by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
When did the City’s problems with its new County Courthouse start? According to Chief Judge Donald Moran, it was when the construction project was included as part of the Better Jacksonville Plan.
The BJP invested $2.25 billion into a massive wave of construction across Jacksonville. The BJP was designed to improve infrastructure and build projects that would improve the local quality of life and spur economic development. The roster of projects included a new baseball park, library and arena.
Those projects are amenities, said Moran, and plans for a new County Courthouse should never have been thrown in with them.
“The Better Jacksonville Plan was supposed to build things that enhance the City. A baseball field, an arena, those things are niceties,” said Moran. “The Courthouse isn’t a nicety, it’s a necessity. It’s the only building that the City is required by law to build.”
Voters approved the BJP in 2000 with its funding mechanism, a half-cent sales tax to fund it. The Plan included a County Courthouse Complex budgeted at $211 million including contingency funds. Later, when the project’s budget ballooned to nearly $300 million, the cost overruns were viewed as a breach of contract with Jacksonville voters. It was one of the strongest arguments in a debate that eventually shut down construction and scrapped the original design.
Now, as the mayor’s office searches for a new design that can be built within budget, Moran is reminding the City not to cut corners on one of its most important buildings.
“If they can’t find the money, they need to say ‘Wait a minute’ and find a park or something we can do without,” said Moran. “We might have to do without something we’d like do have for something that’s our responsibility to build.”
Moran said the County’s judiciary doesn’t care what the building looks like, so long as its functional.
“With columns, without columns, that’s the mayor’s and the City Council’s business. They can build it Plain Jane and we won’t care so long as it’s durable, functional and safe and secure,” he said.