The Jacksonville Electric Authority has had to face this challenge after a recent investigative report exposed numerous workers slacking on the job.  Bad media publicity about the quality of their linesmen could not have come at a worse time for JEA officials.  Already plagued by customers unhappy with increased fees and an ongoing criminal investigation into employee thefts; publicity on the laziness of their workers did nothing to improve a poor customer image. JEA managers now have an inordinately difficult task in regaining customer support while trying to discipline and restructure a heavily protected, union workforce.  If JEA managers are to succeed in this task, they will need to show the value their services provide to the community and demonstrate that they will no longer tolerate poor performance or criminal activity within their ranks. Motivating a beleaguered set of workers, who have been openly harassed by an outraged clientele, will not be an easy task.

However, JEA employees can be shown that they do indeed provide a valuable social purpose but managers must be specific in what they hope to achieve and provide ways that employees and customers can measure their success. If done properly, JEA officials can untangle the Gordian knot of problems they face and regain the confidence of a client-base by providing measurable goals that show their employees the value they are to their community.

When taxpayer dollars fund salaries, public scrutiny of job performance is always going to be high. JEA officials must account for the enhanced visibility their workforce is exposed to and instill in them a sense of purpose to serve the public.  If a workforce shows resolve in doing their job for the community, the public will notice and life for JEA managers will not be fraught with hostile customers and poor publicity. Workplace motivation and measurement can be an administrator’s best allies if their workforce is empowered with the belief that what they do has real merit and benefit.

Last month, Floridians were regaled with education reform plans by the usual suspects. The Governor offered the decidedly underwhelming goal of bringing funding almost back to 2007 levels, the year in which education funding peaked in Florida. The legislature is talking about rolling back the voters’ only failsafe to Jeb Bush’s “high stakes testing and vouchers” approach to education policy: lawmakers want to freeze the 2002 voter-mandated class-size reduction to be calculated at the school level, rather than the classroom level. Educators oppose that move. Lawmakers, in turn, resume their “teachers’ unions are obstructionist” refrain, and move to abridge teacher tenure protections.
But the most offensive source of proposed “education reform” comes from the business consortium, The Florida Council of 100. The group issued its report “Closing the Talent Gap” in partnership with the Florida Chamber of Commerce. To be fair, once you get past its bourgeois-reductionist characterization of “human capital” in the “talent supply chain” which makes our children look an awful lot like widgets, the report makes some good recommendations. Best practices—they’re in there. High standards—they’re in there. An understanding of the continuum of education from pre-K to workforce that involves alternative paths—that’s in there too. But when It comes to dedicating resources to bringing Florida’s lowest achievers up to those high standards, the Council of 100 does a tap-dance. Its authors write: “… [D]etermining an appropriate level of funding is an elusive goal.”

And so continues the sleight-of-hand that has characterized the conservative legislature’s approach to education for the past decade: a focus on accountability that highlights the system’s standards, leaving in sharp, standout relief the schools and students who fail to reach those standards. The funding question becomes conflated with the accountability question, with the latter soon swallowing the former. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle: “accountability” means we’re going to financially punish failing schools and never talk about the resource intensity it takes to serve lower-performing students, thereby preserving and perpetuating the failing schools. Then from their position of governance, lawmakers blame student failure on the very nature of “government” (aka public) schools.
Conservatives love to have kids “trapped in failing public schools” to whom they can then sell their mediocre voucher program. They don’t tell you that they spend less money on the poor voucher kids, turn a blind eye to the voucher kids’ teacher requirements, and exempt them from the high standards of the FCAT, all without getting any better outcomes for said children. It’s a magic trick that dazzled the eyes of the raters at Education Weekly magazine, which rated Florida 8th in the nation in its “Quality Counts” report issued last month.
Florida’s education professionals will tell you that what the state is ranked 8th for is its ability to micromanage. The rest of the “Quality Counts” report bears that out. Florida received an “A” for its standards and accountability. The state received a “B” on its metrics relating to teachers, which are largely a matter of policy. But on student achievement it received a “C,” and on students’ ability to move continuously through from pre-K to post-secondary education, a “C-.”

