Last month, Jacksonville mayor Donna Deegan said regarding negotiations with the Jaguars on a stadium renovation, “I’d like to get this done sooner rather than later.”
It might be later than sooner.
Deegan said this week that a deal is “still months away.”
“We’re not close at this point,” Deegan said, via Hanna Holthaus of the Florida Times-Union. “So hopefully after the next meeting, we’ll start to get a framework, and then hopefully by early spring, we’ll be having a better idea of what we’ve got.”
There have been two meetings to date between the city and the team. They hope to get together again before Thanksgiving.
“I think that our desire on both sides is to get to a yes, and I believe that we’ll get there,” Deegan said, per Holthaus. “At this point, everything, including how we finance and what the stadium looks like and what the amenities are and what is included in the deal, it’s all on the table.”
The one thing that apparently isn’t on the table is not doing a deal. Regardless of whether a stadium proposal on a public ballot would succeed or fail (it would fail, anywhere in the country), the person elected by voters to handle city business seems to be willing to do what the voters would not.
It’s no different than what has happened over the past decade in Buffalo, Nashville, Las Vegas, and Minneapolis. The voters would never go for it. As long as the people the voters voted into office will, the deals get done.
