JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Jacksonville Transportation Authority is facing more than $15 million in unpaid bills as of June, raising new questions about the agency\u2019s financial stability.<\/p>\n
Action News Jax Investigates reviewed JTA\u2019s accounts payable records, which show the agency\u2019s outstanding debt increased from $11.8 million in January to more than $15 million by the end of June. More than $4.6 million of that total is now more than 60 days past due.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n JTA\u2019s largest outstanding bill is more than $3.4 million owed to MV Contract Transportation, which provides transportation services for eligible Connexion customers.<\/p>\n Jacksonville City Councilmember Rory Diamond, the council\u2019s liaison to JTA, said the agency is facing a structural deficit and needs to cut spending.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cJTA\u2019s in a structural deficit right now and not getting enough sales tax money in. Not paying our bills. That\u2019s just not going to work,\u201d Diamond said.<\/p>\n Diamond is calling for JTA to end its autonomous vehicle program, known as NAVI, which was designed to replace the downtown Skyway system and expand service through neighborhoods including Brooklyn, Riverside, San Marco and Springfield.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n The project was expected to have a capital cost of at least $400 million.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one\u2019s riding it. It\u2019s a boondoggle to begin with. Look, you can spend extra money when you\u2019ve got it. We\u2019re in a deficit now,\u201d Diamond said.<\/p>\n Action News Jax reached out to JTA leaders during Wednesday\u2019s board meeting for comment about the debt issue, but the meeting schedule didn\u2019t allow time for our questions. We\u2019re still waiting on a statement from JTA.<\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Jacksonville Transportation Authority is facing more than $15 million in unpaid bills as of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":977189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[15619,13030,248025,5229,1121,3188,723,7310,82820,98098,18708,425,388693,269639,27607,13824,107853,10427,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,255711],"class_list":["post-977188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news_jack","tag-action_news_jacks","tag-action_newshack","tag-america","tag-brooklyn","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville_city_council","tag-jacksonville_transportation_authority","tag-jta","tag-local","tag-mv_contract_transportation","tag-nai","tag-riverside","tag-rory_diamond","tag-san_marco","tag-springfield","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-yona_gavino"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117029889973453800","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/977189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}