from staff
City Council President-elect Stephen Joost will be installed as Council president Thursday night. The new Council and Mayor-elect Alvin Brown start their four-year terms July 1.
Tonight, Joost will join his 18 fellow Council members for the last full City Council meeting of the Council year and the term.
It also will be the last meeting under the watch of Mayor John Peyton, who will be succeeded by Brown.
Brown, a Democrat, beat Republican Mike Hogan in the general election. Brown has enlisted the assistance of Audrey Moran, a mayoral contender in the first election, as he plans his agenda as mayor.
Joost, CFO of Jacksonville-based Firehouse Subs, is a Republican and was elected to a second term, again without opposition.
He holds the At-Large Group 3 seat.
Joost met with Daily Record reporters Monday morning at his corporate offices.
What’s going to happen at Council? How late is this going to run?
We’re going to pass a lot of stuff, however long it takes to get it done. The pension is the No. 1 issue. Above everything else, that takes the most priority. As long as we get that one issue done, and we pass it, whether the others are done or not, is secondary.
What do you think will happen with that?
I can’t say. I know how I’m planning to vote, I’m going to vote yes, and hopefully everybody else will, too.
Do you think that a lot of the other issues are going to be deferred to the new Council?
I think the EverBank deal will get done. Hopefully the bus station will get done, but like I said, the pension is the main thing, because it’s taken the longest, it’s the most complicated to understand. I’m a CPA and I understand finances fairly well, and it took me over a year just to figure out how the defined benefit plan works, because you have all these nuances.
There are things that just take a while to understand, to get into the nitty-gritty of the details and just feel comfortable at even what you’re talking about. We’ve been negotiating two years — I think that’s the big misconception in the public, like all this is being rushed at the last minute. No, it’s all culminated now, but we’ve been working on it for two years. It’s not like this is a last-minute deal.
The other thing that the public needs to understand is the Police and Fire Pension Board is negotiating on a voluntary basis. It could turn around at any moment and just say, ‘forget it, you guys don’t want to do the deal, you say we’re rushing it.’ I don’t want them to walk away either.
You’re not going to reform the whole thing at one fell swoop.
We didn’t get here overnight and you’re not going to fix it overnight. You’ve got to work on it one step at a time, and this is just a small step in what’s going to be a long process.
The Police and Fire Pension Board is different from the Fraternal Order of Police. They’re two different entities. The Fraternal Order of Police is just negotiating wages.
The Police and Fire Pension Board negotiates pension benefits. Again, that’s where people get confused. What we’re negotiating with the Police and Fire Pension Board are the pension benefits, and the FOP has already agreed that whatever the Police and Fire Pension Board agrees to, they will agree to.
What do you see with the new Council?
I see a diverse background of new people coming in, which I think is good for the community because it brings in all points of view. I’d say on balance, it’s probably going to be more conservative than the last Council.
What I see is the mayor is probably a little more moderate.
When I look at it, I say this is kind of the first inklings of a pushback against what the governor’s doing. From my two cents’ worth, nothing against Mike Hogan or anything, but I think some people saw him as more kind of in the Rick Scott category, and then they saw the education cuts being made.
It’s great to sit there and say we’re going to cut, we’re going to balance the budget. Everybody’s a conservative until their program gets cut. Then they start pushing back, and that’s what we’re seeing.
The programs are getting cut, and now you’re seeing a pushback against the governor, and I think in some ways, they saw Mike in the governor’s camp, especially when he (Scott) came down and endorsed him, and had only like a 29 percent approval rating at that time.
Alvin did a great outreach, especially going to Audrey’s people, and was able to bring in some of the more moderate Republicans.
Unlike prior elections, the Republican base did not consolidate. They split. I think part of that split was the pushback against all the cuts you’re seeing at the state level.
People recognize you have to invest in your community and we’re not going to cut our way out of the problem. Whether it’s private or government, you can only cut so much, and then at some point, you’ve just cut beyond where you can even operate, where you can even function.
