Taking care of a matter left unresolved in the city of Jacksonville’s 2024 community benefits agreement with the Jacksonville Jaguars, City Council voted Feb. 10 to set up a structure for distributing $40 million from the deal to the Eastside neighborhood.
Ordinance 2025-0036, which passed 15-1 on Feb. 10, created the Eastside Grants Committee to distribute the funds from within the city’s budget, along with a process for awarding the funding. Council member Rory Diamond voted no. Council President Kevin Carrico and members Terrance Freeman and Reggie Gaffney Jr. were not present for the vote.
In the CBA, the city agreed to provide the funding to the Eastside over seven years to fund affordable housing, workforce housing, economic development and homelessness services to the city’s Eastside neighborhood. The Jaguars are committed to spend $2.5 million in the Eastside annually for the next 30 years.
The agreement was connected to the city’s $1.45 billion deal with the Jaguars to transform EverBank Stadium into the team’s “Stadium of the Future.”
After the city’s Office of the Inspector General warned Council members that their original plan to create a nonprofit to disburse the funds could create opportunities for waste, fraud and abuse, two Council committees voted to recommend a proposal for the city to disburse the funding itself through a committee with members chosen by the mayor, Council president and Jaguars.
That proposal, introduced by Council member Ron Salem, was the subject of the Feb. 10 vote.
“I think it’s a very good agreement because there’s supervision, and we’ll make sure the dollars go to where they should go in this community,” Salem said. “We’re going to have a beautiful stadium in two years and we want a neighborhood next to it that looks the same way.”
“A lot of great work has been done,” said Council member Jimmy Peluso, whose District 7 includes most of the Eastside. “Now, the time to do more work is about to begin. This new board is going to do a ton for the community.”
“[By] pouring money back into that community, it will not look the same as it looks now,” said member Ju’Coby Pittman, whose District 10 includes the northern end of the neighborhood.
The Jaguars, in a statement after the Council Finance Committee approved the Eastside Grants Committee legislation, said its contributions would begin after completion of the stadium, targeted for August 2028.
“We have not defined how that funding will be distributed but we remain firmly committed to investing in the Outeast neighborhood, riverfront parks, youth sports and homelessness,” the statement read.
Committee to distribute funds
Under the legislation, the committee will request an annual funding appropriation from the city for Eastside grants and review grant applications. The city’s CBA funding will vary year-by-year based on the committee’s request.
Four members of the committee will be appointed by the Council president and approved by Council, four members will be appointed by the mayor and approved by Council, and one member will be an employee of the Jaguars.
Committee members will review the needs of the Eastside, recommend the selection process for grant recipients, review and score grant applications, and participate in on-site evaluation of grant recipients.
No more than three of the appointees may come from the same neighborhood of the five in the Eastside: Campbells Addition, Fairfield, Longbranch, Oakland and Phoenix. The legislation recommends that members be from the Eastside and have experience in affordable housing, workforce housing, economic development and homelessness services.
Committee members will serve staggered two-year terms. The Council president will annually appoint a nonvoting Council liaison to the committee.
The committee will be aided by a manager from the Grants and Contract Compliance Division of the city’s Finance Department.
Council flips decision made by special committee
The Council’s legislation evolved from a proposal developed by the Special Committee on the Community Benefits Agreement 2.0. That committee recommended Council create a 501(c)(3) outside of the city offices, which would distribute funds from the city, the Jaguars and other private donations.
After the city’s inspector general told Council members the 501(c)(3) created potential problems, members changed their funding structure to remain within the city’s control.
The inspector general, Matthew Lascell, did not provide specific examples of mismanagement.
“I looked at this as a potential for having the (waste, fraud and abuse), where when you lose control or oversight of the dollars, sometimes bad actors do bad things,” Lascell said about the nonprofit model. “I’m not saying that that’s the case here. I just would like something in place where we have a little more control.”
Although Council approved the revised plan with little discussion on Feb. 10, the issue had been debated at length in committee hearings.
Diamond, who did not explain his no vote during the Council meeting, said during a committee meeting that he was “against the CBA entirely.”
“I was against it during the entire process, during the negotiation,” he said. “I think it’s just a giveaway, taking money out of the pockets of the hard-working people in my district and giving it to somebody else, and I’m fully against it.”