posted
Mar 18, 2009 by Lamar Thames
By LAMAR THAMES
Here’s the deal. Clay County can forget about ever seeing a dime of property taxes being derived from the long-sought outer beltway project. It just isn’t going to happen.
If the roadway is going to be built — and opinions vary whether that should happen — it will have to be with a guarantee that a still-to-be-decided contractor will not have to pay ad valorem taxes to either Duval, Clay or St. Johns counties, where the road will be built.
At least that is the opinion of Rep. Jennifer Carroll, R-Green Cove Springs, who along with Sen. Tony Hill, is pushing legislation to exempt the contractor of the project from paying property taxes, much to the chagrin of many in Clay County.
Carroll said a contractor will build the $2 billion roadway basically free of charge and will even reimburse the state for some of its preliminary studies. Without the sales tax exemption, Carroll said she doesn’t think anyone will be willing to build the beltway and that the state Department of Transportation does not have the money to build it.
“We have been working on this thing for 15 years,” Carroll said. “Finally, all three counties have agreed to it, the bulk of the right of way has been donated and private investors will pay for the rest of the land. It will be a free road to the state.”
If the bill passes, Carroll said construction could begin within a year and could mean up to 35,000 additional jobs in the three-county area.
Now the debate can begin. Do residents of the three counties want the much-needed roadway at any cost? The only thing we can do at this point is write to our other representatives and express our opinions on the issue. If the bill doesn’t pass, the roadway will be scuttled for the foreseeable future.
At one time, I was in favor of the road but I am not so sure any more. It could be an economic boom to Northeast Florida (even without the property taxes) but at what cost? An increase in the rate of our growth once the economy rebounds? Do we really need that? At some point, we have to slow down that growth and this could be one of those ways.
Yes, we need traffic relief in Clay County, but there is disagreement whether the roadway’s chosen route will relieve the congestion on U.S 17 and Blanding Boulevard. Plus, there is the issue of tolls. If the Shands Bridge is closed, it would place an unreasonable burden on those residents must pay tolls to cross the St. Johns River.
The issue is whether the road is built. Not whether the contractor will ever have to pay property taxes. It just won’t happen.
Mike Heemer
3/18/2009
4:26 pm
#225
Lamar;
I’m glad to see that you are having some second thoughts about this Toll Way. A few things keep getting left out of the story every time it appears in mainstream (T/U) news is how much the toll is going to be, how much tax money we are talking about losing, the fact that FDOT is going to be responsible for all major repairs to the bridge and a few others.
Things like 25 of the 39 companies working on this project have a conflict of interest, there won’t be any ‘toll booths’ they will take a picture of your license plate and send you a bill even if you are from out of state.
It is a true statement that FDOT doesn’t have enough money to build the road. What they don’t tell you is that is because FDOT didn’t want the road going where it is. It is too expensive. If ‘locally preferred’ had chosen any other route the beltway (with no tolls) would have been well on its way to being finished. But that would not have opened the southern end of the county to development. Can you say Governors Park and the MU-RP at Reynolds Park?
The other thing they fail to mention is that even as a Toll Road the state Toll Authority can’t build it because it will not meet the financial requirement of self sustainability at year 12.
If the land has been donated I had not heard that. My understanding was that the state could not accept donations for the road. The plan was to buy it at about $77K an acre. The only story I heard of donations was with the understanding that they would get ‘tax credits’ for the land.
If you want to see the documentation on all of this go to MCS and look up a blog called ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Toll Road’. All the links are in there and you can look them over yourself. It is not a pretty picture.
fred catchpole
3/18/2009
6:12 pm
#227
Lamar, too many people have been mislead by the toll road fiasco. Jennifer Carroll is sponsoring the tax exempt status of this foreign builder. Jennifer has lost her way by introducing something that really is not good for the community.
One of the costs to be reimbursed would be the professional study done that showed the beltway was not the most cost efficient nor would it provide superior service to our community.
Shame on the politicians and lobbyists who have kept that study out of the public for their own personal gain.
Shame on the media which has a very short attention span and does not follow up to keep government honest.
Shame on Hill and Jennifer for misleading their constituants.
With 400 school teachers and administrative staff taking the hit, don’t you think it is time for the back door shenanigans be brought to light. I would hope the teachers would rebel and demonstrate at the true culprits who give their buddies lucrative garbage contracts instead of evening the process with proper bidding etc.
The beltway is just a boondoggle we can ill afford especially one our grand kids will be paying for into their 80’s.
Edna Griffith
3/18/2009
8:05 pm
#228
If its a local bill, other legisltors will vote for it as long as there is no objections from those legislators from the districts involved. Key is to contact Clay. Duval and St. Johns County representatives and senators with your objections immediately.
Curt Kinder
3/19/2009
6:32 pm
#229
I’m a longtime foe of this project for a large number of reasons (browse MyClaySun for posts by ‘Engineer’)
This most recent effort to resuscitate the Outer Tollway will amount to nothing less than a catastrophe for education. It would both enable thousands of new educationally cost-intensive houses and strip the school districts of crucial property tax revenue.
Proponents of the Tollway tout its job creation potential. Certainly there will be some high paying jobs associated with its construction, but those will last but a year or so. No large manufacturer or distribution center would subject its trucking supply chain or workers to high tolls as long as there are alternative sites along the region’s free interstate system.
