JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A prominent Jacksonville city council member is calling some of his colleagues “out of touch” as they push for easier access to perks at a time when the council is cutting some critical community programs.
The debate is over a proposed change to how free tickets and perks for events are distributed among councilmembers.
Councilman Ron Salem said he authored the legislation at the request of Council President Kevin Carrico after running into issues getting free tickets to events from Mayor Donna Deegan’s Office.
Salem said it’s only fair the mayor’s office and the city council split the perks evenly. But Councilman Matt Carlucci said the legislation is a contradiction of public service.
”It seems a little out of touch when you cut meals on wheels for seniors by $1.75 million, you cut the healthcare for people who don’t have health insurance, you cut that program out completely. You cut affordable housing out completely, but yet your trying to grab free tickets to ballgames and concerts, to all the venues we have and free parking to get free tickets all to ourselves. I mean, come on, that’s out of touch to me,” Carlucci said.
Carlucci is expressing strong opposition to new legislation drafted by Salem, and pointed to recent painful cuts in social services during the city’s recent budget process.
“We’re supposed to be servicing the people not serving ourselves,” Carlucci said.
The new ordinance would change the way the city distributes free event tickets and VIP perks, like free parking and box seats to Jaguars games that it receives from city-owned venues like EverBank Stadium, Daily’s Place, and the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena.
Currently these perks for concerts, and sporting events are sent to the mayor’s office, which then distributes them at its discretion.
But under the ordinance, authored by Salem, the tickets would be split evenly between the mayor’s office and city council.
”So president Carrico was involved in something with the mayor’s office and aked me to draft legislation,“ Salem said. ”We are co-equal branch of this government so if we can get our share and pass them on to our constituents, and such as well.”
Councilmember Salem said the proposed change is about fairness and giving councilmembers the ability to share tickets with members of the community.
“I know when I was president, I used them to reward people as well, they may be city employees, or others in the community that have done something special, and I’d call them ask them if they want to go to a baseball game a Jag game, something like that,” Salem said.
Critics argue that the timing couldn’t be worse and Carlucci is questioning the transparency regarding how the legislation was introduced.
”I just wonder where he asked him about this, was this a public meeting, a public notice meeting because that’s a discussion about legislation and anytime you talk about legislation, it’s supposed to be in the sunshine. I’m just wondering where this meeting took place," Carlucci said.
We asked Councilman Salem about the question of transparency and how the bill came up.
He gave us a statement that read in part:
“The ticket issue was a policy that was important to the Council President. This matter was handled just like the other policy assignments where the President asks individual Council Members to look into and propose a response - potentially through legislation...I wasn’t directed to achieve a result, I was just asked to look into the Mayor’s new ticket policy. My legislation is my proposed solution to this new policy.”
News4JAX asked for comment about the proposed legislation from the mayor’s office and it said it had no comment.
Council members are expected to discuss the legislation in a meeting in the coming weeks and eventually vote on whether to approve it or not.