The prognostic value of the Quality Counts report becomes further suspect, the Orlando Sentinel reported in January, when you consider that it was based on data from 2007, Florida’s peak expenditure year. Education advocates say that the benefits reaped were a result of intensive teacher training and a focus on literacy and math coaches at the school level at the end of the previous decade. Meanwhile, in a ranking that looks solely at education spending as a percentage of each state’s budget, the Quality Counts study ranks Florida 39th of 50 in spending for its peak spending year!
The best of all possible news is that Florida now knows what a failing school looks like. Indications are that it also knows what it takes to turn failing schools around: targeted, science-based interventions; excellent teachers and principals; hard work. But does Florida know that the principals of its struggling schools are hitting the pavement in order to pay to for the science that we know works for our children? Do they know that their principals are sending out emails, for example, asking citizens to buy lip gloss to help underwrite the cost of intensive tutoring or Saturday school? Set aside the notion that particular principals might be better advised to seek corporate sponsorships to pay for the data-driven interventions that were once within their budgets. What happened to the state of Florida being the corporate sponsor for the public schools?
Does the Duval Delegation understand that a decade ago Duval Teachers United, unlike many teachers’ unions, already linked teacher evaluations to student performance? Does it know that DTU president Terrie Brady, with help from Ed Pratt Dannals, ushered in the prototype for “turnaround schools” ten years ago, using private dollars generated from the likes of Steve Pajcic, Wayne Hogan, Fred Schultz and others? And that Duval already has the “differentiated accountability” structure for evaluating teachers at low-performing schools, as the Council of 100 has suggested?
The district has also bent over backwards, in tandem with Duval Teachers United, to negotiate terms for receiving the Race to the Top funds for which Tallahassee and the Florida business community are pushing. Best case scenario: Race to the Top dollars will deliver $30 million over the next four years, or about $7.5 million per year. That’s a whopping ¾ of one percent to add to Duval’s annual operations budget to serve low-performing students.
Duval has looked at the parameters of the Race to the Top program and researched what it would take to “do it right,” Superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals told Folio Weekly. And that’s $48 million per year. The county already spends $25 million, leaving only a $15.5 million gap once we figure in the $7.5 million in Race to the Top grant money—if we get it. It remains to be seen whether the feds and the state will work with Duval County and the teachers’ union to allow sufficient time for their turnaround plans to work. It remains to be seen whether the state will allow “school recognition funds,” (i.e.., the money used to punish failing schools while rewarding schools with higher performing students,) to be put towards serving its most needy students.
So the next time you hear about “union obstructionism” in education reform, think about Terrie Brady and her decade-old teacher-driven initiative that the feds and the state are just now catching up to. The next time you hear that education reforms aren’t about money, ask yourself, as Florida has slashed education funding and given away $25 billion in tax cuts over the past decade, how the hell could we possibly know? And when your children’s principal tells you she needs for parents to go out and get corporate sponsorships for things that were once within her school budget, tell her you think you’ll go to Tallahassee instead.

Julie Delegal has three high-stakes investments in the Duval County Public Schools. Join her for the Florida PTA Rally in Tally on March 25. http://dccpta.org/

Sheriff Rutherford and State Attorney Corey fielded numerous questions on how their offices are dealing with the seeming disparity of crime and misconduct that has plagued certain parts of Jacksonville.  Citing impressive reductions in arrests and reported crime, Rutherford and Corey detailed how they are working in tandem to strengthen neighborhood ties and improve Constitutional training for Sheriff’s Deputies.  In spite of encouraging statistics, both the Sheriff and the State Attorney, called upon communities to never forget they too play a vital role.  Councilman Crescimbeni backed their statements by pointing out that city residents “outnumber Jacksonville’s leadership by nearly 850,000 people and it’s the residents of the City who are the real force in combating crimes.”

