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Thursday, March 29

First Project Volt, Then Projects Moon and Cart

What in the world is going on with Jax city government that we need code words for potential business development? As a naturally cynical person, I'm going to assume it's because if the names of the companies were disclosed, someone out there might argue against it because of the track record of the company. Or maybe all local governments work in secrecy.


It's just ironic that the same City Council agenda that has a resolution for "Finding Need for Examination of City Govt's Openness, Accessibility & Transparency to its Citizens," there's another for "Auth Economic Dev Agreemt with Project Moon supporting Expansion of the Company's Operations in Jax." 

Project Volt was a huge solar development that has since been scaled back. Project Moon is for some financial whatever business that already exists here and wants government cheese to expand. Project Cart is for some kind of grocery store to relocate jobs here. Moon is the bigger of the two new covert operations, promising 50 jobs. Financial guys in BMWs. They'll make $50,000+ a year, but they won't be you. Instead, you get to help state and local governments kick in $250,000 to make it happen. Actually, that's not as bad as what we would have been willing to pay Amazon to employ a bunch of college grads from schools ranked higher than UNF, so I'm not really complaining.

Corporate incentives will keep the businesses coming to Jax. It won't keep the residents living in Duval County, however, and it's probably just as important to get some residential incentives as corporate ones, but that's another issue. Project Live, perhaps?