Proposed Jaguars Stadium, Funding and Community Benefits: David Bauerlein Breaks it Down

[00:00:02] Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike Mikes on Mic, a conversation about politics, government and Jacksonville. With 50 year opinion leaders Mike Hightower, Mike Tolbert, an award winning broadcaster and long time political observer, Mike Miller. Welcome once again to another episode of Mikes on Mic, I'm Mike Miller here in studio.

[00:00:23] My colleagues Mike Hightower, Mike Tolbert are back at their other homes but they're with us today and we're delighted to be doing the show. As we mentioned to you last week, we were going to devote these next three programs on the stadium deal.

[00:00:38] And we have three guests that are lined up for us. Next week Michael Binder is going to be back with us from the University of North Florida. As you've probably read the newest polling and surveying has come out about the stadium as well as a few other items.

[00:00:51] So we're going to talk about that with him next week. Following that this is going to be exciting. I'm really pumped up about this one. Mikes on Mic is going on the road. We're going to be doing our program from Shad Khan's conference room at the stadium

[00:01:08] with Jaguars president Mark Lamping. So that's going to be really interesting. But today we want to kick it off with the one journalist in this city who has covered this from soup to nuts from the beginning and will be there to the very end.

[00:01:22] TU's David Bauerlein, so great to have you back with us again David, thank you so much. Mike, it's great to be here and let me just say I wish Mike Weinstein was here next week because then it could be the Mikes on Mic with Mike.

[00:01:33] So I'm happy to fill in as best I can today. All right well Mike Bauerlein will be joining us then. He'll stay with us. Mike Binder, there you go. Mike's on Mic with Mike Binder, very good.

[00:01:46] As you know the long anticipated decision is nearing now about whether or not Jacksonville investing $775 million in the $1.4 billion stadium of the future that will keep the Jaguars in town for the next 30 years.

[00:02:01] With all that in mind, again we're going to talk about that this week with David Bauerlein. We're delighted to have him with us and Mr. Tolbert why don't you kick it off for us? Well, in thinking about the questions they ask you David, seeing to me the most

[00:02:15] obvious one to start with is how will the city pay for its $775 million investment? What's that plan and where will the money come from and if any what projects in the city that are now on boards for the city will be erased in order to make room for

[00:02:33] that. Yeah, all great questions Mike. So basically they're going to borrow the money and so it'll be from general fund revenue to pay for the actual stadium deal. As far as what projects might be wiped out, you know they have been looking through

[00:02:50] their capital improvement program which is this program of improved construction projects around town to see if anything's redundant or no longer has already been done but still in the books kind of clean up stuff. They have not yet said there's any projects that have previously been approved that

[00:03:09] are not going to be done or that are going to be moved back. I think the real impact will be that's a tremendous amount of money to put onto your books for the borrowing and so what might it squeeze out that you might want to do

[00:03:22] that you're not going to be able to do and so we have to wait and see kind of what the capital improvements program will be next time. So it's borrowing a lot of money.

[00:03:31] They do say that they can free up some borrowing capacity and it's a little bit complicated but there's the better Jacksonville plan that was approved back in 2000. It's supposed to go through the end of 2030. The Curry administration, Lenny Curry's administration, have looked at finding a

[00:03:47] way to pay that off, get that retired faster so you can kick in in 2027 with the half-cent sales tax for pensions paying down that big debt the city has. Now the Deegan administration, Donna Deegan administration said well no let's just

[00:04:03] let the better Jacksonville plan run through the end of 2030. We'll take some projects we were going to borrow money to do. We'll just pay cash for them about $600 million and therefore we have this

[00:04:14] borrowing capacity that we would be able to have freed up to be able to take on this additional debt for paying for the stadium. So I think there's, we'll see if there's another shoe that's going to drop

[00:04:26] and they're going to come in and say you know what there's a lot of projects we promised to do, we're not going to do. I have not gotten a sense yet from what they've been saying that it's going to be

[00:04:34] an either or do the stadium and don't do some approved projects but still there's a lot of things the city wants to do that would not be as feasible to do with taking on this stadium debt.

