What's happening is related purely to the economy. I had this discussion with someone this morning...in very rough times people are still willing to throw money at our schools, no matter how much of a waste that ends up being, but they are reluctant to spend public money or pay "fees" for anything else, especially public transit.
The irony is that the only thing that has any possibility of being built right now in Jacksonville is apartments. Institutional and other multi-family investors are generally very large fans of transit, density, and walkability as that boosts their potential rental revenue and helps their developments. The complainers must be developers and landholders who have all this land and control all these halted master-planned developments, and they must think that getting rid of the mobility fee will somehow allow them to resume whatever their plans were.
Someone is trying to force the council's hand here. I doubt they would consider repealing it if there were no complainers.
This goes back to a point, as well, that I have made repeatedly on this site. Jacksonville is a very unsophisticated real estate market that lacks deep pockets and cutting edge developers/investors. Developers/owners in Jacksonville would not know what to do or how to react if public transit actually happened down there. The city barely knows what to do. I have heard stories about investors coming into town from larger cities literally mowing over the city, getting practically everything or most of what they wanted...and since no transit is happening, the best developments are cheap sprawl things.
Most of the big guys are exiting or not increasing their investments in smaller-than-top-20 markets in the US, but in the south there are two very notable exceptions where everyone wants to be: Charlotte and Austin. Both cities play above their league and government works really well with the private sector there. For some reason, the big investors can see eye to eye and actually have good talks with city officials in those two cities, but I can tell you people kind of look down on Jacksonville city officials and local investors as unsophisticated, "good ol boys", not as highly educated, etc etc. You would think that would be an advantage, but it actually makes things more difficult. Plus major loan originators and investors like PMCC, AimCo, and Metlife are throwing money at destination cities with walkable streets and density (and current or future transit options). They, along with young professionals and the college educated, prefer vibrant cities where ideas are easily shared and life is more exciting. Jacksonville fits no categories, unfortunately, so it's harder to get institutional financing and harder to land exciting developments that will be filled with wealthier and more upwardly mobile professionals.
