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A ‘hologram’ message from Mayor Donna Deegan was put on display at the Jacksonville International Airport in December.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Some Jacksonville City Council members were seeing red after hearing the City Council auditor say it appears the cost of “hologram” technology that portrays Mayor Donna Deegan welcoming travelers at Jacksonville International Airport will be financed by building inspection fees collected by the city.
State law puts strict limits on how local government can use building inspection fees by requiring the fees to only go toward activities related to enforcement of the state’s building code, according to state statutes.
Mike Weinstein, chief of staff for Deegan, said the city will be using the technology as a way to improve communication with the public in the building inspection office. The machine can understand questions asked in English, Spanish, French, Japanese and German with plans to expand to Filipino. The image of a person in the 7-foot tall box then gives a verbal answer.
Weinstein said the city chose Jacksonville International Airport as a test site to see how the technology called a Proto Box works before deploying it in the building division.
That explanation didn’t fly with several City Council members who said the airport location is about promoting Deegan.
“I frankly think you ought to send the damn thing back,” City Council Finance Committee Chairman Ron Salem told Weinstein.
Salem said as someone who has observed Jacksonville mayors dating back to Jake Godbold in the 1980s, “I have never seen an administration promoting themselves like this one does. It really bothered me to have that thing at the airport and the way it was used.”
Phillip Perry, a spokesman for Deegan, said Wednesday that airports around the country typically have welcoming messages from their mayors. He pointed out that during Lenny Curry’s time as mayor, the city paid for billboards in four cities that featured Curry inviting people to move to Jacksonville.
“She is the chief executive of Jacksonville and it’s completely appropriate for her to welcome visitors to our city,” Perry said. “Were comments like his made when the previous administration ran billboards in cities outside of Jacksonville? Of course not.”
Rory Diamond criticizes ‘HoloDonna’ as wasteful spending
City Council member Rory Diamond, who calls the technology at the airport “HoloDonna,” said the Proto Box at the airport has nothing to do with improving the permitting process.
“Are we expecting Japanese developers to be at the airport looking for answers to permitting questions?” he asked Weinstein.
“I’m not sure who we expect, but basically the prototype that is put at the airport wasn’t put there for the permitting effort,” Weinstein said. “It was put there to experiment with the technology, the software and the system.”
He said the city gets the additional benefit at the airport site of using the technology to welcome travelers to Jacksonville.
“And it just happened to be the mayor and it just happened to be really good self-promotion (for Deegan),” Diamond said. “That’s all just coincidence.”
“Well, I think they were going to ask you, but they decided to ask the mayor,” Weinstein said.
Diamond said Deegan is “much better-looking than me” but the city should pull the plug on the exhibit.
“Mr. Weinstein, God bless you for standing up there and trying to defend this god-awful boondoggle,” Diamond said. “It’s terrible. It’s a bad look to spend this kind of money when we’re strapped for cash.”
Weinstein said the building inspection fees have grown to about $24 million in reserves and can only be used for specific purposes, including educating the public about the permitting process.
City Council auditor questions legality of using building fees
City Auditor Kim Taylor her office posed questions to the administration on Dec. 19 because the city’s new release for the hologram-style box said the city’s JaxEPICS (Jacksonville Enterprise Permitting, Inspections and Compliance System) is sponsoring it. JaxEPICS is funded by building inspection fees.
Taylor said her office had tracked down about $75,000 in purchase orders for setting up the technology. She said the city has not yet paid the invoices and her office questions whether the city can legally use building inspection fees to pay those costs.
“The statute is very specific on how those dollars can be used so we’re always very careful during the budget process that the dollars are used appropriately,” she said.
Weinstein said JaxEPICS is a years-long effort to upgrade the permitting process and has gotten millions of dollars of support in city budgets over the years.
“This is just the first attempt at what they have all along anticipated Proto Boxes being used for education and training,” he said.
Finance Committee members Raul Arias and Nick Howland said the fees shouldn’t go toward the Proto Box at the airport.
“Even if you’re testing it out, it should be tested out for the intended purpose, not for something completely different,” Arias said.
Howland said if the technology is actually to improve the building division, the Deegan administration should immediately move it out of the airport so “there’s no longer any perception of a violation of the state law.”
Perry said the city has a six-month agreement with the Jacksonville Aviation Authority for the Proto Box at the airport.
He said the city will use building inspection fee money for it and it is a legally justifiable use of those fee collections.
He said the Building Inspection Division provided $8.9 million to the Information Technology Division to “improve the permitting process, cover development costs related to the JaxEPICS permitting system and test new technology that can be used for those purposes.”
“This is a minor pilot in the multi-year communications plan and an incredibly small line-item in a multimillion budget for promoting the city’s permitting efforts,” he said. “The fixation on it is missing the forest for the trees.”
He said the city plans to use the hologram box for promoting other city services in the planning department, permitting efforts, tourism promotion “and more.”
“We’ll continue to lead the way in promoting Jacksonville as a tech hub that is attracting leading companies in the industries of the future,” he said.
Diamond said the technology is nothing to brag about and people could have seen the same thing a decade ago at theme parks such as Epcot.
This story was first published by The Florida Times-Union.