[00:04:47] Well we haven't heard any of the big other big ticket items like the jail or the other things being delayed or being put on the chopping block in order to be able to afford the $775 million but like you

[00:04:59] said there may be some that are just not all that apparent to us that they could take that money from but that's an awful lot of money to find projects to equal $775 million. I don't see how they're going to be able to do that.

[00:05:12] And the jail right now is not on the capital improvements program. Right. You know so that's one of those things if they want to do it they've got to find the money to add that into the next five years.

[00:05:22] David, during the mayor's campaign candidate Deegan was pretty clear that when she would become mayor she wanted to put the deal together with the Jags that would keep the team here in Jacksonville. Take us back to what she said then tell us how she's done and

[00:05:40] especially having agreed to the deal. She wants to have the deal done by bed may and communicating with public. How is she doing with moving that along? How she's doing with communicating? And give us an update from your perspective how she's doing

[00:05:57] from the time she made the commitment as a candidate and where she is now. Yeah that was she definitely made a commitment during the campaign to seek to get a deal with the Jaguars. She made the case that the Jaguars are important to the future of the city.

[00:06:12] So that was clear from her campaign. She said during the campaign she was going to hire a team of outside experts to come in and help the city. She has done that from the very first town hall she did coming out of the gate after she was elected.

[00:06:27] She got some skeptical questions from people saying I don't want to be paying all this money for a renovated stadium. She said that it was important for the city's future to have it. So she's been very consistent on the rhetoric in terms of selling the deal.

[00:06:44] She obviously has been out did five town hall meetings they call them huddles with Jaguars president Mark Lamping and Mike Weinstein. She's a lead negotiator for the city. So they'd opened up for 30 minutes of questions from the public.

[00:07:01] So she's been I think persuasive in those meetings in terms of addressing questions for the biggest audience is still to come that's the 19 people in that city council but obviously they've been in the loop all along as well. And none of them really ran against the stadium so

[00:07:20] she should have a pretty receptive audience there as well. Did the question of a referendum putting on a referendum did ever come up? Every community meeting someone seems to say what about a referendum and her response has consistently been you know I ran on this.

[00:07:36] You knew what my position was and that's part of leadership is you elect people to make these decisions. So she has said we don't need a referendum Ron Salem, the city council president has said we don't need a referendum.

[00:07:50] There's nobody on city council who's introduced legislation for a referendum. So she's been very consistent that this is what people elect voters, voters elect leaders to do and that she has sort of it's not a mandate.

[00:08:02] She's doing what she told told voters she would when they elected her. Besides that question which I also heard at the huddle that I attended I went to the first one at Mandarin High. You've gone to all of them haven't you?

[00:08:13] What are the other issues that are brought up? Is there are there questions about the surrounding counties and whether they have any skin in the game and if not why not or what could be done to bring them into the fold so

[00:08:25] that they're also a participant in this? Yeah between myself and Hannah Holthaus my colleague covering city hall we've gone to all five of the meetings. Yeah there was some questions I think there was at least one question that came up and Mike Weinstein the lead negotiator for

[00:08:40] the city kind of indicated that he was working on something he might bring forward later where perhaps the county's surrounding could provide some support for if not financial support. In kind stuff. Yeah in kind type of stuff but no there's no no attempt to do

[00:08:57] interlocal agreements agreements with the outside counties and get them to pay a proportion of the cost based on their population in this region. This is it's all in the backs of Duval County taxpayers. Tell us a little bit about Sidley Austin that's the firm that's out of

[00:09:12] Chicago and that was the firm that she brought in to work with Weinstein and others our own general counsel and others to put this agreement apart. Where did put it together I should say where where did this come from? Where did Sidley Austin come from?

[00:09:25] Yeah so there are there a law firm that has done these types of agreements deals on both sides of the table for a number of teams and other franchising cities they were worked on behalf of the state of New York

[00:09:40] when it did a deal with the Buffalo Bills. So a lot of the language you see similarities in the language for instance the non relocation agreement is almost identical to what the non relocation agreement is between the state of New York and the Buffalo Bills.