School Board Member, Brenda Priestly-Jackson, addressed the many concerns expressed by parents of children in Duval County schools.  Declining literacy rates and increasing drop-out rates were the biggest issues posed to her during the evening’s moderator-led discussion.  Along with the usual accolades placed on existing programs, Priestly-Jackson called for a concerted effort to target 14-16 year olds, who statistics show are at the highest risk of falling through the cracks. She stated there needs to be an emphasis on GED programs, vocational training and optional school hours that will give these teenagers alternatives to traditional curricula.  She too, looked for the community to help educators do their jobs and urged every family member and neighbor to “ask the questions, and demand the results” so the school system has the chance to make a difference.

Although the turn-out of elected leaders was impressive, some members of City Council declined to respond to invitations or refused to appear, in fear of the event being “nothing more than a gripe-session.”  Notably absent were City Council’s two presiding officers Richard Clark and Jack Webb, both who have been recent targets of Ethics Commission complaints.  With this event in the books, and organizers looking forward to future Accountability Forums, it remains to be seen if this will change the tone of responsiveness in Council Chambers – or will it be status quo in the Council Districts that lacked elected representation at this meeting.

Sparks flew at the Dec. 17 Charter Revision Commission meeting when Duval County School Board Member Tommy Hazouri leaked the results of a mayoral campaign poll: 84 percent of Jacksonville voters oppose replacing their elected school board with an appointed one.
When Hazouri implied that further discussion of the matter would be a “waste of time,” Commission Chairman Wyman Duggan interrupted him, saying tersely that he did not apologize for the work of his commission in fully exploring the proposal to appoint the School Board.

Ultimately, if the City Council likes the idea, we voters would decide whether to relinquish our electoral connections to our school board -- connections forged at PTA and SAC meetings, on the telephone, in the grocery store. We’d decide either by local referendum or by a state constitutional amendment referendum, depending on whom you ask. Those who advocate changing to an appointed board believe that Article VIII, Section 1(d) of the Florida Constitution permits county voters to change the way they put certain constitutional officers -- like the tax collector -- into office. The section doesn’t specifically mention school board members, however, and those who favor keeping the elected board point to a different section. Article IX is dedicated specifically to public school issues, and requires that school board members be chosen by a “vote of the electors.”
The “Article Niners” say such a change would require a state constitutional alteration, not a mere referendum. But we can’t take either side’s word on it. The final decision will rest with a state court judge or the First DCA or the Florida Supreme Court, after what could turn out to be a long and costly legal brouhaha. At the end of said brouhaha, both sides will know whether to hold a local or state referendum on the issue, at which point more time, talent and treasure will be put into both sides of that referendum campaign.
Or we can try to settle the debate here and now, which would require us to turn our attention to the most important question that emerged during the Dec. 17 Charter Revision Commission meeting. Commissioner Jeanne Miller posed it, to both Duval Schools’ Superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals and Board Chairman Brenda Priestly Jackson, after they completed lengthy presentations in favor of maintaining an elected board. Miller opened her question by citing Duval’s 69.6 percent graduation rate as evidence of poor performance. (Florida’s graduation rate is 78.9 percent by the same measure.) “What would be the harm,” she asked in light of these figures, “of a 10-year experiment [with an appointed board]?”

Answering Miller’s question entails tackling that question’s parameters, and Priestly Jackson took the commission to task for presenting graduation data absent accompanying socioeconomic data. Forty-eight percent of Duval students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, and as any University of North Florida education major can tell you, socio-economic status has a high positive correlation with academic performance. That doesn’t mean we lower standards—that means we as a community must dig a little deeper to serve all our students.

Jacksonville’s history and its population distinguish it from the bedroom communities of St. Johns County, for example. We in Duval have the largest minority population in Florida -- not Hillsborough, not Miami-Dade. When we talk about problems in public education in Jacksonville, we’re talking largely about poor and/or minority students -- not the children of highly educated exurban dwellers.

