by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
If you don’t work in the building, getting into City Hall got a little more complicated over the weekend. In an effort to improve safety and security at Jacksonville’s elected officials’ work address, the public will now be required to pass through a checkpoint including walking through a metal detector and having purses, briefcases and packages scanned by an X-ray machine.
The new procedure went into effect when the doors opened at 7 a.m. Wednesday morning.
“Things are working well. We wanted to give First Coast Security an opportunity to train their personnel this week while traffic into the building is very low,” said Lynn Westbrook of the City’s Public Works Dept.
“This quiet week will also let the people who work here in the building get used to the new procedures. About 25 people came to work this morning without their new badges. I’m guessing they won’t forget again.”
Westbrook said the new measures were put in place at the request of the mayor’s office and after consultation with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s Homeland Security personnel.
“Security is becoming more a part of our daily lives,” said Westbrook. “We wanted to increase safety and security for the people who work in the building while still allowing the public to have free access.”
While there were a couple of hundred employees going into City Hall Wednesday morning, the general public wasn’t walking through the door the morning after Christmas Day. Westbrook said he doesn’t expect that to be the case at other times, like when the City Council meets and there are procedures in place to handle large numbers of people who need to be screened. According to Westbrook, when a lot of people need to be processed, they might bypass the metal detector.
“We’re considering just wanding people like they do at the TPC,” said Westbrook, of the security measures at The Players Championship.
The heightened security measures won’t mean the absence of two familiar faces that have welcomed employees and visitors to City Hall for years. Al Gulley and Ray Dinning are still working the entrance, even though it’s next to the front door instead of the elevators.
Gulley said the only difference he thinks the new checkpoint will make to citizens is, “It will be a little less personal than when we checked IDs and wrote down visitors’ names but that’s the price we pay for improved security.”
One group that likely won’t be as pragmatic about the new security are the City’s disabled military personnel who have to come to the Veterans Service Office. They have been able to use the Laura Street entrance to City Hall and get to the office since the day the building opened. But those doors, like the ones facing Hogan Street, have been secured and are now available as fire exits only.
“Quite a few of our clients have to use wheelchairs or crutches or they have oxygen bottles, so this may create a hardship for them. It’s going to be inconvenient – in some cases even difficult – for those veterans to have to use the main entrance instead of being able to be dropped off on Laura Street,” predicted Veterans Service Office Supervisor Herschel Allen.
One City Hall employee, executive council assistant Scott Wilson, is glad to see the new procedures go into effect. Wilson is Dist. 4 Council member Don Redman’s assistant and works on the fourth floor every day.
“I think it’s great. I used to work at the Courthouse so I’m used to it. It’s good to make the people who work here and those who visit City Hall safer,” he said.