s first leg — from Tampa to Orlando — and Abreu said there was no money to even study a Jacksonville extension. Gallagher estimates the project would cost about $17 billion, the governor’s High Speed Rail Authority estimates run about $10 billion less.
Abreu included with his letter a list of Duval County projects that would face “potential deferrals,” if the State is forced to fully fund the project. A trio of Cecil Field projects with a collective $3 million price tag could be delayed along with $14 million for Jacksonville International Airport terminal improvements and $57.7 million to extend Brannan Field/Chafee Road to I-295, according to Abreu.
According to the governor’s office, those delays would be a small part of an enormous toll exacted by the train. In letters to voters, Gallagher said the train could “bankrupt the state.” Gallagher said the project would force cuts in health care and education and could lead to the creation of a state income tax. Included with the letters are two petitions to put an anti-train amendment up for a November vote. The governor needs 489,000 signatures by the end of June to put the initiative on the ballot. So far, more than 50,000 have been collected.
Members of the HSRA said Bush was using inflated numbers and threats of unlikely cuts to scare voters into supporting the amendment. Member Bill Dunn said the federal government would pay for about two-thirds the cost, and said Jacksonville’s high-priority projects would survive.
“The governor’s office is telling people this is going to bankrupt the state; they’re going to have to release prisoners from jail, take the elderly off health care and fire all the teachers. I think it’s safe to say there’s some exaggeration there,” said Dunn. “If they’re telling you they’re going to take away priority projects, you have to ask: Why would they take those first? The priorities at the bottom of the list, those are the ones that are going to be canceled.”