Mayor Alvin Brown stopped short Thursday of saying he would veto legislation to appropriate $8 million for a new Supervisor of Elections Office in LaVilla, but voiced strong opposition to the bill filed by City Council member Clay Yarborough.
“I do not support spending $8 million to build the building,” said Brown.
Brown said he was more supportive of using the Yates Building for a consolidated elections office. The suggestion to use the building, located Downtown at 231 E. Forsyth St., also was established in a Nov. 22 report issued on the matter.
“Either using parts of it or the entire building, but we should be using assets that we already have. The key is looking at what works and what doesn’t work, looking at all the options,” said Brown.
He talked about the new Duval County Courthouse as a reason why he didn’t support a new building.
“I just had to deal with a building that the voters approved for $190 million and that building ended up being $350 million and I am not interested in getting involved in building another government building when we have all these buildings,” Brown said.
He also said there were other priorities in the city rather than building the new facility.
“Arlington needs a lot of work. There is a lot of infrastructure that we need to do,” said Brown.
Yarborough represents District 1, which includes the Arlington area.
Yarborough filed the legislation, which supports building a new consolidated elections facility at 816 W. Union St., which is commonly referred to as the Sax Property. It will be introduced Tuesday to Council.
The elections office currently has two buildings — its main office Downtown at 105 E. Monroe St. and an elections center at the Gateway Mall at 5200-2 Norwood Ave.
The proposed LaVilla building would be at least 65,000 square feet in size and combine the functions of the two existing buildings.
Brown was asked by a reporter Thursday about speculation Yarbrough could run for Supervisor of Elections in the next cycle.
“I had no idea that he had an interest in running. It’s his choice. It is interesting though that he has voted against every spending (legislation) in this City. I can’t imagine why, all of the sudden, he would want to introduce a bill to spend $8 million that generates no revenue,” said Brown.
Yarborough responded in a message this morning about the speculation.
“That is not something I plan to do at this point and I support the project regardless of who the next supervisor of elections is because it saves taxpayers money in the long run versus staying at Gateway and paying more,” Yarborough said.
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