Where do you find the $60 million to cut for the coming year?
There are several ways to find the money. My objective as Council president is to make sure, when we make cuts that we try to preserve human capital. What I’m talking about are the two largest items of discretionary spending, the Jacksonville Children’s Commission and the Jacksonville Journey programs.
Everybody will miss the fact that engineering degrees are down, medical degrees are down, mathematics, applied mathematics degrees are way down, all these things that you need to make your country be successful. Public education is one of the fundamental goals of government.
I’ve changed my view on this in my last four years. Having my own children really starts to open your eyes up.
When I was a kid, I don’t think I learned the alphabet until I was about 5. Public education begins at 3 and 4 years old. It doesn’t start at 5 anymore.
We all recognize the fact that we’re in a global economy. We’ve got to compete as a society, not a city. We have to start educating our kids at 3 and 4. Much to the credit of the Children’s Commission, they’ve turned it from a custodial into a learning atmosphere. Instead of everybody getting money like they did in the past, now they’re starting to prioritize the money. And I think that’s been a big first step
To me, going back to what I think our goal is, in the past there has not been any hierarchy in the decision making. It’s been, ‘we’re $40 million short, let’s go find it. Let’s go cut everybody 5 percent or 3 percent.’
Now, we’ve stripped a lot of the fat away, and I think we’re starting to get into the meat and the bone.
The new mayor’s made it perfectly clear he’s not going to raise taxes or fees, we’re going to have to come up with $60 million, and so our task is to cut things and preserve human capital.
What I mean is you can do without a park. I mean, what good is a library if you can’t read? You’ve got 47 percent of the population that’s functionally illiterate right now. We start cutting these reading programs, where are we going to be in 20 years?
When times get better, you can add things back. You can reopen a library, you can do a park, you can have a new soccer field, but when a child doesn’t learn how to read, that’s a lifetime, in all likelihood, that is going to be lost.
We really have to come up with some way how we’re going to prioritize our dollars, when we cut the $60 million.
What every generation has done in the past, and this is going to be a lot of my speech Thursday night, is sacrificed for the next. Now our generation is being called upon to sacrifice. It’s got to be a shared sacrifice.
Until we realize that, everybody’s like, ‘my park, my library, my, my, my, my, my.’ We’ve got to start giving something up and make sure we leave something for our children, so they can learn to read.
All the conservatives sit there and say, ‘this is just a tragedy that we’re not producing all these degrees like we used to.’
If you’re going to be conservative, to be really conservative means you’re going to put your money where your mouth is, and put the money where these kids are going to learn how to read. That ought to be the last thing we cut. Not because it’s the easiest thing to cut.
You’re going to have to persuade your fellow Council members that they need to sacrifice in their districts as well. How easy is that going to be?
It’s not. If it was easy, everybody would do it. That’s where you have leadership. You’ve got to try to lead through example, through persuasion. I think everybody recognizes that you need to sacrifice, and if Council members see other members willing to step up to the plate, they’d be more willing to do so also.
What’s your sacrifice going to be?
I’ve called for everybody to share Council aides. I think as a Council, we have to lead through example. Also there are some positions that have been vacant, and we’re just going to cut them out of the budget. Those are the sacrifices we’re going to make. By the way, we’ve taken prior pay cuts. We’re already sacrificing. We’ve already stepped up to the plate some.
That will save some money. Do you think you’ll be able to find that much throughout the organization to plug that $60 million gap?
We’re going to have to. The mayor steps up and shows leadership because he’s the one that’s proposing the budget. That’s for the mayor to determine. Then we just go through it, and try to make it better.
What sort of relationship will you as Council president have with Mayor-elect Brown and his top advisers?
