Fulfilling Consolidation Promises Should be Top Priority
in Jobs for Jax Transportation Plan
The Ultimate Urban Circulator (U2C) and the Emerald Trail are compelling initiatives that could transform how Jacksonville citizens access and transit Downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. The Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) and Groundwork Jacksonville deserve credit for innovative planning to enhance our urban core.
But neither project should be the top transportation priority in the Jobs for Jax plan to extend and enhance the local option gas tax. Jacksonville cannot truly reach its future potential until it has fulfilled the nearly 55-year-old promises of consolidation. Keeping commitments made during the 1967 consolidation campaign must be the primary goal for the City of Jacksonville (COJ) and JTA utilizing revenue created by Jobs for Jax.
To their credit, both COJ and JTA have both recognized the importance of that goal. The Curry Administration plans to leverage Jobs for Jax revenue in fulfilling decades-old promises to replace septic tanks. It also proposes to invest in much-needed drainage improvements across Jacksonville.
Under the leadership of CEO Nat Ford, JTA has been a national model for advancing diversity and broadening food security and health care access through improved transportation. Additionally, JTA intends to use part of its Jobs for Jax revenue to improve bus stops throughout the city, including 111 in Northwest Jacksonville, and enhance major corridors like 8th Street, Dunn Avenue, Edgewood Avenue, Lem Turner Road, and Kings Avenue.
Jobs for Jax would benefit from even more of these kinds of infrastructure improvements. As I have previously written in the Florida Times-Union, The Jaxson, and in the 2019 update to A Quiet Revolution, the chronicle of Jacksonville’s historic city-county consolidation, our unique form of local government was founded in part on the notion that a single governmental unit could better deliver services and infrastructure to all neighborhoods.
During the consolidation campaign, advocates explicitly promised citizens throughout the community that merging the city and county governments would result in the paving and illumination of roads, building of sidewalks, replacement of septic tanks, enhancement of drainage systems, and other improvements to neighborhoods previously lacking those amenities.
Consolidation likely would not have passed but for those promises. As Jacksonville civil rights leader and former COJ official Alton Yates explained in 2018, conditions in some areas were dire. “It was kind of a secret that people were drinking water that was unhealthy, dealing with septic tanks which were backing up and overflowing, and living in neighborhoods where streets had never been paved,” remembered Yates. “There was dilapidated housing and children couldn’t go to school because of extreme poverty in which they lived.” It was the promise of improvements that persuaded many citizens to yield political power in favor of neighborhood investment.
Nearly 55 years later, many of the challenges persist yet promises to fix them remain unkept. Jobs for Jax could provide a meaningful down payment toward mitigating Jacksonville’s tale of two cities — one which has the infrastructure to enhance quality of life and economic development, another which has been denied previously assured improvements.
The calls to invest in the U2C and Emerald Trail are understandable. When I first wrote about the U2C in 2018, I praised JTA’s application of bold, cutting-edge thinking to Downtown transformation. I also joined others in recommending that JTA create destinations in neighborhoods like Durkeeville, Eastside and New Town. Brentwood and Phoenix could also be considered for the U2C circuit.
Groundwork Jacksonville has designed a “signature outdoor destination” that “will encompass approximately 30 miles of trails, greenways and parks that encircle the urban core and link at least 14 historic neighborhoods to Downtown, Hogans Creek, McCoys Creek, and the St. Johns River.” The Jaxson has accurately described the Emerald Trail as “an extremely ambitious long-term project, and one of Jacksonville’s best ideas in years.”
Yet neither the U2C nor the Emerald Trail is more important than Jacksonville keeping its decades-old promises to historically underserved neighborhoods. Both initiatives also have more funding options. They could receive federal and state funds given the heightened infrastructure interest in Washington and Tallahassee. Each project could also attract non-governmental partnership, as evidenced by JTA’s past efforts to identify private partners to build and operate the U2C and the Emerald Trail’s previous fundraising successes. As the last five decades have shown, the neighborhoods still waiting for promises to be fulfilled may not have the same access to capital.
As the Jacksonville City Council spends the next month examining Jobs for Jax, it will hear strong arguments for U2C and Emerald Trail investment. While both initiatives are worthy of support, that assistance must not come at the expense of long-deferred consolidation commitments. Our community’s first priority should be to ensure that every neighborhood promised sidewalks, paved streets, lighted roads, and other improvements nearly 55 years ago sees those promises fulfilled without further delay.
_________________________________________________________________
Chris Hand is an attorney who served as Chief of Staff at the City of Jacksonville. He authored the 50th anniversary update to A Quiet Revolution: The Consolidation of Jacksonville-Duval County & the Dynamics of Urban Political Reform. Some of this column was drawn from that update.
