The JAX2025 community visioning initiative transitioned from its "imagine" to "build" phase Wednesday.
About 250 people attended an "implementation orientation" that recapped progress made for the exercise and introduced four focus task forces for people to sign up and participate.
"We've got work to do," Ben Warner, Jacksonville Community Council Inc. CEO told the crowd.
The four areas were selected among 50 to be priorities for the next three to six months and were chosen because of their short-term success possibilities, community momentum and interest and their overlapping of other target areas.
The first four task forces are:
• Encouragement of bicycle and pedestrian transportation. Topics to address include encouraging carpooling and pedestrian-friendly and safe transportation in neighborhoods and the community.
• Working together for people. This includes a diverse and inclusive community that will "collapse the silos between organizations that are working on similar diversity issues."
• Distinctive neighborhoods. Strengthening the artist community and increasing venue, workspace and residential opportunities in arts districts; assistance to neighborhood associations and others for enhanced responsiveness from local government about issues; developing the "feel" of Downtown as a neighborhood; and strengthening financial literacy, earnings and stability all are aspects of the task force.
• Government openness and responsiveness. To develop and publish performance measures for government functions and reporting on effectiveness and efficiency while also improving government responsiveness and follow-through from local government.
Similar task forces will be introduced over the next several years to address other concerns that the community indicated in the visioning process, Warner said.
Warner said a quarterly report will be issued Oct. 10 on all of JAX2025's vision targets and that by January a benchmark system to establish progress made will be released.
More information on the task forces and other JAX2025 volunteer opportunities is available at jax2025.com.
"All the work we've done up until now is just the beginning. We've identified where the finish line is," he said.
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