Whatever the government touches, turns to shit: City’s investment in BBQ sauce doomed by lofty goals

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Eager for a “made in Jacksonville” success story, the City Council in May 2011 signed off on a $590,000 deal to help a family business make enough Jerome Brown brand barbecue sauce for it to be sold nationwide.

Whatever the government touches, turns to shit: City’s investment in BBQ sauce doomed by lofty goals Exchange-city_investment_problems_43776_c0-150-3540-2214_s885x516

At the time of the vote, the family had not paid its property tax bill; and it was the 10th time in 12 years it was late in paying property taxes for its business. Sometimes the payments were delinquent for more than two years.
That might have been a red flag for city decision-makers considering committing taxpayer dollars to the sauce venture.
But the city’s vetting of the business didn’t dig into the family’s financial history, which included four bankruptcy filings in the 1990s and a string of state Department of Revenue actions that included late payment of $11,461 in sales taxes in 2009, according to court records.
City Council backed the agreement in a 14-3 vote, clearing the way for a $380,000 loan in 2012 followed by a $210,000 cash grant in 2014.
The approval of the deal indirectly helped launch the political career of business co-owner Katrina Brown, who successfully ran for City Council in 2015 in a campaign that portrayed her as a savvy business executive who secured city funding for the sauce plant.
But the business, which she co-owned with her mother, repeatedly was late in making loan payments and paying taxes. It failed to create any of the 56 jobs it pledged in the development agreement, leaving the city with nothing to show for its investment but a breach-of-contract judgment against the business in July. Federal agencies have been doing their own investigation because the sauce plant got a $2.65 million loan backed by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
The failure of the ambitious undertaking shows what can happen when a business makes a lofty sales pitch for city assistance, gets the benefit of the doubt that it can deliver on its promises, and then skates along for years with spotty oversight by the city, according to a Times-Union review of city records, meeting minutes and court documents.
The city agreed to the barbecue sauce deal even after being burned over the years by failed economic development plans like one for The Shipyards, which was the subject of grand jury hearings in the 2000s.

That baffles John Winkler, president of the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County.
“One would have thought there would have been lessons learned from, for example, The Shipyards, that could have been applied to avoid this debacle in the first place,” he said.
Winkler said that after the city did the deal for the sauce plant, “Why did it take years to figure out there was a systemic problem? It really suggests they didn’t want to know.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/21/citys-investment-in-bbq-sauce-doomed-by-lofty-goal/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

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Whatever the government touches, turns to shit: City’s investment in BBQ sauce doomed by lofty goals

Whatever the government touches, turns to shit: City’s investment in BBQ sauce doomed by lofty goals

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