by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Following a controversy over its handling of an early education facility built on polluted ground, the Jacksonville Urban League will focus on increasing employment and education opportunities to repair relationships with community leaders, Urban League President Richard Danford said Wednesday.
Danford’s comments came as he was preparing to host the League’s 2005 Equal Opportunity Luncheon. The event drew a full house to the Hyatt’s second-floor ballroom. The crowd included government, corporate and community leaders. In September the Council contemplated pulling City funding for the JUL after several members expressed frustration with the League’s efforts to move hundreds of children from the Forest Street Head Start Center, which sits on a former City incinerator site. But a month later the JUL has relocated all of the children and is now making progress toward having its funding restored, said Danford.
Danford said the JUL signed a $500,000 contract Tuesday with the Jacksonville Children’s Commission for an educational initiative aimed at improving early literacy. Still up in the air is more than $700,000 in state and federal grants that were to be disbursed to the JUL by the Jacksonville Housing Commission to pay to rehabilitate homes and provide homebuyer counseling. A decision on that money should come at the JHC’s Nov. 14 board meeting.
The dispute soured some of the JUL’s community connections. Several community leaders complained to the Council that the JUL was not moving quickly enough to move the children. But Danford said the best way to restore those relationships would be to focus on shared priorities, namely improving education and employment opportunities in Jacksonville’s urban neighborhoods.
“What we need to do is look forward toward what we need to do to be a productive and viable organization,” said Danford. “We focus on the three E’s: education, employment and empowerment.”
Responding to complaints about the pace of relocations, Danford said the JUL had a responsibility to move deliberately to find new facilities for about 700 children once located at Forest Park. The JUL relocated all children by early October, weeks ahead of schedule.
“One of the things the head of an organization must do is take a leadership position to do the right thing,” said Danford. “That meant doing the right thing for the children. That meant relocating them in an orderly fashion and placing them in licensed facilities.”
Wednesday’s luncheon focused on recognizing corporate, government and individual contributors to the cause of equal opportunity. Mayor John Peyton received an award as did attorney Robert Riegel of Coffman, Coleman, Andrews & Grogan, Drummond Press and Pepsi Bottling Group.
Council member Mia Jones received the Clanzel T. Brown Award named for the former JUL president. Attorney Charles Towers Jr. of Rogers, Towers received the Whitney M. Young National Leadership Award named for the civil rights leader and former executive director of the National Urban League.