Our cover boy this month is Jacksonville Mayor John Delaney. He’s there because he’s the most important person in North Florida.
Please, before your regionalism gets in the way, let me explain.
The growth of our area always has hit a wall when it came to crossing county lines and city limits. If you lived in Clay County, you laughed about Jacksonville’s public schools. If you lived in Duval, you joked about the rednecks in Baker. If you lived in St. Augustine, you looked down on everyone and wished they would stay away (except, of course, to fall into the tourist traps.) Nassau? If you were in Fernandina, you wished you wouldn’t be bothered, especially by the farmers on the western side of your county.
There always have been efforts at getting people together but there was an underlying distrust. There really wasn’t anything to tie us all together. The merger of several real estate associations helped, as did the Jacksonville builders establishing councils into other counties. There’s a regional planning council, but it seems to produce a lot of paper that seems to disappear into filing cabinets. There are Chambers of Commerce, but each staked out its turf.
Now, back to Delaney. Early on in his first term of office, around 1995, he quietly started getting people together. We need each other, he said, and he walked the walk, including officials of nearby counties when the future was discussed. He didn’t step beyond the line, as others disastrously have done, and he didn’t act like a Big City Mayor talking to a hayseed. Your town may be smaller, but it’s just as important; you can’t complete a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces.
He has been subtle (he has done other not-so-subtle things, lest you think we’re canonizing him) and it has worked.
When a big project has been planned, there have been others around the table.
The BellSouth operations center is an example; when they broke ground on Fleming Island, the Clay County officials credited Jacksonville as much as themselves. The World Golf Village took regional cooperation. The western parts of Clay and Duval county had transportation problems until each county’s politicians got on the same page, and today a new road is turning barns into houses.
Delaney goes out of office next summer. His replacement is unknown — you can pare the field to one of a dozen or so, and you still may not be right. It’s going to be a big, expensive and very meaningful race.
As big as the race will be, the winner must find a way to successfully follow a hard act. Delaney leaves a legacy that needs to be continued. That legacy extends beyond the Duval borders, so it’s acceptable, if you’re a Clay, St. Johns, Nassau or Baker, to stick your nose into the matter. You may not be able to vote, but you darn sure can talk.
Delaney has brought the counties together like no one else (yes, the Jaguars did, but in a different way.) Thank him for it, and hope that the person starting a four-year term next July 1 understands how much it means to the real estate and construction industries to have someone to lead us into working together.
— Fred Seely is the editorial director of Bailey Publishing & Communications Inc. and the editor of Realty/Builder Connection. He can be reached at [email protected].