Jacksonville City Council president-elect Tommy Hazouri said Wednesday the city has entered an “era of enlightenment” that can take the outcry at protest rallies about racial injustice and turn it into actual progress.
Hazouri said he will form a social justice committee that will act as City Council’s clearinghouse for all legislation on that topic. The committee will start meeting next month.
“We’re going to be the bold new city of enlightenment of all the cities in the South,” Hazouri said during a Zoom meeting.
The meeting came a day after Mayor Lenny Curry ordered the removal of the Confederate soldier statue in Hemming Park across from City Hall.
While that action got loud cheers from a crowd that joined Jaguars running back Leonard Fournette for a “Black Lives Matter” walk, City Council members said the discussions about racial injustice in Jacksonville will not be an easy one to have.
They got a taste of that during their regular council meeting Tuesday when council member Aaron Bowman said tweets from another council member in recent days attacked his integrity and his professional reputation.
“We could be remembered as the council that did nothing but ridicule each other and maneuver for political gain, or we can be remembered as the council that worked together and changed the world,” Bowman said.
Council member Brenda Priestly Jackson — who tweeted last Friday she does not trust the Jacksonville Charter Revision Commission because Bowman appointed the members — denied Bowman’s accusation that he’d been called a racist in a different tweet several months ago.
“This is not a plantation,” Priestly Jackson said at the Tuesday council meeting. “No one is an overseer. We all have voice and vision and we’re all called to serve. I will not accept anyone misrepresenting that I called anyone a racist. I identified behaviors. If some feel those behaviors support that definition, that’s not on me.”
At the Wednesday meeting of City Council members, Curry joined Sheriff Mike Williams and State Attorney Melissa Nelson in giving brief statements about their desire to engage in discussions about how to move forward.
Curry repeated the pledge he made Tuesday at a rally outside City Hall that he wants to formally bring together his office, the sheriff, the state attorney, the public defender, and City Council, along with community members who are independent of his office.
He said he will file legislation in July for creating that commission. Because of City Council’s traditional summer break, the earliest it could vote on that legislation would be July 28.
Curry said his proposed 2020-21 budget, which he will submit in July, will continue to invest in neighborhoods.
Hazouri, whose term as council president starts July 1, said council members Matt Carlucci and Priestly Jackson will serve as co-chairmen of the social justice committee. He did not immediately announce the other committee members.
Hazouri said he wants to see a single Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast. For the past two years, the city has organized an MLK breakfast and at the same time, civil rights organizations have put together a breakfast in King’s honor.
Hazouri said a unified MLK Breakfast and removing Confederate monuments are important symbolic statements that “say who we are,” but the council needs to put money behind initiatives, too.
“It’s going to be expensive, but you know, you have to make the commitment today,” Hazouri said.
Bowman said “we may need to raise taxes. Yes, raise taxes.”
Bowman said the council Finance Committee will hear a presentation Tuesday from the Jacksonville Transportation Authority about how it uses the local 6-cent gas tax. The tax is slated to run through 2036 and under state law, it could be increased to as much as 12 cents per gallon over a 30-year period.
Bowman said last week he supports the Charter Revision Commission’s recommendation for creating an “urban core development authority” that would focus on an area of northwest Jacksonville that has historically had the highest rates of poverty, unemployment and crime in the city.
The authority would have a full-time staff and an appointed board, similar to the Downtown Investment Authority. Bowman said raising the gas tax would provide a funding stream for the development authority.
Priestly Jacksonville opposes an urban development authority, saying it’s another case of “Jax shenanighans” that would weaken council members from districts drawn to promote the election of African-Americans.
“Look at who is recommending what and ask yourselves why now?” she wrote last Friday in a tweet. “Whose agenda? Power grabs and marginalization are always at play in Jax.”
She wrote she doesn’t trust the Charter Revision Commission’s recommendations because it has “strong ties” to Bowman who appointed the commission members.
She said Bowman advanced the appointment of his one-time executive assistant Terrance Freeman to City Council when Gov. Rick Scott appointed Freeman in 2018, even though Freeman wasn’t a District 10 resident, according to Priestly Jackson’s tweet.
Priestly Jacksonville filed a lawsuit in 2018 contending Scott’s appointment of Freeman was unlawful because Freeman wasn’t a District 10 resident at the time. A state district judge dismissed the lawsuit.
Priestly won election to the District 10 seat in 2019 while Freeman won an at-large council seat.
Bowman said Tuesday that “social media attacks should be expected at student council but not be expected in City Council of the 12th largest city in the United States.”
Priestly Jacksonville previously criticized Bowman in a June 2019 Twitter post when she accused him of discrimination when he did not call on her and council member Ju’Coby Pittman, who also is African-American, during a council orientation session.
“This is our city and not a plantation,” she wrote in that Twitter post.
The Charter Revision Commission’s recommendation for creating an urban core development authority did not come up during the Wednesday meeting on Zoom.
Hazouri said Carlucci and Priestly Jackson can start working right away on organizational matters and the special committee will definitely have its first meeting in July.