[00:09:56] So they brought kind of this background institutional knowledge of what the latest deals encompass in having been at the table and kind of sort of what the mainstream is for these type of deals in terms of moving it forward not only locally but ultimately with the NFL because

[00:10:14] NFL owners also have to approve. And that's what I was going to mention in saying that I think one of the benefits of using a firm that has done this in the past with other NFL teams and with other cities is they know what the NFL owners are

[00:10:27] expecting. So I'm sure as they're sitting back and putting together this agreement at least in the back of their heads if not saying it openly and saying no the NFL won't go for that you're going to have to do it this way in

[00:10:39] order to get them to go along with it and they probably have a pretty good pulse on what the other 32 owners would go along with or not go along with right? Right and certainly if the NFL owners have approved a language already in a

[00:10:55] team such as Buffalo which is comparable in some ways to Jacksonville not a huge market team one that requires you know then you would seem likely to say yes to it when it comes from the Jacksonville Jaguars in the city of Jacksonville.

[00:11:09] Yeah I want to go to another subject that's not on the table. I think a lot of people David are probably relieved that what the Sports and Entertainment District like Jay revisited is not in this deal that it was left out not on the table.

[00:11:26] That's six hundred million dollars. Why was it left out and when do you think the Jaguars will bring it back? I don't think it's going to go away. My understanding was left out just because it was such a complex

[00:11:38] undertaking to add that to all the moving parts of doing a stadium deal and the other explanation is that because it is kind of in this community redevelopment area which is set up by state law you know they would not

[00:11:51] have been able to deal exclusively with the Jaguars and reaching an agreement with them and then you would have had some additional steps as far as you know inviting other people to put in proposals. So it would have been cumbersome.

[00:12:03] I mean it's a lot to just negotiate a stadium deal and then layer on top of that this really complicated economic development deal. So it's kind of like let's focus on the stadium. Mayor Deegan has said that she really wants to see a Sports and

[00:12:20] Entertainment District in that area. The Jaguars certainly would. So you know whether that means it's lot J again where you turn a parking lot into entertainment district or maybe there's other ways to skin that cat Mike.

[00:12:35] I mean personally I look at that area and I go well you already have a pretty nice road called A. Philip Randolph Boulevard that stretches from the sports complex into the East Side neighborhood which the city says it wants to redevelop.

[00:12:49] You look at Nashville I mean they don't have a Sports and Entertainment District necessarily they just have music row. Right. You know so maybe there's other ways to bring entertainment and some of those offerings without having to sort of parachute in

[00:13:05] this giant entertainment complex onto a parking lot. But I do think it will come back and you get back to the question Mike you originally asked which is well what is it how does this affect the city's ability to do projects already approved.

[00:13:19] I don't think it necessarily does but you know are you going to do a Sports and Entertainment District. Are you going to do a jail also. Are you going to do all these downtown developments you want to do. Are you going to do a community benefits agreement.

[00:13:31] Are you going to do what the mayor said about Northwest Jacksonville finally getting caught up. Laura Street Trio. Laura Street Trio I mean that's like a humongous amount of cost there so maybe you have. Perspectively it's going to start to narrow the playing field for

[00:13:45] some of these particular. David you sort of touched on it. I'm interested in the 300 million dollars for the community benefit agreement which Mayor Deegan seemed to push from the very beginning. Seems to me that this can really be transformable to the Eastside

[00:14:04] neighborhoods near the stadium as well as downtown as we all know and Mike told us talked about this for a long time. It's parts of those neighborhoods that really do need some help out there. How does the community benefit agreement work who benefits and

[00:14:21] when you think we'll see the results. Yeah I think that's going to be perhaps the most contested part remarkably of this whole agreement. So it's 300 million dollars total 150 million dollars would come from the Jaguars paid out over 30 years five million dollars a year.

