Mayor Alvin Brown’s yet-to-be-filed bill to reshape the city’s economic development functions won’t cost taxpayers.
“It’s a straightforward reorg,” said Chris Hand, Brown’s chief of staff.
The moves would shift the Office of Sports and Entertainment from under the Office of Economic Development and elevating it to report directly to the mayor.
The sports and entertainment office would also have oversight of the offices of special events and film and television.
The bill also repeals the Sports and Entertainment board, which oversees a trust fund where City Council and event-related funds are deposited to subsidize expenses for bringing events to town.
Instead, the Sports and Entertainment officer and city’s finance director will make decisions on dispersing those taxpayer dollars.
Oversight will come from the chief financial officer and council auditor, both of whom will review revenue and expenditures when reports are filed no later than 60 days after specific events.
Hand said the decisions streamline the process in the city’s side of a public-private partnership with Gator Bowl Sports and the JAX Chamber. The three combined in late March to announce the Jacksonville Sports Council, the events side of Gator Bowl Sports that will attract sports and events to the area through the private sector.
Council member Matt Schellenberg said Wednesday he is in favor of the private entity’s concept, which would not be dependent on elected officials or be affected by turnover during administration changes.
But, he said, he wants to see how the changes maintain transparent oversight of taxpayer dollars and would want to see expenditures over certain thresholds head to council for approval.
Schellenberg last year led a committee that investigated how the city lost about $700,000 in the Navy-Marine Corps Classic, a collegiate basketball matchup between the University of Florida and Georgetown University in November 2012.
The new sports fund reporting setup would be like that of the city’s Special Events Trust Fund.
Ron Salem has served on the sports board, that oversight agent, for more than a decade. He said discussions about attracting sports events more from the private sector have dated back to Mayor John Peyton’s administration and there “clearly are advantages” to a model that’s been proposed. He said momentum for the decisions ramped up the past six months or so and that while he is sad to some extent, “sometimes change is good.”
While the economic development office would lose the sports functions as well as the Office of Public-Private Partnerships — elevated to join the mayor’s office — it would gain two new offices. The Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship along with the Office of International Trade additions are “both functions so critical to the growth of the Jacksonville economy,” Hand said.
Each will have directors and staff, but Hand said discussion of specifics is premature until council approves the legislation.
Hand said some of the ideas came from council members such as John Crescimbeni, who during the latest reorganization sought to have the economic development office solely concentrate on just that — economic development, without other functions and commitments.
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