Great video by Action News. However, they did miss one major issue. They mentioned that since the moratorium expired, only $10k has been generated by the fee. There is a reason for this. If you applied and were approved for a mobility fee waiver when the moratorium was in effect, you have a year to start construction. All in all, nearly $28 million in waivers are floating out there. While we know we've lost $5 million to date, we stand to lose $23 million more by this fall if all projects approved for waivers become reality.
For those who say this is an investment in creating jobs that would not have come if the fee were in place, just how many jobs are you talking about? In most cases, there were development projects coming on line that would have happened regardless of the fee. For example, in the case of 7-11, this quote from our facebook comments is pretty damning:
So to 'create jobs', we gave a $323,571 subsidy to a 7-11 (which coincidently signed a master development agreeement to open 55 stores in North Florida over the next five years and only received two mobility waivers out of the eleven stores they opened during the moratorium) that generates an average annual payroll of $90,000. That's a fantastic return on our taxpayer dollars while libraries close, streetlights get turned off, grass goes un-mowed, parks sit in ruin, we fire police officers and a fire station within this particular mobility zone gets threatened with closure... right?
So if someone is claiming the moratorium of last year created jobs, exactly how many, because several created by 7-11, Wendy's, Waffle House expansions, and the national multi-family building boom most likely aren't result of a Jacksonville specific moratorium. So once you take those out of the equation, what's our ROI on the $5 million already lost and the potential $28 million by the end of this year?
