JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Questionable spending and your taxpayer dollars: An Action News Jax investigation is looking into how the taxpayer funded group Friends of Hemming Park spends its money.
We obtained documents given to Jacksonville City Council auditors and went line by line through expenses. What we found led one councilman to call the nonprofit incompetent.
According to internal documents, Friends of Hemming Park is in real financial trouble, more than $350,000 in the red.
City Councilman Matt Schellenberg said members were blindsided during a recent committee meeting.
"They had an opportunity to explain that to the council and here we are a week later and said they needed the money,” Schellenberg said.
When asked why it took so long to raise a red flag, Friends of Hemming Park CEO Vince Cavin replied, “Yeah, that's on me and my leadership.”
We pored through thousands of expenditures since the group began in 2014. In March and April of this year, there were two petty cash payments totaling $22,000 with no detailed explanation as to how the money was spent.
Cavin said the cash was used to buy alcohol and pay for bartending services during two recent downtown events.
We also found $7,900 spent on food at restaurants like Biscotti’s and Black Sheep.
Action News Jax Reporter Paige Kelton asked Cavin: "One hundred and fifty lunches, dinners, team events, marketing meetings, coffee; is that excessive for a nonprofit?”
“Certainly, some of those things should not happen in the future," Cavin said.
Another questionable expenditure: a $500 expense marked “funeral” in December of 2014. Cavin admitted that was for an employee who had passed away, adding, “Certainly we should have taken up a collection plate rather than put it on the taxpayer, so it’s expenses like that that we need to be more mindful of in the future.”
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Schellenberg responded to our findings by saying, "It's just incredible incompetence on how they are handling the money."
He and other council members are now questioning whether the city should commit any more money to the group in charge of bringing life back to Hemming Park.
At a May 24 committee meeting, the group painted a dire financial picture, saying it needed $250,000 just to stay afloat. Half of that amount was approved but members ordered an audit of the group’s books.
Councilman Bill Gulliford admitted many of the problems stem from how the money was granted
“We’ve got a problem with I think the way we administered that money, we just gave them the money carte blanche and that in retrospect was not the right thing to do and going forward, the two things I’m interested in focusing on is the administrative cost of running it salaries and things like that and that any money we give them should be limited to that use and that use alone,” Gulliford said.
Cavin said since Friends of Hemming Park was formed, more than 600,000 people have visited the park. As he waits for the results of the council audit, he promises to keep better watch of taxpayer money.
"From now on, we’re going to have a very tight fiscal policy and the board is going to have tighter oversight on every expenditure that goes on,” Cavin said.
Among the changes, the group will now separate city funds into a separate account from sponsorship and event revenue.
Cavin said he will meet with the council auditor on July 14 and its findings will be revealed at a committee meeting next week.
The mayor’s office said Thursday that funding recommendations will be made for the next budget, but ultimately it will be up to Mayor Lenny Curry to decide how much Friends of Hemming Park will get in the future.
HEMMING PARK FINANCIALS
-December 2013-September 2014 (.pdf)
[ -October 2014-September 2015 (.pdf) ]
[ -October 2015-May 2016 (.pdf) ]
-December 2013-September 2014 (.xlsx)
-October 2014-March 2015 (.xlsx)
-April 2015-September 2015 (.xlsx)
-March 2016-June 2016 (.xlsx)