Comparisons that ignore these demographics are reminiscent of former Gov. Bush’s “private schools are better” argument. Sure they are -- until you control for the socioeconomic status of those schools’ students. When that data is factored in, private schools fare no better than public schools.
For years, national and state political leaders have decried the fact that “poor children” are “trapped” in “failing” public schools. Taxpayer- subsidized “choices,” private school vouchers, were peddled as the panacea. But in Florida, after a seven-year experiment with corporate tax vouchers, there is data that shows low-income voucher students performing no better in private-school settings than their income-level peers in public schools.

The problem isn’t that public education is inferior to private--it’s not. The problem is the flipside of our greatest aspirations as a democratic society: We want to educate everyone, and that’s resource intensive. With great vigor and honorable ideals, we’ve chosen the Mount Everest of goals. But instead of empowering educators to dig in and make the climb, we elect politicians who claim they have the secret to how to scale the summit without breaking a sweat. Instead of investing confidence in our highly trained professional teaching force, we take the advice of policymakers who (after all) went to school once. We micromanage, we demoralize and then we cut funding. And when, after all the attacks and decimation, it still doesn’t work right, we’re primed for the next politician’s silver bullet idea for reforming public education -- like appointed school boards.

The “harm” in switching from an elected to an appointed school board, Chairman Priestly Jackson told the Charter Revision Commission, is that it would dissolve the very bonds that we should be working to strengthen, the bonds between government and those who stand to lose -- or gain -- the most from public education policy: poor people and minorities. Ironically, some say that those bonds were strained to fragility by the original charter, the very process of city/county consolidation itself back in 1968. Many African-American voters viewed consolidation as a means, intentional or not, of diluting black political power in Jacksonville.

Add to the mix the historical impact of white flight from the city’s core; the traceable line of economic deterioration on Jacksonville’s Northside since at least the 1960s; the uneven busing practices for desegregation that had elementary-school-age black children boarding buses to cross the river to go to school, while white kids on the Southside weren’t required to board those buses until sixth or seventh grade. This history left a generation of Jacksonville’s African-American parents with no institutional memory of their own neighborhood’s core -- the elementary school.
These facts aren’t offered make excuses, or to transform a civic debate into a racial one, but to remind us who we are. We’re a city with a history of political and economic alienation that can’t afford to leave any stakeholders behind. In Jacksonville, the ropes between elected and electorate keep us all on the same climb.
And we now have a large web of stakeholders in place, coordinating to offer help, all at once. Just two years ago and for the first time ever, Jacksonville’s business and philanthropic leaders sat down with our homegrown Superintendent and our talented school board to produce a strategic plan for the public schools. Now we have benchmarks built on broad-based consensus. Notably, we also have a young, citizen-driven process that has begun to discern the city’s role in enhancing public education, the Jacksonville Journey.

Jacksonville has finally created an appropriately large table where stakeholders are already convening with rolled-up sleeves to tackle the challenges within our public schools. The question is not whether the city should upend this table and commandeer a new one in the form of an appointed board. The question is: What can the city bring to the table to help with the enormous workload?

In an effort to bring local officials and residents together, the event’s chairperson, Eunice Barnum, hopes that this event will “provide information to the public about each of their accomplishments since being voted into office.” But response to the event has been tepid, with only John Rutherford, Jerry Holland, Jim Overton, Matt Shirk, Angela Corey, Reginald Brown, Glorious Johnson, John Gaffney and Clay Yarborough agreeing to attend; even after every one of their elected colleagues received numerous invitations from the groups.

In light of current voter sentiment, it may not be an unexpected response to an event that will surely pose some tough questions for many of Jacksonville’s leaders. In the past year alone, two presiding members of City Council have come under fire by the Ethics Commission and one is  facing felony charges.  These antics, coupled with a double digit tax hike, have many residents wondering what the leaders they put in office are doing for their communities.  Accountability forums seek those answers and present a new grading scale elected officials will have to face, long before poll numbers are looked at in advance of elections.

Events, such as public issue forums, foster an environment where local leaders can come together with the communities they serve and better understand the needs and concerns of the electorate.  Choosing not to attend, speaks volumes on where a leader’s priorities lie and does little to bolster their once effervescent campaign promises of integrity and transparency.

