When Edgar Mathis officially took over as president of Jacksonville Community Council, Inc. Wednesday morning, he told the 100 or so members present that Jacksonville was a city on the verge of greatness.
The Better Jacksonville Plan is reality and in progress and the Super Bowl will be here in 2005. Mathis also said part of what is taking the River City to the upper echelon of cities in the country is its community-based organizations.
“It’s a super city because of its institutions,” said Mathis, who was born and raised in Jacksonville. “JCCI is one of those institutions that make Jacksonville a better place to live.”
Mathis, who is the circuit manager for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, said he has five main priorities heading into the 2001-02 JCCI year.
“There will be two outstanding studies this year,” said Mathis. “The first is ‘Beyond the Talk, Race Relations in Jacksonville.’ If anybody can pull it off, JCCI can. The study will be chaired by Judge Brian Davis and Bruce Barcelo.”
Ben Warner, who spoke on behalf of Davis and Barcelo, said race relations is one of the touchier subjects JCCI has tackled.
“JCCI has been trying to figure out a way to study race relations for a long time,” said Warner. “It’s a difficult study. We feel like we have a great team and Jacksonville is ready. We had such tremendous response — about 200 people signed up — that we had to move the meetings to Southside Baptist Church.”
The other study will go hand-in-hand with aspects of the Better Jacksonville Plan.
“The second study will be on how to keep Jacksonville beautiful,” said Mathis.
Brenna Durden, chairperson of the study, “Beautiful Jacksonville: Becoming a Clean City,” said she would like people to visit Jacksonville and leave with the same impression they have of cities like Tampa and Toronto.
“We want people who come to Jacksonville and go away and say, ‘What a clean city.’ We hope our recommendations will be received well by the community and put in place in time for the Super Bowl,” said Durden.
Mathis will also push hard to get JCCI’s membership over the 1,000 mark, his second objective as president.
“Our membership is at about 700,” said Mathis. “Lois [Chepenik, executive director] said it should be in the thousands. I told her I agreed, but I’m going for 1,000 first.”
Mathis would also like to better implement the work done last year by treasurer John Cobb, who led JCCI’s annual support campaign and handled the institutions finances.
“John Cobb did an excellent job, but we as a board did not execute it very well,” said Mathis. “All we have to do is roll it out and dust it off.”
The fourth thing on Mathis’ agenda is to create a steward, or overseer, group. Mathis feels like there are people out there who would like to be involved, but can’t make a full-time commitment.
“They may not have the time to get in and roll up their sleeves and join us, but they will help us,” said Mathis.
Finally, Mathis urged members to attend Thursday night’s JCCI Forward meeting where the topic of discussion was last Tuesday’s terrorist attacks and what can be done in Jacksonville to help those affected.
“If we can pull off those five things in ways we have not done in the past, I think 2002 will an outstanding year,” said Mathis.