by David Chapman
Staff Writer
Qualifying for spring elections began noon Monday and mayoral candidate Audrey Moran became the first to officially enter the field of candidates vying to be Jacksonville’s next executive branch leader.
Mike Hogan also qualified. Both are Republicans and considered two of the four front-runners in the race.
Other high-profile mayoral candidates expected to qualify within the week include fellow Republican Rick Mullaney along with Democrat Alvin Brown.
The qualifying deadline is noon Friday.
All candidates had to report financials by midnight. Updated totals include: Hogan, $393,759; Moran, $466,036; and Mullaney, $642,892. Financials for Alvin Brown were filed prior to deadline, but not posted.
The first election is March 22 and if no candidate receives the majority of votes, the top two will face off in the May 17 general election.
Following filing official paperwork and fees, Moran quickly met with supporters at her Northside campaign office to discuss the work of six policy groups she created to address city issues and the solutions if elected.
The groups, consisting of almost 100 people, worked on issues related to education, jobs, quality of life, transportation and logistics, Downtown and pension reform, she said.
Moran said the groups will help develop plans that would allow her to “hit the ground running” if elected.
The issues were:
• Education. Moran would appoint a chief education officer to pull together the work of educational entities and develop a strategy to better public education.
• Jobs. Under her jobs platform, she would work with area chambers of commerce and host a small business summit within the first 100 days of office to determine “what’s working and what’s not.”
• Quality of life. She wants to protect the quality of life attributes of the city while working on eliminating health disparities.
• Transportation. She said she would work with the Jacksonville Transportation Authority on improving transportation in struggling neighborhoods and planning and implementing long-term transportation needs.
• Downtown. A former chair of the Downtown Development Authority, she said the first piece of legislation she’d sign would reincarnate the authority and that it would transcend mayoral terms for development.
• Pension reform. Moran wants to move the general employees of the City to a 401(k) retirement system instead of using a pension system, while addressing police and fire pension reform in areas of age of retirement and years of service requirements, among others. She also vowed not to raise property taxes to pay for reform.
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