Mayor John Delaney held his first Town Hall meeting of the year Monday night at Spring Park Elementary School. It was also the 38th of his mayoral tenure. He spoke with Daily Record staff writer Mike Sharkey at its conclusion.
Question: Do you really enjoy the meetings?
Answer: Yes, I do. There’s two things: one, it keeps me in touch with what problems are out there. And, two, it’s a way for me to check if our systems and bureaucracy dealing with those problems works. Then it’s just fun to be with the people and feel their emotions. This was a good meeting, a positive meeting. I’ve had some where I’ve felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. But, they are fun. They are enjoyable.
Q: How have they changed over the six and a half years that you’ve been in office?
A: Ray [Alfred, fire chief] actually changed the first one. My first one went on three hours. Ray sat down afterwards and said, ‘Mayor, we need to put a time limit on it. We hang around up front [afterwards].’ It went so long and it was Matt Carlucci’s [City Council president] mom who finally raised her hand and said, ‘Can we go home now?’ That’s why now, at the start of the meeting we cap it [at an hour]. But, they are basically the same now. The issues tend to be topical, but they are different in every neighborhood. Some meetings have more of an emphasis on drainage. We’ve had a few with Ray and fire station issues. Most of the questions are about parks, public works and JEA, I’d say 90 percent.
Q: Have they changed in relation to your first few when you knew you’d be campaigning for the 1999 election and when you were pushing the Better Jacksonville Plan?
A: I think if anything has changed, they have become more positive. In the early years there was more stuff to do; the beautification campaign, pumping $150 million bucks into sewer and drainage. Things were getting answered. A lot of how we shaped our agendas are a result of these meetings. We said, ‘Hey, the public is worried about this and this.’ For example, the litter question. That comes up at virtually every meeting and I usually say to people that it’s actually better now than it was four years ago, but people are just less tolerant of it.
Q: It would be politically incorrect to say you enjoy one Town Meeting over another. But, do the ones you have with the beaches carry a little more weight because you live out there? Because you live there, is it tough to separate yourself from some of the issues that also affect you as a citizen and are they tougher on you?
A: No, there’s still hot issues there, in the Arlington-Beaches CPAC [Citizen Planning Advisory Committee] area. They have been pretty good. It’s a rare meeting where someone is a horse’s behind. You learn something at every one, which issues are really important and touch people. I heard two ladies tonight talking about their kids. One was petrified about the condition of the [magnet] schools for junior high. The other was petrified of her kid walking through a neighborhood that may have sex offenders. They all get to you one way or the other.
Q: There was a lady here from Mandarin and she knew you from those CPAC meetings. Do you find that some people tend to follow you from meeting to meeting?
A: Yes, we get some repeat offenders, so to speak. I remember when her issue originally came up. A house burned down on a road that didn’t have a fire hydrant and that’s because the developer didn’t put them in and, at the time, the neighborhood didn’t want to run the line down there because it would cut some tree routes. She and others were active on that.
Q: Regardless who wins the mayoral election, will you encourage them to continue these Town Hall meetings?
A: That’s up to the mayor. If they ask my opinion, obviously, I’d pass them on. They have been very constructive for me in managing the city and keeping in touch with the city. I think the one big thing is you get to say to people, ‘Look, I’m not hiding.’ Twelve times a year we are advertising this thing, it’s always in the newspaper. If you want to come and ask me any questions, this is the time.