Print ArticleThe mayor’s latest proposal has been dubbed the “Big Ideas” plan. Whose big ideas are they? Where was the public input? When was the town hall meeting? Why did the downtown core’s district councilperson, Suzanne Jenkins, know nothing about the “Big Ideas” plan until hours before it hit the newspaper? The mayor needs to take the lead from his predecessor, John Delaney, about getting public input. Delaney’s administration brought us “Celebrating the River”, our current downtown master plan. This plan, involved thousands of everyday citizens input. When Delaney wanted to kick-start development not just in downtown, but throughout the city, he worked with the City Council to get the issue on the ballot, so Jacksonville citizens could approve what is now known as “The Better Jacksonville Plan.”
No one is criticizing the concept of expanding our city parks. However, why don’t we focus on better maintenance of current parks, or development of parks in conjunction with the current Downtown Master Plan? One such example is the Hogan & McCoy’s Creek greenway, an eight mile long waterfront park referred to in the Downtown Master Plan as “The Emerald Necklace”. Why don’t we enhance the parks we already own before we create more?
While presenting at Councilwoman Jenkins’ town hall meeting, Metro Jacksonville mentioned the need to build public-private relationships. When developers want to build downtown we, as a city, need to embrace those pursuits. We do not need to encourage development offers and then impulsively terminate those offers when a re-election campaign becomes a priority. This practice not only turns off developers from working with the city, it frustrates taxpayers who have had to endure a multitude of plans with no development action to follow the rhetoric. It is obvious that citizens are passionate about downtown development. At the recent town hall meeting; there was standing room only in the city council chambers - which holds 400 people.
In speech it appears that the mayor’s office has an interest in seeing downtown prosper. In action, a mayor that claims to care so much about downtown scheduled a different public meeting at the same time as a town hall meeting regarding the future of downtown. Surely City Hall isn’t so big that news of a town hall meeting regarding the future of downtown couldn’t circulate from the city council offices to the mayor’s office in two weeks. If the mayor was truly concerned about the public’s feeling regarding downtown, why did no one from the mayor’s office appear at the town hall meeting?
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