Guest column: Broadband needs to be part of the city’s infrastructure
Your turn
Infrastructure projects are immensely popular with the American people. In March, President Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan into law with $343 million earmarked for Jacksonville/Duval infrastructure projects. And a substantially larger federal infrastructure-targeted bill is making its way through Congress now.
So why are our City leaders considering a $1 billion 30-year gas tax bill for infrastructure when the federal money is already starting to flow to Jacksonville, signaling that we have entered a new FDR-like era?
And why didn’t the $343 million in federal money available to Jacksonville show up on the City Council radar long before last week?
Guest column: Skyway doesn t have a place downtown
Your turn
These last several weeks have brought focus on the downtown Skyway. It is incomprehensible that we are debating increasing the gas tax to continue to invest money into a system that has never had any significant usage. In 2015, I served on an advisory group convened by JTA to determine what options existed for the Skyway. Nothing discussed by this committee made up of city and business leaders led me to believe the best option was to invest more than $400 million to expand the system.
There is a reason the Skyway was considered a demonstration project and it is time to acknowledge that the project demonstrated that the concept is a failure. Other cities have not implemented similar systems. The JAX Chamber annually visits a city to find projects and learn about polices that further economic development with the goal to replicate these ideas and policies in Jacksonville. The reverse also occurs. Cities visit Jacksonville.
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