by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
For the folks at Jacksonville Community Council Inc., the year doesn’t start on Jan. 1 and end Dec. 31. Their year doesn’t even coincide with the City’s fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1 and concludes Sept. 30. In fact, for the last 27 years, JCCI’s year has gotten underway basically when they finally determine which two local socioeconomic issues they are going study and report on during the next 365 days — or longer.
After tackling race relations and the city’s cleanliness during the last year, JCCI has opted to study in-depth “Public Education Reform” and “Neighborhoods at the Tipping Point.” Both issues are timely, affect a huge majority of Duval County and they made the cut, which isn’t easy.
Lois Chepenik, JCCI’s executive director, explained the process by which a subject is chosen. The National Football League choosing Jacksonville as a Super Bowl city wasn’t this difficult.
“The process is we choose a very broad-based group to be on the committee,” said Chepenik, of the 25-50 member group that will ultimately give their input. “The committee members come from the local governments, neighborhoods and education system. It’s a group that has a good idea of what’s going on. We recruit elected officials, the governor and citizens about what we want to do.”
(Chepenik said Gov. Jeb Bush was invited to provide possible study issues, but didn’t reply. However, she did say that several years ago the governor’s office submitted about a dozen suggestions.)
Annually, about 100 ideas are submitted. While many aren’t feasible or relevant, most have merit and receive proper consideration. According to Chepenik, there are four basic minimum criteria an issue must meet to make the initial cut: Is it manageable? Is it good and interesting? Is someone else doing it? Is it too emotional for reasonable dialogue?
Last year’s study on race relations in Jacksonville drew enormous crowds — the weekly meetings had to be moved from JCCI’s offices on Atlantic Boulevard to Southside Baptist Church — and incorporated lively, and sometimes heated, discussions. Chepenik said there are only a few things that may invoke enough passion to make the issue combustible.
“Abortion is something we may not address, but we didn’t shy away this past year on race relations,” she said. “It was very emotional sometimes.
“The committee came up with these two issues and the board endorsed them.”
Chepenik makes the process sound fairly simple, but there are several steps between the formation of a very long list of ideas and the formal selection of two. First, every idea is assigned to one of two categories: human services or community improvement. United Way, which has been a partner of JCCI for 27 years, partially funds the human services study, while the City helped pay for the community improvement study.
Once categorized, the JCCI staff examines the issues for everything from feasibility to repetition. Eventually, six to 12 issues are selected and “white papers” on each issue are written.
“These are one page long and each one talks about what will be covered and background information,” said Chepenik. “The committee gets the white papers that the staff thinks are viable and information about the other 90 or so as well.
“We then go through the whole process again. The committee may ask us why we chose certain issues for white papers and why we didn’t choose others. We have to defend those decisions.”
The selection process usually begins in February and ends in May or June. Eventually, the committee settles on two issues and JCCI begins the arduous but beneficial task of studying every angle of the issue.
“It’s a long process, but it’s JCCI,” said Chepenik. “It really is who we are.”
Although both issues for study have been determined, there are still two things up in the air: one, who will comprise the committees and, two, who will chair the committees. Chepenik said people have already started inquiring about committee membership, but it will be several weeks before anyone is placed on a committee or the two chairs are selected. Official work on both studies will begin in October.
In late spring, JCCI formally presented its findings from the cleanliness study at a luncheon. Next month, it will present the findings from the race relations study and it won’t be a quiet affair. Because the study sparked so much interest, causing the move from its headquarters, the formal announcement will also be made at Southside Baptist.
“We’ll produce a written document of our findings and conclusions,” said Chepenik. “It will be released it a luncheon on Sept. 17 at Southside Baptist church because it holds about 300 people.”