Jacksonville City Council President-designate Kevin Carrico, left, and Vice President-designate Nick Howland celebrate after their elections Tuesday night. | Mike Mendenhall, Jacksonville Today
Published on May 29, 2025 at 3:06 pm
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Incoming City Council President Kevin Carrico says Downtown revitalization will be a priority when his one-year term begins July 1, and he wants to start with reforms to the city’s Downtown Investment Authority.
Carrico co-introduced legislation Tuesday night that would require council to confirm the DIA board’s pick to lead the agency and would give city lawmakers the authority to remove the CEO.
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The bill, co-introduced with council member Joe Carlucci, would allow the agency to bypass the Mayor’s Budget Review Committee and submit legislation on incentive deals it negotiates with private real estate developers directly with City Council.
Currently, the DIA CEO has to get approval from the mayor’s office to file bills with council.
“They’re already vetted. They have a board that’s appointed by the mayor, and they have a CEO that’s chosen by that board. They already have their process,” Carrico said. “It’s almost like a committee process. They work the deal, negotiate the deal, they vote on the deal. They should then be able to file that (legislation) with us,”
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Under the legislation, the DIA board’s threshold to approve incentive deals independent of council would be reduced from $18 million to $10 million with an exception held of property tax rebates, known as Recapture Enhanced Value Grants, which would still go to council.
Carrico says that removing the tax rebate piece — which historically are millions to tens of millions of dollars — would allow the DIA to independently approve more incentive deals.
The council president-designate says he expects the changes to speed up vetting and approval of city-backed redevelopment agreements Downtown and give the DIA — the city’s coordinator in attracting private investment on the Northbank and Southbank — more autonomy.
”It’s not a power trip, it’s an accountability thing,” Carrico said during a meeting Thursday of council’s Special Committee on the Future of Downtown.
Some council members, including Jimmy Peluso, whose district includes Downtown, talked about changes to the bill Thursday. Peluso wants the council’s ability to remove the CEO stripped from the bill. He said he worries that could politicize the agency’s CEO position.
“What everyone is jumping on and calling me about is the piece of the legislation where that CEO would then be confirmed by the council and be able to be removed by the council,” Carrico told Jacksonville Today.
“We’re just asking for a trade. We’re going to give you more autonomy. In return, we would like a little accountability.”
Carrico’s push comes as the agency is searching for its next CEO to replace Lori Boyer, who is retiring when her contact expires in mid-June after leading the DIA since 2019.
The board and the executive recruiting firm Jorgensen Pace, contracted by DIA to aid the search, have not released a list of finalists. But Carrico says he will meet with all the candidates who are expected to be interviewed by a DIA panel in early June. If the bill passes, it could give council a say in the next CEO.
“But what’s the vision? Some vision to see what is the end goal? How do we back up from that? How do we use our experience to get to that goal?” Carrico asked. “Obviously, (the CEO candidates) need to know a little bit about the process and have that experience, whether it’s in another market or in this market, but really a visionary person that can comfortably travel around and meet investor groups from around the country that are willing to put resources in Downtown Jacksonville.
“So someone with that kind of a network of individuals that has vision and also has the skill, or at least the intelligence, to hire the right people with the skill to make good decisions and make responsible development happen.”
President and vice president-designate
Carrico’s bill was introduced the same night council members voted 17-1 to select the 42-year-old, second-term Republican as its next president with no other nominees challenging the spot.
Council member Matt Carlucci was the only no vote, and Michael Boylan was absent from the meeting Tuesday.
Nick Howland, an at-large Republican council member and executive director of the veterans suicide prevention nonprofit The Fire Watch, will be vice president in the 2025-26 council year. He was selected in an 18-0 vote.
Carrico won a special election in 2020 to represent District 4 and was elected for a full term in 2023. He’s currently vice president of strategic initiatives for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida and previously was vice president of operations at the Clara White Mission.
He says public safety and youth development are two of his other key priorities.
“We have to keep people safe,” Carrico said. “We have to do whatever is necessary with (the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department), with (the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office) to make sure that we can be on the cutting edge of technology and keeping up with our growth in the city. So I’ll be working with those guys from day one asking them what they need and how we can help them accomplish their goals, which is my goal of keeping the community safe.”
In March, Carrico introduced a controversial piece of legislation that set new local penalties, including imprisonment, for undocumented immigrants found in Jacksonville. It also funded 25 more mobile fingerprint scanners for police. It passed council in a 12-5 vote.
The president-designate told Jacksonville Today after the vote that he wants to work with Kids Hope Alliance, Mayor Donna Deegan’s administration, the School Board and other city agencies for youth development programs.