[00:14:38] The cities would be 150 million dollars over five years. It would go for things like finishing out the riverfront parks with the Jaguars really like that investment in downtown. It would go towards specifically focus on the Eastside neighborhood which is

[00:14:55] on the other side of the Arlington Expressway from the sports complex. And it would go for some county wide programs and the program outside of the park development would be things like workforce development affordable housing fighting against homelessness.

[00:15:13] And so it is there's no dispute this is the biggest community benefits agreement that any NFL team and host city have ever negotiated. The controversy may be that the city council president Ron Salem has said we're not going to do the community benefits agreement until later.

[00:15:36] And so it will assuming that the stadium deal gets approved the community benefits agreement may be towards the end of the summer even after they go through the whole budget process with city council that the city council votes on it.

[00:15:51] Unless there's a push by council members to say no, we want to do it all together. Let's not bifurbicate these two things. So that will not come up this month certainly the stadium deal might get a vote this month but the community benefits agreement not.

[00:16:09] David you picked up on the mention of President Salem but Councilman Rory Daliman as usual has been very vocal in trying to just kill the community benefit agreement outright. Does he have any support from any other council members? I mean, I would think that that would be something

[00:16:30] that they would want because of quote the name of it community benefit. Can you give us any background where you see that and does Rory have nine other votes to kill it? No, he doesn't. Rory is the only one who's staked out that position so far.

[00:16:50] And Rory's position is basically the Jaguars were willing to do $100 million in their negotiations with Deegan. And Deegan came back and said, if we match 150 million, will you put up 150 million? And the Jaguars said yes, we'll do it that way.

[00:17:07] So Rory seems to be operating on the idea that well, if the city council says no to any city match, the Jaguars will still do 100 million. And maybe they will, maybe they won't, I don't know. This was a business transaction that they did.

[00:17:22] I mean, they put up this money in order to win the support of the mayor on this. So I don't know really how that might play out. The other, the arguments I've heard of, Nick Howlands, the city council finance chairman has basically said,

[00:17:37] they're attractive projects in that community benefits agreement. But we're taking on a lot of projects, a lot of debt. It's better to just do this through the budget process. And let's let the projects in the community benefits agreement compete with all the other needs we have.

[00:17:54] And let's see if they do merit having that as part of a community benefits agreement, which means you won't know really the answer to that till September. There are a number of bills that are part of this, that have you seen them yet?

[00:18:08] I mean, we talked before and we're not quite sure if there are six bills or seven bills. God knows how many, to be honest with you. But when are you and us, when are we going to be able to see what those other bills,

[00:18:19] how they relate to the framework bill? And is council going to vote on those by the end of this month when they haven't even seen them yet? That's a great question. I don't know about how they're going to be able to do that much work in that

[00:18:34] compressed time period, but basically the timetable is that the mayor could file the legislation this week. In which case it gets introduced to city council next Tuesday. Correct. And then they'll have a public hearing on, I think it's June 17th, a special city council meeting on June 17th.

[00:18:57] And then they would vote on it June 25th. So in order to do that timeframe, first of all, the legislation has to be introduced in time to get that going. So far no legislation's been introduced. Right. So we've got draft agreements, that's it.

[00:19:12] And then city council would have to declare a legislative emergency. They would basically have to say, it's so important to get this done by June 25th that we're going to agree to fast track the process and take a vote. I don't know, what's the emergency?

[00:19:27] That's the question they would have to answer. I mean, the only emergency I would think is the October meetings of the NFL. You gotta hit that milestone if you wanna get them to address it before we actually move forward.

[00:19:39] But the question I had and Mike Hightower actually touched on this. If a Rory Diamond or a Nick Holland or anybody else on the city council decided that they were going to introduce amendments to this. Whether it's moving some things out or

[00:19:55] proving other parts of it and everything else. This framework has been agreed to by the Jaguars. So does that mean then that they've gotta take, if those amendments were passed and included in the bill. That means they've gotta go back to the Jaguars and renegotiate that.