I think we’re going to have a great relationship. I think our personalities are going to mesh well, because I see him as the theme guy, the broad-based guy. He’s the salesman, he’s the upbeat person, and I’m the CFO. I’ve always been kind of a nuts-and-bolts person anyway, and so I’m the detail guy that’s going to make it happen. I think our personalities are going to work well. I think we’ll be very successful.
You are in private industry. What’s your view on the economy?
We’re in 25 states. I think the problem with the economy is one word: confidence. There’s so much uncertainty out there. People don’t know what’s going to happen, they don’t have any confidence. People are kind of just getting by, and what’s interesting is, companies have more cash than they ever had. There’s like over a trillion dollars on companies’ balance sheets right now. The problem is, they have no confidence in the future, and they’re not willing to invest the money.
What would create that confidence? What signs are the companies looking for to unleash some of that cash?
In order to have confidence, you have to have a stable environment. For example, our company, we could talk about the latest change in medical insurance, you know, ‘Obamacare.‘
That just creates a huge amount of uncertainty because corporations are smart. Successful corporations are run by smart people, and they’re saying, this economy is unsustainable. People are very worried. We don’t know where this deficit’s going to drive our economy. Even though a lot of corporations have good earnings, they’re unwilling to invest their money because they have no confidence.
You have to deal with that, of course on a national basis, but also in relationship with the City. How easy is that?
It’s not. Part of shared sacrifice is having the confidence that you’re doing it for a better tomorrow. You go out and sell that message and say, ‘hey, guess what, let’s have a shared sacrifice and let’s invest in the things we’re going to need to create a better tomorrow, like learning to read, or putting money in the port.’
Can you go without a new park, without a new baseball field, or whatever, in lieu of that, put the money in the port? We’ve got to fix the Mile Point problem. Whether the federal government does it, or we spend the money first and they reimburse us, it’s got to be fixed, because it’s holding the whole port development back right now.
We could create over 10,000 jobs, and the rest of your problems get solved on their own, because 10,000 jobs will lead to 30,000 or 40,000 jobs as an economic multiplier. Now you’ve created all these new jobs, you’ve created demand for new housing, property values will stabilize, your tax base stabilizes, and then you get the money to do these other things. That creates confidence.
You have an entire year, but then again, you have just a year. You mentioned the port. What are some of the other priorities that you would like to see addressed during your year?
Some of the mistakes by Council presidents in the past are that they created too many priorities, because it’s only a year.
If we can balance the budget and leave a lot of the Journey programs and the Children’s Commission programs intact, by the end of this year, when you sit down with the next Council president, and we’ve got a funding source to fix the port, that will have been a huge year. Fixing the port would be monumental.
What sort of funding source do you see available for that?
There are different options, but if the City has to back a bond or something like that, this is what debt is for. You bond the money out, you put it in a project that’s going to produce jobs for the next 20 years, and it’s going to be there over a long time. Debt in and of itself is not bad.
I would back bonding for the port. I would back looking at a best use and practice for money. In the City government, you’ve got all these little silos of cash, with all the little restrictions on them. If the mayor came in and requested, ‘I want to take the handcuffs off of some of these silos and let’s do some bonding for the port,’ I would back that even more.
There are different options, but by the end of the year, my goal would be, here’s how we’re going to solve the problem.
Are you going to be working closely throughout the community?
You have to talk to other leaders in the community that are going to help sway public opinion and get people to buy in to what your view is. So you talk to the chambers, the Rotary Clubs, neighborhood associations. You start Thursday night with my speech, where all the news media is going to be covering it. You just stress the benefits and the logic of it. If you put a plan together that makes sense, people will buy into it. What’s most important is if they don’t agree, at least they can respect where you’re coming from, and there’s some logic to it, then you can move forward.
What are you going to say, what’s your speech Thursday night?
You pretty much just heard it.
Will your mom be there?
You’d better believe it. She’ll be in the front row.
Did you make her get a new hairdo? You suggesting making it a law?
She won’t do it. The mayor already said, if I passed a law requiring her to get a new hairdo, he was going to veto it.
