from staff
Don Shea, Jacksonville Civic Council executive director, has agreed to serve as Mayor-elect Alvin Brown’s transition staff director. His duties will include making sure the 18 fact-finding policy committees have the staff support needed to work toward identifying opportunities and challenges in their respective policy areas and are compliant with Florida’s Government-in-the-Sunshine Law. Shea was hired in July to head the private Civic Council, arriving from Shreveport, La., where he served as executive director of The Downtown Development Authority.
Did you volunteer your services for the position or were you recruited?
The mayor-elect reached out to me. It’s wonderful and I am both honored and humbled by the opportunity.
What experience do you have working on a transition team?
I haven’t directly been involved in a mayoral transition, but I have been involved in similar work for different city administrations.
What do you perceive to be the greater challenges with the role?
The calendar is working against us. Between the co-chairs, committee chairs and volunteers, we have more than 150 people working together to come up with recommendations and file reports in a short time frame.
When will your job be done?
We are looking at around the end of this month.
What is the status of the Civic Council’s “City Budget and Pension Analysis Task Force” and will that be presented to Mayor-elect Brown?
We are pretty far down the road with it. Some of the information will be folded into the work of the different task forces that will offer their recommendations to Mayor-elect Brown. But, as for a freestanding report release, we haven’t made that decision yet.