by Liz Daube
Staff Writer
The Planning and Development Department is asking City Council for more funding for planning consultants, and some Council members are wondering when the planning will stop and action will begin.
“We have spent so much money on visioning, on consultants,” said Elaine Brown, the only Council member to vote against the request at Tuesday’s Finance Committee meeting. “I’ve just kind of reached a saturation point with visioning. I need you to justify $700,000.”
Brown said she wants City planners to detail the expected outcomes of further vision planning before the Council approves the appropriation of $400,000 from the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission. The current budget already has $300,000 slated for evaluating and updating the City’s 2010 comprehensive plan.
Vision planning is the creation of documents that describe a community’s goals and issues. The plans usually address growth and economic development concerns. Michael Saylor, director of the planning department, said city government and private developers often use the plans to guide their decisions.
In 2005, the Mayor’s Growth Management Task Force – which cost the City $124,416 in consultant fees on its own – recommended the creation of a new, citywide vision plan that includes recognizable images and more citizen involvement and education.
If approved by Council, the extra $400,000 will allow City planners to hire a temporary consultant to create vision plans for three Jacksonville areas, according to Brad Thoburn, assistant director of planning policy. Saylor said a total of six district plans need to be gathered to create a new, improved 2030 plan over the next few years. He said three are already done, but the urban core (which includes areas surrounding Downtown, such as Brooklyn and LaVilla), Arlington and Southside districts still need plans.
“We kind of focused on the other side of the river over the past four years: north, northwest and southwest,” said Saylor. “Those were the areas that were anticipated to be sort of the hot new real estate markets.”
Brown said the City has already worked with local communities on a variety of planning efforts, especially within the urban core. Some of those efforts, often called “master plans” or “neighborhood action plans,” have cost hundreds of thousands in consultant services. For example, the JEDC’s 2003 Brooklyn/Riverside Avenue District Master Plan Study cost $223,000 in consultant fees.
“People take their time to do visioning for their neighborhoods and communities, and then we bring in yet another group of people who do more visioning,” said Brown. “Let us just concentrate on the data that we already have and using that as we start looking at the bigger picture.”
Brown said she needs the planning department to outline the scope and timing of their work to assure neighborhoods that previous plans won’t become “dust collectors.”
Council member Suzanne Jenkins, who represents much of the Downtown area, said she thinks the urban core neighborhoods have been studied enough.
“I don’t want to redo what we’ve already done. Let’s just take some money and enact them,” said Jenkins.
She mentioned a current JEDC bid for consultants to conduct a Downtown parking study. Jenkins said she’s already been involved in research and planning on Downtown parking issues, so she doesn’t understand why the City needs to spend more money on consultants.
”We know we have a parking problem, and we know what it is,” she said. “Let’s carve out some dollars and fix it.”
The planning department needs consultants for their expertise, according to Saylor. He said his staff of 78 has its hands full with other tasks, and the City is obligated by state law to have an updated, comprehensive plan.
In addition, Saylor said the new vision plans use community input and provide detailed, visual information – “new school” improvements from the 2010 plan, which was crafted about 10 years ago.
“It (the 2030 plan) is based upon what we would like to see on the ground,” he said. “It’s not so much policy and legislation. You can see what corridors look like, what sections of town are designed for.
“While it will have policies in it, it will be more of an artist’s concept. It makes everybody’s jobs easier. It’s a pretty easy road map. It’s simple, and you don’t have to have a law degree to interpret what it says.”
Thoburn added that neighborhood plans will be used in the vision plans, but that doesn’t mean local plans need to wait for action.
“I think the fact that those neighborhood plans are in place means we’ll be able to put those visions into place,” he said. “We did these (other vision plans) three years ago at an average of $300,000 apiece. Part of that (proposed $700,000) budget is using what is already there. We have to use those plans, and we should. They will be the foundation.”
While the Finance Committee passed the funding request 5-1 on Tuesday, the Economic, Community and International Development Committee deferred it on Wednesday. Thoburn said City planners will answer further questions for Council members at the next ECID meeting.