Three consecutive terms for City Council members.
City elections should move from the spring to November, but not in years voters decide presidents or governors.
Eliminate internal service charges and increase the role of neighborhood groups.
Months of meetings by the Task Force on Consolidated Government spawned those ideas and a slew of other proposed changes. Today, its final report will be released to the public with a format that pays homage to the 1966 report that helped birth consolidation.
The 118-page “Blueprint for Improvement II” details a review of questions and concerns that have cropped up in the 46 years of Jacksonville’s consolidated government.
City Council member Lori Boyer called the process “huge” in both scope and effort. She chaired the committee that had more than three dozen volunteers.
“There’s so much in so many different areas,” Boyer said of the review. “So much that I would never have known.”
Problems, needs and solutions — there were plenty of them.
Overall, consolidation performs well with its strong mayor form of government. And it should stay that way, members recommend. But, there are some issues.
The extended tax base that made Duval County the largest in the contiguous U.S. also had side effects. Sprawl led to population shifts and shifting infrastructure and social service priorities.
“Downtown has suffered from the suburban migration of offices and retail and is far less vibrant than it was in 1968,” reads the report, citing consolidation as “partly to blame.”
Poverty, low graduation rates and crime areas have expanded since 1968. Pollution and racial tensions have diminished in the same time.
Pension obligations have “skyrocketed,” but the task force didn’t touch that issue. Instead, it sided with the suggestions made by the mayor’s Retirement Reform Task Force.
Some of the focus areas, along with suggestions:
• The continuity of government and institutional knowledge. Allowing council members a third consecutive term would help. Having a strong chief administrative officer position who could serve beyond one mayor also would help. The position ideally incorporates a system of managerial oversight similar to a strict county manager system, which the commission rejected. Staggering council terms also was not an idea that members liked.
Overall, Boyer said the commission has a large concern over the lack of continuity.
The city, its independent authorities and constitutional officers should be aligned in its mission and a Strategic Commission should be created. Boyer said one example could be a “green” initiative in that the Jacksonville Transportation Authority, Jacksonville Port Authority, city and others would need to be on the same page with efforts to make such a policy drive happen.
As for the authorities and constitutional offices themselves, Boyer said it was determined not to bring them in under city control.
“They run their business, they run their shop better than we think we could or would,” she said. “It’s good they are independent.”
• Eliminate central service functions, which Boyer said was one of the bolder suggestions the task force suggested. Internal service charges are levied against departments for functions done by other city departments throughout the year. If eliminated, the commission believes overall costs would be reduced and usage of such
services voluntarily would increase.
• Neighborhoods need more than a “one size fits all” mentality that comes with consolidation. The report states one negative consequence has been a lack of responsiveness and individual attention given to neighborhoods with distinct identities. To help, a “Neighborhood Bill of Rights” needs to be incorporated to the charter and Citizen Planning Advisory Councils should be expanded. That includes CPAC members having input on development in their areas.
• An overall increase in effective, efficient government. There were several recommendations, including changes to the procurement code, zero-base budgeting city departments, a review of boards and commissions every four years and local elections moving to November.
• The need for more trust in government. One suggestion is to allow the Jacksonville Public Library to retain fines collected from their customers and applying them toward its departmental budget. Another is to create an ordinance establishing a clear scoring criterion for Capital Improvement Plan projects. Making council larger “was rejected as impractical,” while Boyer said the idea to make the group smaller “didn’t make sense” to commission members. So, it stays at 19 members.
While the commission adjourned in May, Boyer and Damian Cook, an executive administrator for the project, have spent months fine tuning the final report that will be presented to former council President Bill Gulliford and President Clay Yarborough at 10 a.m.
Gulliford said this morning that he had seen the report and it was “exactly what I hoped for” when he appointed Boyer last year to the task.
“It’s well thought out, it was debated … it covers a lot of areas,” Gulliford said. “The most important part is going to be implementation. If we don’t, shame on us.”
He said he wasn’t in a position to determine what point should first be addressed, but he wants to have weekly public meetings with Boyer to go over the report.
As for concepts he agreed with, Gulliford said he liked the idea of eliminating central services and a refocus on neighborhoods demands attention.
Boyer said that outside of her normal council duties, it’s been the most time-consuming endeavor she’s undertaken in office. But, she said she was impressed by the commitment of the almost three dozen members and volunteers who spent months working on the review.
“It’s one of the great things about Jacksonville,” she said. “We just have a huge percentage of people who want to make it better, which is so evident by the time and effort on this.”
The cost for the report was about $16,000 for Cook’s time, based on hourly pay that paid by the Jessie Ball duPont Fund.
@writerchapman
(904) 356-2466