With the current challenges Jacksonville faces, quality of leadership and accountability will be major factors when voters head to the polls and events such as this one will undoubtedly shape voter opinion. When elected officials shirk opportunities to address their performance with constituents, voters are further alienated and feel that the folks they put into office are nothing more than mythical creatures.  Leaders who have the fortitude to attend such events need to be commended with votes and those who scoff at the chance to meet the masses, may very well be looking for new employment in 2011.

Time will tell whether or not this will be the spark that Mayor Peyton wants it to be, but one thing is certain; downtown’s current dilemma started long ago.  The die was cast when a few premiere landowners grabbed large swaths of land east of the St Johns River and carved out City support for convenient urban exits leading to boulevards that bear their names today.  That land speculation, when combined with a post civil-rights urban exodus and America’s love affair with the automobile, set the stage for today’s downtown Jacksonville.

Focus on the urban core has come in fits and starts, while support for Southside growth has been unyielding and non-stop.  Year after year, acres of land acquired by a handful of 20^th century City-stalwarts have been transformed into the most desirable and burgeoning addresses in the City.  Office parks, strip malls and siloed communities (each seemingly with their own Publix) continue to turn pristine pinelands into a patchwork of suburbia while downtown Jacksonville dwindles.  Yet City leaders seem stumped at why the urban core resembles a ghost town.

In order to effectively grow the urban center, City leaders need to realize it wasn’t by happenstance that downtown faded away, but that it was more by design.  For years City Planners and Leaders have pandered to Southside landowners and developers by overlooking impact fees and happily rezoning land trusts for just about any project that crossed their credenzas.  All while, making conspicuously cozy deals for riverfront development that have only yielded taxpayers a few half empty, high-rise condominiums and a Grand Jury investigation.

Vibrant downtowns require a steady mix of long-term residents, shoppers and workers; all needing a reason to stay awhile.  If City leaders are finally serious about redeveloping an urban core, and capturing a population for more than an 8 hour shift, than they need to exhibit the same exuberance and cunning for downtown development that they put forth in building out the JTB Corridor. If not, than they need to come to the stark realization that downtown has been destined to what it has become by their own actions and will remain a transient hub, relegated for official errands and waterfront industry.

Southside development has shown that a Publix on every corner seems to work, so perhaps leaders need to implement a version of this model for downtown. Otherwise, they might as well save the taxpayers millions by scrapping the bejeweled pedestrian walkways and dredge the St John’s River to entice at least one revenue generating Shipyards project.

But I’m also appalled. The Lone Star article appeared in a section-front spot in the Times Union. And for more than a month these spots have been dedicated to the newspaper’s annual holiday season “Hope Fund” feature: a series of portraits of people in dire need of contributions from the Times Union’s generous readers. So I was conditioned and primed to read about a family in economic devastation, caused by illness, disability, unemployment, or refugee hardships. Instead, I read about how the public schools, too, are in dire straits, begging community organizations and businesses for help.

Just in case you think I’m exaggerating, consider the discussion that emerged at a recent SAC meeting at my children’s elementary school. The professionals there employ data-keeping techniques that allow them to zero-in on specific learning deficits that must be addressed in order for a given at-risk child to progress. Teachers and other personnel have the science that if properly applied, can make the difference between a little child learning to read and a little child being left behind. But due to budget cuts, my children’s principal is forced to choose which children will receive interventions: the younger, more malleable at-risk students, or the older ones who must pass the FCAT. She might be able to serve all of them, she tells us, if she could get a business sponsorship to help underwrite the tutoring and Saturday school. Or, she says, she could put the entire supplies budget towards these interventions; and ask parents to bring in gift cards to office and art supply stores.

Sure, as a parent, I’ll do that as often as I possibly can. As will other parents, who also bring stamps, toilet paper, paper towels, copy paper, etc. to the school, regularly. But where does it end? Are we going to be asked to send in light bulbs and floor wax next? Are we going to be asked to find corporate business sponsors to underwrite teachers’ salaries, or to pay the school’s electric bill?