[00:20:10] And what if the Jaguars come back and say we can't go for this? Then where are we? I mean first of all there's no way you can hit the 25th of this month if you get that kind of deliberation going back and forth between the Jaguars and city.

[00:20:24] But how is that mechanism going to work? City council puts in an amendment. Then it's gotta go back to the Jaguars. They've gotta look at it. They and their lawyers have to decide whether or not they can live with that.

[00:20:35] Then they say yes, they can or no, they can't. Then it goes back to the city. I just see this thing bouncing back and forth like what could be. And that's only just one bill. We haven't seen what the other six or seven bills are doing.

[00:20:48] Yeah, I think the question would be whether there's amendments that's kind of change things around the edges or something really substantive. Well, if you listen to Rory Diamond, there's gonna be something very substantive. On the community benefits agreement. Yeah, which is part of it.

[00:21:01] That's not gonna come up until- But that's not gonna be part of the framework? That's not gonna be part of the vote that takes place in June. Okay. So, but yeah, what if city council hypothetically were to say look,

[00:21:14] we think that if the Jaguars move anytime within 30 years, they have to pay back every dime that the city paid. That's substantive. Whereas the proposed relocation agreement would be if you move in the first 14 years, you got to pay back everything.

[00:21:29] And then it's a sliding scale down for the second half of the lease. Or another thing, if I can interrupt you, that $5 million a year for 30 years. That $5 million means a lot more this year than it's going to be in 30 years from now. Oh, right.

[00:21:43] So that's something else that they could come back with and say, well, we want the Jaguars to move that up from 30 years to 15 years or something like that.

[00:21:51] So that money actually means more in dollars of the day than it would be if it were spread over those 30 years. They could, yeah, exactly. So there's things like that. And then you're gonna hear the argument, well, this is everything's tied together.

[00:22:05] If you change one thing, you got to change others. And so I've not heard really any at this point big substantive agreements. You know, maybe they haven't seen the legislation yet. Maybe there'll be some amendments to, there's always amendments to kind of strengthen small business participation,

[00:22:23] minority-owned business participation. Yes, JSEP and things like that. Possibly there'll be something like that. I haven't heard anybody say, well, we want to change the cost share and have the Jaguars pay even more.

[00:22:37] Because when you start to get into that territory and really changing the central foundation of the framework, then that would really string things out if there's a majority of council that wants to do that.

[00:22:50] Yeah, you know, David, I would assume that even though council members have not seen all the bills yet, there's got to be a lot of lobbying going on by the city, by the mayor's office and certainly by the Jaguars.

[00:23:06] Is that the case or is everybody sitting silent and standing down until the bills are shown? No, I think they're getting briefed, to put it that way, by meetings with the Jaguars and the administration one on one.

[00:23:21] They do have some draft agreements which could change, but they basically do. If you want to read 92 pages of the stadium development agreement, you can do it. They don't have the formal legislation at this point. So yeah, I think there's a lot that they're looking at.

[00:23:37] In fact, Councilman Rockman Johnson was at one of the committee meetings this week and they were going over the plan for the information session. He was like, when are we going to get to actually make some amendments and changes?

[00:23:50] Like, we've been over this ad nauseum with all the information. You know, give us a chance to dig into the meat of the deal. So I think they're getting lots of lobbying and briefings and all that kind of stuff already, for sure, behind the scenes.

[00:24:03] And I have one final comment, David. If Roy Diamond thinks if the city backs out of the community benefits agreement that Shod Khan is going to put up a hundred million dollars, then he'll do that when peaks fly. That is nonsense.

[00:24:22] Tell us how you feel about this, Mr. Talbert, from your perspective. But I kind of hear you on that. I mean, let's say the City Council, which I think it's a long shot for them to actually vote on it this month.

[00:24:33] Let's say they vote on the stadium deal and put the community benefits agreement off till later. What incentive at that point does Shod Khan and the Jaguars have to do anything with the community benefits agreement? They've got their deal.