What’s next for you?
After City Council, I’m coming back to Firehouse Subs. That’s what’s next for me.
Are you sure? Have you thought about another race?
So much of it’s negative. People are so disrespectful to their politicians. The 19 of us are more cordial to each other than the people are. Sometimes it’s just disheartening. You do the best you can, and people just belittle you. It’s like a blood sport. Anything they can do to tear you down, and instead of tearing people down, we need to be building people up. I blame part of it even on the news media, you know, ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’
When you look at our community, we’re surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of leaders, people stepping up to the plate every day, volunteering to make their communities better. It you read the news, watch the news every day, you’d think the whole place was falling apart, and it’s not, contrary to what people may read.
What about the fee that has been proposed to channel money to Legal Aid?
At first it seemed like it was pretty simple. With the bad economy, there’s a greater need for legal aid, and one of my first questions was, by raising the fees on the people going through the legal system, are they going to be able to pay for it? The answer was, well, we’ve put in safeguards. I said, OK, well it sounds pretty good. At the last minute, (Chief) Judge (Donald) Moran came in and said, ‘you’re going to make criminals out of these people.’ So now, I’ve got the chief judge coming out. No. 1, I was wondering why did they not know this legislation was coming through, and waited until the last minute to testify. But even given that, now I’ve got the chief judge saying, this is bad, you’re going to make criminals of people that got pulled over for (some) driving (violations).
He says, ‘I’ve got people saying, Judge, give me the 30 days in jail because I can’t pay the fine.’ He says, ‘I’m going to have to start putting people in jail that have no business being there.’
That recalibrates the whole way I was thinking. So I’m going to have to do some more thinking on it, to be quite honest.
Do you have any particular view about incentives and how they are used, how they shouldn’t be used? The current issue is using incentives to provide a rebate to EverBank for creating 200 jobs and another incentive to encourage EverBank to move 1,000 jobs, and create the new ones, from the suburbs to Downtown.
I do. Incentives are like couponing, almost. The first time you do it, it’s great, because it brings in more customers, but if you keep doing it again and again and again and again, you’ve effectively lowered your menu price, and you’re worse off.
You have to look at each situation, and unfortunately so much of what we do at Council is what I call the gray area. On the one hand, everybody agrees that you have a problem with Downtown, and we need people in Downtown, and if we don’t do anything, we’re going to end up looking like a Detroit, and that’s the last thing we want.
So you’re stuck between the rock and the hard place, because you’ve got a bad economy, and on EverBank, I’d do the same thing. They can drive a great deal, because when you’ve got a 26 percent vacancy rate Downtown at an all-time high, they can drive whatever bargain they want when they’ve got a thousand people or 1,200 people, they’re going to relocate to Downtown.
On the one hand, you know we’ve got to do something to get people to move Downtown, and they’re creating new jobs. Weighing all the facts, nobody’s totally right or totally wrong, but weighing all the facts, I have to say, I’m going to vote for the EverBank deal because it brings all these people Downtown.
Do I like the fact that we’ve got to give $2 million-plus away for moving expenses? No. But it’s a sign of the economy. If I had 10 people lined up to go to that building, then I wouldn’t have to do these incentives to get people to move Downtown.
Any comments about the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission and what should happen with the JEDC?
I don’t know what’s going to happen with them. It’s going to be one of those decisions where if we’re going to have to cut them, we’re going to have to cut them, to come up with the $60 million. You have to remember, a lot of the JEDC is just monitoring all the contracts that are in place, where we’ve done these tax incentives. Half of what they do now is just monitoring contracts.
Then there’s the proposed Downtown Community Empowerment Corporation.
I don’t see that happening. I mean, quite honestly, I don’t think right now we need another bureaucracy. The JEDC can focus on Downtown development. We don’t need a separate bureaucracy to do that, with salaries and benefits and everything else. We’re just not in the environment where we can grow government right now.