The Tollway is all about providing transportation concurrency to developers and builders so as to enable construction of thousands of new houses in sprawling subdivisions. The county, its schools, and citizens will be left holding the bag of taxes and debt service needed to build all the other infrastructure associated with widespread residential development – hundreds of millions of dollars for new schools, fire protection, police services, water and sewer plants, parks, and local roads.
The Clay County development and building community recently flexed its muscle and connections to shed the transportation impact fees, clearly indicating their desire to shirk their share of the unique and severe impacts their industry creates for us all.
Mike Heemer
3/20/2009
8:07 am
#232
Here’s another problem with this legislation. If you don’t stop to think about this it seems to be an issue only for this road. And that sure seems to be the tack that these people are taking in their news coverage.
The issue is that once it gets passed it will be for the entire state not just locally. People down south and out west need to be paying attention to this too.
The next time it could be their County that is going to lose millions in property taxes. Once the flood gates are opened it will be too late to stop the flow of FDOT going to PPP for roads in this state and everything will be tolls.
Marsha Willoughby
3/20/2009
8:33 am
#233
With no toll booths, what is the expense to collect the toll? They take a picture, send a bill, what if the bill is ignored? Who will be responsible for collecting that toll? A great many people (myself included) will just change the route I use to go to St Augustine which is going to put me on either 17 or 21 alot more to catch the interstate that isn’t a toll road. When there isn’t enough money coming from the toll who is going to make up the difference? I think Jennifer Carroll is misleading alot of people and I fully believe at some point it will be the taxpayer left holding the bag.
Curt Kinder
3/21/2009
8:47 am
#237
A couple followups to the comments made after mine:
1) The bill would apply to / facilitate any FDOT PPP project. A Florida Department of Revenue staff analysis of the bill lists 6 or so statewide. That doc is on the legislature website – dig down into the two parallel (House, Senate) bills
2)Toll collection will mostly be via transponder (SunPass). The system will know where you entered and exited and debit a prepaid account automatically. Transponderless folks will be videotaped and a toll bill sent to the vehicle’s registration address of record. There will almost certainly be a several dollar surcharge for video tolling to encourage users to buy and fund transponders.
Failure to pay will trigger a Uniform Traffic Citation. Ignoring one of those leads to license suspension and an arrest warrant. There have been tolling foulups downstate and nationally costing thousands of innocent drivers hundreds of dollars and / or days off work to straighten out.
3) Financial risk (not enough toll payers) The idea for this project is that risk will fall entirely on the consortium that builds the road. To be assured of getting the $2 Billion back plus a reasonable rate of return is why both the existing free Shands bridge will be demolished and the taxpayer-funded Cecil Commerce Parkway (SR 23 / Brannan Field Road) given over to 75 years of inflation-adjusted tolling.
Tom Platt
3/21/2009
12:00 pm
#238
I commend Curt Kinder (“Engineer”) for his professional observations concerning the proposed Reinhold Expressway (euphemistcally called the “outer beltway”) designed to bring traffic through the 30,000 acres of land owned by the Reinhold Corporation.
This is yet another “turkey” project promoted to benefit one landowner paid for by taxpayers.
Maybe a more honest name for the expressway would be “The Corporate Welfare Memorial Highway?”
fred catchpole
3/22/2009
10:11 am
#239
Why not Clay County, Green Cove, Orange Park, Keystone Heights, Middleburg
By FredCatchpole – Sun, 03/22/2009 – 10:06am
I am curious why the county and cities in this area have not appeared to have sought any of the grants under the HUD Neighborhood Stabilization Program??
The goals of that plan would appear to be helpful to the real estate industry in this area. Jacksonville appears to have received more than 26,000,000.00 in these funds.
Many of the cities in the State are doing the correct and intended use of these funds. They are given so the cities and county can buy abandoned and foreclosed properties at significantly reduced prices taking the non performing loans off the books of lenders. The cities then maintain the properties fix them up and rent them or resale them when the market improves. The grants are not loans and the cities and counties get to use the funds generated from these properties.
Just think if the County received $3,000,000 and then generated 25% of that figure in revenues from those propertie. It might save some of the educational losses.
Some counties and Jacksonville do not appear to be using the funds to stem neighborhood blight but are being controlled politically. I noted the Times Union suggesting that Corrine Brown and Mayor Peyton were controlling the 26,000,000.00.
Proper use of the funds reduce the competitive listings for homes that are being legitimately sold by the owners who are transferring or want to move to other properties. Today those asking prices are diminished by bank owned offerings well below market value. As a result all the properties then suffer decline. With the low absorption rate caused by tighter lending standards reducing the pool of qualified buyers, would it not then be prudent to get the toxic properties out of competition to allow property values to increase.
In addition to taking the toxic properties off the market, it creates jobs. By eliminating these properties then those builders will start selling some of their newer products and again jobs are formed.
So I ask again why did we not get any of those grants? Anyone want to respond as to why, I hope it is not because we have too many politicians who can not look beyond their benefactors to do something good for the entire populace. Mayor Mike why did Green Cove not get any of these moneys since you read these blogs maybe you can enlighten me.
Any of the Commissioners or Orange Park leaders please also weigh in on this question