[00:24:48] I mean, I don't know if politically they would stake out that position, but just from a standpoint of it just seems kind of bizarre to take the most popular part of this deal, say we're not going to act on it now.

[00:25:00] Do the thing that voters by and large don't like, which is all this money for stadium renovation, and then just leave the hanging out there, the most popular part of the deal, which may or may not get done. Who knows?

[00:25:14] Well, and if you take a look at some of the other I was looking at some of the other markets, Buffalo Common Council, as it's called when the New York was negotiating for the bills, they unanimously adopted a resolution calling for a deal that included team investing in Buffalo neighborhoods.

[00:25:29] They had their own CBA and the same thing happened with Tennessee and the Titans. There's also a CBA there. So the NFL owners are very much used to a big comprehensive bill that does a stadium and has a community community benefits agreement attached to it.

[00:25:46] How are they going to feel if they're going to say, well, where is your CBA, Jacksonville? When are we going to see that? Or would they see it at all if it were taken up separately? Yeah, I don't know what the answer is. That's a rhetorical question.

[00:26:00] Yeah, I don't know if the community benefits agreement, I think the size is that probably is left in large part to the owners themselves. You know, I think Buffalo's got 100 million dollars roughly. Bills are putting in over 30 years. Tennessee's like just under 50 million. Right, 48. So it can vary.

[00:26:19] But yeah, they may want to know where is your community benefits agreement. So that would be ironic if there's more pressure from the NFL owners and city council members to have a community benefit agreement.

[00:26:30] For us to be even thinking about playing with that part of it, to me, is sort of taking some of the glue, the vast majority of the real glue out of this thing that makes it a really community benefit thing. I just think we're playing with fire.

[00:26:46] That's my perspective. Yeah, I think the politics are that's probably the one part of the deal that the mayor can point to and say, look, I really weighed in hard on this. I got the biggest community benefits agreement of any NFL deal in the history of the league.

[00:27:03] And it's the most popular part. And so, you know, maybe that's the part where council doesn't want to give her that win, at least not easily.

[00:27:13] And look, I mean, there could be some, you can make the argument that there are some reasons why you might want to make sure that if you're going to commit to the stuff in the community benefits agreement, the city can afford it without squeezing out other things that may be important needs as well.

[00:27:32] It's going to be an interesting journey, isn't it? I like you, I really wonder whether or not they can put this all together by the end of this month. That seems awfully quick.

[00:27:42] From all from all the things that we've seen reported during this negotiation process, it kind of seems like it was kumbaya around the table with everybody getting along and everybody agreeing we're going to get an agreement. Was it? Did they have any differences?

[00:28:00] Have you heard anything about any falling outs or any big disagreements that could have gotten in the way but did not?

[00:28:07] You know, I haven't heard that there were any like really big sticking points or any kind of, you know, those stuff down on the table and we're walking out this, you know, I don't sense that that was that kind of a negotiation, that it was pretty cordial in terms of moving forward and seeing where there were grounds for agreement.

[00:28:29] So I don't think that was the case.

[00:28:32] I mean, you know, the community benefits agreement, you know, maybe the Jaguars say, look, here's $100 million of, you know, really more than anybody in the NFL team has put up and we're a small market team and the city came back and said, well, we want more.

[00:28:46] And that's where they got to this 150 with $150 million match. You know, they decided pretty early on that they weren't going to do these stadium, personal stadium license seats. That could be contentious.

[00:29:03] You know, that's where, you know, if you're a season ticket holder, you got to pay a big lump sum money just to have the right to buy season tickets for that year and future years. That came off the table pretty quickly.

[00:29:14] Obviously, they thought of a referendum that way. Oh, yeah. That was nothing that was ever part of the negotiations. Yeah, they had a couple of they had some framework of deals that were pretty recent between Buffalo and Tennessee, two other markets that are somewhat comparable to Jacksonville.

[00:29:31] So I think that helped because a lot of ground had already been broken. So I not heard that there were any kind of big blow ups or anything like that that sort of threatened the deal from going forward.

