The depth and breadth of recommendations to be made by the mayor’s Jacksonville Economic Development task force likely began taking shape as it learned more information Thursday.
The group was formed by Mayor Alvin Brown following a December audit of several JEDC accounts that identified lack of contract verification, compliance and standard operating procedure, among other points. Thursday was the group’s second full meeting.
“If a public company got an audit like this, it would have a new CEO and CFO,” said task force member Robert Miller.
“It’s a case of the system being designed improperly and a lack of training for the people who were guarding the City’s money,” he said.
One example was a maintenance contract for the JEDC’s portion of Cecil Commerce Center. The agreement may have been flawed from the beginning as it was awarded to the lone bidder on the combined grounds and building maintenance Request for Proposals. The audit revealed many failures of oversight and compliance.
“Having a good contract in place can help avoid problems,” said City Council Auditor Kirk Sherman.
The City’s Director of Intra-Governmental Services, attorney James Cole Cartledge, said he might make a fundamental change in that particular contract.
“I’m looking at breaking the Cecil maintenance contract into two pieces,” he said. “We think there are a lot of people who can do the landscaping but not the building maintenance and people who do buildings but not lawn maintenance. We want to encourage competition.”
The dividing of duties in contracts and compliance also was raised by Jack Meeks, a JEDC commissioner.
“People who go out and stir up deals have a different mindset than people who work in compliance,” Meeks said.
Paul Crawford, the acting executive director of the JEDC, said that lack of compliance could be related to the reduction of JEDC staff from more than 40 several years ago to the current fewer than 20.
Crawford said in 2005-06, there were five people on the staff charged with monitoring compliance.
“I’d say the City did the right thing in cutting the JEDC’s budget if they had five people” assigned to compliance, said Sherman.
The task force is next scheduled to meet March 19.
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