by Natasha Khairullah
Staff Writer
Jacksonville’s population may be growing at a faster rate than you thought.
At the League of Women Voters Jacksonville First Coast’s (LWVJFC) annual meeting Friday, Chief Executive Officer of the Northeast Regional Council Brian Teeple, said the Council projects the area’s population to be right around 3 million by 2030.
“Duval County has been growing consistently at a rate of about 2 percent a year,” he said adding that at that rate, the population number should surpass the official estimate.
Currently, the official population projection for 2030 is 2.1 million – Duval County and the surrounding areas’ current population is at 1.4 million.
One of the Council’s main focuses is to assist with strategic and comprehensive project planning for some of northeast Florida’s major issues – including community development, growth management and quality of life – and also serves as a clearing house for all regional project applications for federal assistance.
Teeple also discussed the alternative projected costs associated with the population increase over the next 20 years, including how many miles of new road will need to be constructed and how many new facilities, like jails and schools, will need to be built to accommodate residents.
“Its hard to quantify in dollar amounts what the costs will be,” said Teeple. “But we can estimate how many units of certain resources, like drinking water for example, would be required per person.”
Teeple was the first of a full line-up of speakers scheduled to address members of LWVJFC over the next year on various issues faced by the region. Over time, the League’s legislative priorities changed to reflect the needs of society and critical issues of concern, said LWVJFC President Carol Spalding, adding that information provided by Teeple and the Council can only help further the mission of the League, which is to encourage informed and active participation in government and increase understanding of major public policy issues.
“At the same time, the League is wholeheartedly political and works to influence policy through advocacy,” she said. “It is the original grassroots citizen network, directed by the consensus of its members nationwide.”
The League, created in 1920, is a nonpartisan political organization with grassroots nationally, state-wide and locally.
For nearly 40 years the local chapter has been active in community enhancement studies before Jacksonville Community Council Inc. was around, said Spalding.
“The League was instrumental in the consolidation of the City of Jacksonville and conducted a number of studies in the area of expansion of public libraries, teen pregnancy and transportation,” she said. “In other cities, some of these studies are done solely by the League and they don’t have entities like JCCI to help them out.”
LWVJFC was recently approached to join Blueprint for Prosperity in the area of voter education, one that Spalding says will prepare members for some of next year’s work.
Spalding, who’s also the open campus president of Florida Community College at Jacksonville and has been involved with the League since the 1970s, says education is key in raising political awareness and voter turnout.
“We talk about democracy and we want to spread it all over the world but if you don’t practice it in your own country I don’t understand that,” she said.
“Just like Thomas Jefferson said, ‘You have to have an educated populous to make a democracy work.’ ”