Jacksonville taxpayers keep getting handed the bill so downtown can look like a brochure. Donna Deegan and the Downtown Investment Authority have spent this term treating the riverfront as a VIP lounge for billionaires. Shad Khan’s Four Seasons and Shipyards package has been padded again and again — completion grants, tax rebates, utility moves, museum relocations — until the city’s incentive stack was pegged around $134 million, with the hotel’s property-tax rebate alone capped near $57 million over 20 years. The DIA’s own math says the city might clear a modest net benefit decades from now. Residents get the risk and the debt service now. Then there’s the stadium. The 2024 deal locked the city into hundreds of millions for EverBank’s rebuild — commonly cited as $625 million in public stadium money, with broader public commitments pushing higher once parks and related work are counted — so an NFL team owned by a billionaire stays put and still ships a home game (or two) to London every year. The Washington Post editorial board said the quiet part out loud: Jacksonville taxpayers are getting fleeced for slightly less football in the same place. Meanwhile the neighborhoods that actually pay the property tax get potholes, and City Hall answers with another riverfront rendering and a claim that every tax dollar magically returns threefold. State auditors and local critics have called the broader budget bloated under this administration; the mayor’s office calls that politics. Fine. Politics is what you get when the Downtown Investment Authority keeps writing checks for luxury hotels and a stadium while the rest of Duval is told to wait their turn. @CityofJax @MayorDeegan @RoryDiamond @NickHowland15 @CMKevinCarrico @TFreemanJax @lennycurry @JimmyPelusoCD7 @Ron_Salem @DuvalWarRoom @FLVoiceNews @wjxt4 @BenBeckernews @ActionNewsJax