It was a message hard to miss.
Emblazoned on the large video board above the stage, a simple phrase.
Bellowed by Bishop John Guns, with an echo that reverberated throughout Jacoby Hall.
And finally, hammered home by Mayor Lenny Curry minutes after he took the oath to become Jacksonville’s mayor.
“One City, One Jacksonville.”
It was a symbolic, prevalent theme throughout the pomp and circumstance Wednesday, but it wasn’t meant as just an optimistic phrase.
It’s a goal. One Curry believes is reachable. One he knows he’ll have to lead to help coalesce for public safety, children and neighborhoods. One he began working toward months ago during the campaign.
Reaching that goal means working with new Sheriff Mike Williams, the man he shared the stage with Wednesday.
It means joining with faith-based leaders like Guns, who called for building bridges across racial and cultural lines for unity during his speech at the inauguration.
Teaming with Duval County Public Schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti for the betterment of education and children.
Leaning on past mayors for advice. And working with City Council members to make those priorities a reality.
Many parts, but one goal Curry is confident the city will achieve.
Making public safety inroads
Public safety has long been priority No. 1 for Curry. It’s a message he stressed on the campaign trail, during times when violent crime stories seemed to make headlines daily.
Curry and Williams have regularly met and picked up the phone to talk with each other.
The mayor said the two agree there needs to be more officers on the street. And that Jacksonville Journey programs need to be resurrected.
Especially during these past few weeks of transition, Williams said the two have swapped information. And there’s another reality the two have realized: There’s not a lot of money to go around.
The 147 officers Curry talked about adding won’t come in one fell swoop. That likely will take a few years.
Money will be tight for those officers, cars and equipment, Williams said but the working relationship with Curry “is what is going to get us through this tough time.”
Curry already has assisted on the financial end, helping secure a $250,000 grant from the Legislature that will go toward Williams hiring 15 additional officers.
It’s a sign of the active role he said he’ll play when it comes to what the city does with the state leaders, including Gov. Rick Scott — who sat with his wife, Ann, near the front of Wednesday’s inauguration.
The public safety push begins almost immediately.
Williams said his first “sheriff’s walk” will be July 11 at Eureka Gardens, a complex constantly in the spotlight for violent crime. Soon after, it will be Grand Park.
Williams said relationships with the faith-based community, including leaders like Gunn of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church and Mark Griffin of Wayman Ministries, will help in the community outreach.
Curry’s also reached out to build relationships with those same leaders and said he’ll continue to do so. The faith-based community is important, he said, because helping the community and its children is their stated mission.
“It’s real,” he recently said. “It’s pure for them.”
Especially their relationships with at-risk children, upon whom Curry said he wants to place an emphasis.
A focus on children
Curry told people Wednesday he wants to “get in the trenches” with the children, to let them know they’re not forgotten.
“They need to know we care about them,” he recently said. “We care about you. We love you. And there’s a better way forward.”
Doing so will require an approach from different fronts.
Pastors and other faith leaders already have relationships with at-risk children, access that is needed to make a difference.
Another natural ally for the cause is Vitti, with whom Curry has spoken to numerous times and considers a large part of the public safety strategy. That’s a relationship already being built, too.
Vitti said Wednesday he and Curry “run in the same circles” because some of their children attend the same public schools. And the superintendent serves on Curry’s “Prevention, Intervention and At-Risk Youth” transition subcommittee.
Curry said he’s committed to before- and afterschool programs that will help what’s going on inside schools be more productive. And along with Williams, he said the three will “get together and work on this together.”
It’s a working relationship Vitti said he welcomes. He’d like to have quarterly meetings to review crime data, hot spots and discuss at-risk children who have been in fights, among other topics.
“We know that there are problems,” said Vitti, “but we all have to own it.”
That hasn’t exactly happened the past two years, he said. Instead of a proactive approach, Vitti said it’s been more reactive and isolated.
And as for “resurrecting” Journey, Vitti said it’s a suggestion he’s also had and is behind.
For that funding to work, though, there will have to be teamwork from Curry’s equals.
Learning from history
Council and former Mayor Alvin Brown didn’t always have the best relationship. From the council side, there was a perceived lack of communication and failure when it came to dealing with budgets.
Already, Curry is trying to show that’s a thing of the past.
Curry said he’s regularly called council members. At this point, they’re just getting to know each other, but Curry said they’re all at the phase where there’s recognition of “tremendous opportunity.”
He’s popped in on certain events, like ethics training, or just stopped by their fourth floor City Hall offices.
Council President Greg Anderson said the two have had several conversations in recent weeks and he’s heard of Curry reaching out to others. In fact, Anderson said it was Curry who reached across the aisle to propose a lunch meeting with all the council members — a date they’ll have today at City Hall.
Curry told the group Wednesday they’d have a balanced budget with stated priorities. Priorities they might not agree with, but priorities nonetheless.
Anderson said he’s OK with that. It leaves room for discussion with the group of 19 that ultimately will determine which priorities receive how much.
John Crescimbeni has been a council member during four mayoral installations. He said the past few years have meant council members digging more into day-to-day operations, instead of being the policymaking body they’re intended to be. He said he’s looking forward to that reverting back to normal under Curry and called the message of unity “perfect.”
“We so often forget that and try to operate in different compartments,” he said, “… but we are one city.”
Curry said he’s building other relationships to help build “One Jacksonville.”
He speaks regularly with former Mayors John Delaney and John Peyton, two of his supporters during the campaign. Tommy Hazouri, one of those new council members Curry will work with, also will be called upon for knowledge.
He would also listen to advice from Jake Godbold and Brown, as well.
Relationships with constitutional officers will continue to be built in the weeks ahead. One he’s already begun is with State Attorney Angela Corey, one of those partners for public safety.
Corey on Wednesday said she and her office contribute toward that “One Jacksonville” vision through ways like $1 million of the office’s budget going toward diversion programs.
All parts of the city have an interest in safety, schools and the economy.
“It’s my job as mayor to always remember that and pull us together and keep us together,” said Curry. “We need everybody buying into this One Jacksonville.”
That includes the community as a whole.
The years ahead
Curry knows he needs to show results. He has to answer to the people of Jacksonville about what he’ll have done in the first parts of his term.
“I think in this business and any business, you’re only as good as what you did today, not yesterday,” he recently said.
The budget and pension funding have to be balanced with maintain the quality of life residents enjoy.
There is a sense of optimism, he said. People smile and tell him congratulations. Then they tell him to “go get something done.”
It’s optimism that must turn to reality — and with a sense of urgency. But he’s stated his commitment to the team approach.
“In the years ahead, we are going to fight together, we are going to work together, we are going to help each other, we are going to love each other,” he said during the inauguration. “And when we have moments when we agree to disagree, we are still going to be focused on a common cause, that is ‘One City, One Jacksonville.’
And for One Jacksonville to truly be built, it’ll be from those relationships he’s been working on for months.
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