Some comments from Mayor Donna Deegan on Thursday during her first of 14 community conversations had many people talking about the city’s stadium negotiations with the Jaguars.
“Eighty percent of the people in Jacksonville say they don’t want to spend public money on the stadium, and 80% of the people in Jacksonville say they don’t want to lose the Jaguars,” Deegan said. “And those two things are mutually exclusive, guys. They are. So we will come up with a deal that is the best deal we can come up with for the taxpayers.”
News4JAX spoke with the Mayor’s Office on Friday, which said Deegan was speaking off the cuff during the community meeting about numbers that she remembered.
They referred us to a UNF poll in August of 2022 that found 80% of respondents would not want taxpayer money to go toward a new stadium.
In February of 2023, after the Jaguars made an unexpected playoff run, another UNF poll found that 60% were in opposition to spending taxpayer money for renovations on the current stadium.
News4JAX reached out to the Jaguars for comment. We’re waiting for a response.
But we really want to know what you, the taxpayer, think about what the mayor had to say. Let us know in the form below what you think of the mayor’s statement and the city’s plans for stadium negotiations: