An Aruba connection: JaxPort signs pact with island recovering from pandemic
Four years after a chance meeting at a sports-fishing tradeshow in Orlando sparked talks about trade ties with Aruba, state Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis joined the prime minister of the Caribbean island and JaxPort leaders in signing an agreement between the port authority and Aruba.
The ceremony Monday came at a JaxPort board meeting that also featured the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announcing it will return at least $35 million to JaxPort because the cost of deepening the St. Johns River came in well under budget.
The savings had been long anticipated because construction contracts for the dredging came in at lower than expected amounts. The Corps finished the deepening last year and has been working to close the book on the balance sheet for the project financed by the federal government, state Department of Transportation, city of Jacksonville, the port authority and private terminal operator SSA Marine.
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JaxPort has not yet determined how it will divvy up the $35 million among the entities that paid the non-federal share of the project that cost about $420 million for design, engineering, permitting, construction and environmental monitoring. The lower total cost of the project means the Corps also will return about $13 million in federal money that had been put up for the work.
The Army Corps expects to have the final accounting of spending done by early 2024 to determine if any other savings will be returned.
Patronis was at the board meeting to talk about the agreement with Aruba, a popular tourist destination that suffered some of the worst economic turmoil in the world when the COVID-19 pandemic hit its economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.
"Aruba is in recuperation after the pandemic," Aruba Prime Minister Evelyn Wever-Croes said. "We do not want to only bounce back, but also bounce forward to become stronger and more resilient."
Jacksonville's role in that recovery will come from Eagle LNG shipping liquefied natural gas to Aruba from terminals in Jacksonville. Eagle LNG signed a 20-year agreement with Utilities Aruba NV which is moving away from heavy fuels such as oil for its electric generating plants.
JaxPort CEO Eric Green called Patronis the "driving force" behind the agreement between the Aruba and JaxPort.
Patronis's involvement stemmed in part from a chance meeting he had four years ago while he was attending ICAST, the huge sportsfishing trade show in Orlando. He said he was walking past the Native Eyewear booth where sales representative Nelson Oduper Jr. pitched him about the sunglasses.
"He's hustling," Patronis said. "He's representing his product with sunglasses and he sees my lapel pin, and he says, 'Are you a government official.'"
After Patronis introduced himself as the state's CFO, Oduper said his father had been prime minister of Aruba and his brother also served as a minister in the government.
"I go, 'Really?' Small world, you know," Patronis told the JaxPort board.
He said that encounter began discussions that later involved Patronis reaching out to Green and ultimately the memorandum of understanding signed on Monday.
"We'll explore the areas where we can strengthen our business ties together," Patronis said.
In addition to liquefied natural gas, other goods going from Florida to Aruba will be food, automobiles, assorted consumer goods and electronics, Patronis said.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis worked on deal between Aruba and JaxPort
