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City Council president: ‘I was pleasantly surprised’ by Jags stadium renovation deal but financing questions remain

Mayor Deegan confident deal will pass city council

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Legends Center on the Northside is where the second community meeting is being held Thursday night to get resident input on the proposal that has the city spending $775 million towards a $1.4 billion stadium renovation project, as part of a 30-lease agreement to keep the Jaguars in Jacksonville.

Community members have been talking about the pros and cons of the deal and in 20 days, the Jacksonville City Council will begin taking the issue up in a series of meetings.

RELATED: Jacksonville activist group comes out against stadium, jail plans, wants millions invested in ‘neglected parts of city’

The plan for the stadium upgrades is very expensive with 55% of the cost coming from Duval County tax dollars.

Council President Ron Salem told News4JAX on Thursday he is hoping to hold a series of special meetings, possibly three a week for the month of June, so they can dissect the deal and vote on it by the end of the month.

Salem was on WJCT’s First Coast Connect hosted by Anne Schindler on Thursday morning and talked about his reaction to the proposal.

“Are you satisfied from a cost-benefit standpoint?” Schindler asked.

“I was pleasantly surprised on the percentages even with the $150 million in maintenance that we’re putting in. It’s 55 city, 45 Jags and frankly, that’s a little bit better than I was expecting in terms of the balance,” Salem said. “The finance part of it, I spoke to our auditors yesterday afternoon. They have some questions about the financing and how it’s going to work. They’re researching it. So it’s hard for me to come in until the auditors can advise me on exactly how it’s going to work.”

Salem said the 19 council members will all have opinions and so will the public and he hopes that will be worked out and the plans can move on.

On Thursday, Mayor Donna Deegan was in the News4JAX studio talking about the plan with anchor Kent Justice on This Week in Jacksonville and how she feels concerning the city council and the thoughts some have already expressed about the community benefit agreement where the city and the Jaguars will both kick in $150 million to benefit some communities and programs in Jacksonville.

RELATED: ‘I wouldn’t support it’: Councilman questions parts of Jaguars stadium deal

“I know I’m excited for council to take a look at this. Obviously, it’s our job to come up with the agreement, it’s their job to edit it and then end up to pass it and I have every belief that they’ll see this and think that it’s a good deal for Jacksonville,” Deegan said. “A few rumblings I’ve heard is they want to talk more about the community benefit agreement and I am certainly happy to defend that and say why I think our entire community deserves to be involved in this, and so I’m hoping they’ll see that but at the end of the day they’ll have to do their due diligence and they don’t even have the actual bill yet because we’re still in, got to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on the agreement.”

It’s hoped that the full agreement will be released soon.


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