[00:29:45] So that could be that there was we just didn't hear about it, Mike. But so far as I know, there weren't. It seems like so what you're hearing is that Mike used the word come by.

[00:29:59] But so between the city and the mayor's office, things seem to work out because of the lawyer, the legal team they brought in all that. So really where the sticking if there's going to be some sticking points when it gets to the council.

[00:30:14] So that may be where the problems come in or we know it's going to come up from Roy Diamond, at least there. So two out of three is not bad.

[00:30:25] I would not want to be sitting in the council seats on something this major if they're just kind of playing politics with it as opposed to something substantive.

[00:30:36] And now really be putting city, I would think, putting the city council really on the ledge if there is no CBA in that, because a number of those council members who are representing constituencies that were opposed to just the stadium deal,

[00:30:51] but liked the CBA to be involved in it, are going to have a tough choice that they're going to have to make and go back to their constituents and say, we're going to take up the CBA later.

[00:31:00] I'll be in full support of it if it helps our constituents. But I feel that we really have to go ahead with this or we'll never get a CBA even down the pike. And that's the important thing.

[00:31:12] There's only going to be a CBA if there's a Jaguars deal. So if there's no Jaguars deal, there's no 150 million dollars from the Jaguars towards that pot of money. So you tell your constituents if we want the CBA, even though it's not included in the original legislation,

[00:31:29] we won't get it in the future if we don't pass the legislation first. But like David said, once a deal is done, what is the incentives for the Jaguars to put up the money? That doesn't make any sense.

[00:31:42] That's one of the things that I understand that that is a positive thing even by the people who don't want to pay for it. Well, my observation in size and percept,

[00:31:55] it's another shot at something that we have been promising a part of this community for, what, 50 years and we don't deliver on it.

[00:32:03] And I just, you know, when do we start stepping up and follow through on commitments to parts of our community that have always gotten the short? Sure.

[00:32:16] I just, you know, it sounds to me a little bit like we've got city council members who are Republican city councilmen and Democratic city councilmen as opposed to city councilmen.

[00:32:29] And I just think we're walking into a thing if we sit there until certain parts of this community will just wait, we'll come back and address it later. The hour finally comes around.

[00:32:47] You know, at some point, you know, we just got to look ourselves in the air and say, are we doing it for the right thing? Are we doing it or playing politics? To me, it sounds like this should be a damn no brainer. That's my observation.

[00:33:02] Yeah, well, I think I think probably based on the interviews I've done with city council members, not done a survey of all of them. I would think that the stadium development agreement is going to get approved by city council and it may even be a real overwhelming support.

[00:33:16] But to do an emergency, declare it a legislative emergency and put it up for a vote June 25th, you got to get 13 to 19 council members. There may be some who just say like, I'm not ready to vote.

[00:33:27] But there may be some who say, look, you want me to declare an emergency so we can vote on this June 25th while you're holding back the community benefits agreement and taking that up two, three months from now. That's not a you're not getting a yes from me.

[00:33:40] It's going to be tough, but it's going to be interesting to watch. No question about it. Well, Mr. Hightower kind of teased us already about the polling questions regarding the CBA and the stadium.

[00:33:51] And we'll get into all of that next week when Michael Bender is going to be joining us once again from the UNF opinion research lab. So we hope everybody will be in tune for that. David, thank you so much as always for being with us.

[00:34:03] And guys, thank you. Good to see you once again. I'm glad to have you here. And of course, our great thanks goes out to the Jacksonville Historical Society and the Jacksonville History Center for their continued support of Mike's on Mike. Thank you all for joining us this week.

[00:34:17] Catch us on Facebook on our website, Mike's on Mike dot com on Spotify and any other place where you get your your podcasts, any platform. Thank you for joining us. And you all have a good week.

[00:34:27] Mike's on Mike with Mike Tolbert, Mike Hightower and Mike Miller can be found on your favorite podcasting platform, Facebook and YouTube. Visit the website at Mike's on Mike dot com. Join us next time for more conversation with Mike's on Mike.