by Joe Wilhelm Jr. and
Karen Brune Mathis
Staff Writers
Today, Mayor Alvin Brown accepts more than 300 transition policy recommendations from 18 committees involving more than 200 people.
Brown and his leadership team will review the information in the more than 100 pages of reports and decide what to use and how to use it.
“He is ultimately the person who lays out the vision of the City,” said Chief of Staff Chris Hand during an interview Saturday.
Those recommendations also might be helpful in plans to reorganize City government, which is Brown’s next goal after City Council approves the 2011-12 budget.
“The mayor is about to embark on a reorganization of government,” said Hand. “The hope is to introduce the reorganization by the end of the year.”
Hand said Chief Administrative Officer Kevin Hyde and Deputy CAO Karen Bowling are working on “as comprehensive review as possible” to make City government “as efficient and productive as possible.”
He said the report from the operations and infrastructure transition committee would be directed to Hyde and Bowling.
The review could result in changing the way departments are organized and which departments provide which services and functions. Some changes might need the approval of the Council, said Hand.
Hand said the reorganization would be proposed by the end of the year, or possibly as soon as Council approves the budget, which takes effect Oct. 1.
At 10 a.m. today, Brown is scheduled to accept the transition policy committee reports at City Hall from Transition Strategic Co-Chairs Peter Rummell, The Rev. Dr. Henry Rhim and Delores Barr Weaver as well as transition co-chairs Audrey Moran and Tony Hill.
Each of the committees had two co-chairs, for a total of 36.
Don Shea, on loan from his position as executive director of the private Jacksonville Civic Council, served as transition staff director to coordinate and manage the activities of the 18 transition committees.
“The work of the transition committees will help to provide a framework,” Shea said Friday. “They are meant to guide Mayor Brown and his team in setting their policy priorities and major initiatives going forward.”
Shea said there will be some recommendations that are more controversial than others, but could not say what has been learned yet.
Hand said Brown wanted the efforts to be a fact-finding exercise. “We told people, ‘don’t come in with an ax to grind.’”
“There will be a number that are helpful and others that might not be workable or fit with the mayor’s agenda,” said Hand.
Hand said the recommendations are data points, not necessarily a roadmap.
Hand said all are important and all are helpful. “They may not all be implemented, but all are appreciated,” he said.
Shea and Hand extended thanks to the committee members for their work and both said it was evident that people wanted to help the mayor.
“The biggest ‘What have we learned?’ for me was how broad the eagerness is in our community to participate in the shaping of public policy and how interested people are across the board in making sure Alvin Brown is successful as mayor,” Shea said.
Shea said the committees met for 3,800 hours over 3 ? weeks.
“That’s a lot of work,” he said.
Hand said a number of the committee members used information from former Mayor John Peyton’s 40-chapter departing document, which is 268 single pages when printed on standard paper, titled “Maintaining Jacksonville’s Competitive Advantage: A Public Policy Discussion.”
Shea also said that all of the committee members “indicated that they want to stay involved somehow moving forward to monitor implementation. A lot of people feel enfranchised in local government now that they may not have been in the past.”
Hand said that some of the committee members might be asked to join the nine advisory boards that Brown plans. The volunteer boards will advise Brown on areas such as the port, military affairs, workforce development, education and more.
“The goal will be to have these as working committees,” he said.
Hand said the mayor would meet with the transition committees in early 2012 to provide a progress update.
While Shea’s transition committee role comes to an end, he continues with the Brown administration as part of team with Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Jerry Mallot to review economic development.
Hand said the economic-development transitional recommendations will be directed to Shea and Mallot for their review.
They are studying the City’s economic development efforts, including the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission’s functions and Downtown revitalization.
“Mayor Brown has tapped me for an additional assignment, which is to design and recommend a new Downtown improvement agency,” Shea said.
“I am working very closely with Jerry Mallot of the chamber, who has gotten a similar request from Mayor Brown, to rearrange the entire citywide approach to economic development, so we are doing those two things in tandem and that is the process we are involved in right now,” he said.
Shea said it could take two or three months to make recommendations about Downtown revitalization and economic development.
“We are taking some time to examine best practices and best organizational models across the country. We are interviewing a lot of local people who are involved in economic development business here in Jacksonville to tap their brains to see what works well, what doesn’t and what we need to improve,” he said.
“The whole goal is being to develop a strategy that does a number of things. One is to provide an adequate amount of incentives to lure businesses to Jacksonville and to Downtown Jacksonville,” he said.
“Secondly, to expedite the approval process so that we are not cumbersome to businesses that want to relocate and expand here, particularly because we are in competition with other cities in the Southeast,” he said.
Shea also said that Downtown Jacksonville “has never had a robust and well-financed Downtown development organization.”
Asked about focus areas for a Downtown improvement organization, Shea mentioned three in particular.
“We have to fill up the vacant office space. We have to animate Downtown in the sense of bringing more activities there, as well as retail and restaurant opportunities for people. We have to expand the residential base Downtown,” he said.
“These are elements of successful downtowns all over the world,” he said.
Shea said some of those elements have begun. “We just have to expedite them coming together in the most beneficent way to increase the tax base and the employment base,” he said.
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