Or are we going to demand, even in these hard times, that state lawmakers get their priorities straight? The assault on both the morale and the budgets of Florida’s educators began about a decade ago—amidst $20 billion in tax giveaways—and long before the 2008 market crash. Lawmakers need to act now, in anticipation of economic recovery, to dedicate a sustainable income source to public education in Florida. We can hold lawmakers accountable for fulfilling their constitutional “paramount duty” to provide a “high quality” education for all students in Florida, or we can sit and watch while our public schools become the next “Hope Fund” recipients.

One such corporation is Gerdau Ameristeel (“Ameristeel”), a large seller of steel products manufactured by their network of “mini-mills” located throughout the United States and Canada.  The company’s Jacksonville facility, located in Baldwin, currently employs slightly over 300 workers.  According to Ordinance 2009-940 recently introduced to the Jacksonville City Council, the company is requesting a 5-year exemption from the public service tax on electricity, a tax break it claims is necessary to make the Baldwin plant more competitive with the company’s other mills which would enable more work to be shifted to Jacksonville.  This request might seem reasonable if it didn’t follow other significant incentives provided to Ameristeel in recent years through the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission, including a $3 million grant in 2005 (after the company threatened to close the plant) and the issuance of $25 million in Industrial Development Bonds in 2006 that provided Ameristeel with a low-cost source of funds for facility improvements.

The wording of the proposed ordinance also raises doubts, since it lays out the company’s case in such strong terms that it makes me question whether the document was written at City Hall or at Ameristeel’s Tampa headquarters.  The bill’s hodgepodge of “facts and figures” (few of which are substantiated) left me feeling like the victim of an Enron-style investment pitch.  At minimum, the company’s assertion that JEA rates are out of line with rates charged by electric companies in other parts of the country should be confirmed with hard data.  If true, it means the city is operating with a clear competitive disadvantage in attracting any business that would consume significant amounts of electricity, a problem of far greater significance than appeasing a single company requesting a tax break.

My doubts about the information presented in the ordinance quickly turned into alarm when I began researching Ameristeel.  I found considerable evidence that the tactics used in Jacksonville are part of a normal set of business practices employed by the company throughout North America to extract financial incentives from state and local governments and weaken labor unions at its plants.  A review of Ameristeel’s dealings with workers and community leaders in Sand Springs, Oklahoma (a suburb of Tulsa) illustrates the company’s approach.

• June 2006 – Ameristeel purchases Sheffield Steel Corp. for $188 million
• Oct. 2007 – Forges new 4-year labor agreement with workers
• Dec. 2008 – Announces layoffs of roughly 40% of workers
• June 2009 – Begins talks with union heads about shutting down plant
• July 2009 – Seeks rescue package from state before making final decision on shutdown
• Aug. 2009 – Announces mass layoffs – requires workers to forfeit recall rights in order to receive severance payments
• Oct. 2009 – Shuts down plant
• Nov. 2009 – Begins talks with state and local officials on reopening plant, contingent on amount of financial incentives available

In another example, Ameristeel received $1.25 million in city and county grants in 2006 for its Charlotte plant less than one year after receiving a $300,000 grant from the state of North Carolina.

And if Ameristeel is in dire financial straits, you wouldn’t know it from the information presented at the Goldman Sachs Global Steel Conference earlier this month.  The presentation paints a clear picture of a strong company that has weathered the financial crisis and is well-positioned for future growth.  The company appears particularly eager to cash in on infrastructure projects associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, noting that “America’s infrastructure is in desperate need of investment.”

Regardless of one’s feelings about Ameristeel’s actions or economic development incentives in general, it is obvious that many companies view these programs as negotiable items that are part of their ongoing operations, rather than need-based incentives pursued infrequently and accepted with good faith intentions of maintaining long-term commitments to workers and local communities.  They also appear to be comfortable with promoting “bidding wars” between state and local governments, a harmful practice that weakens America’s economic stability.  It is time for elected officials and other government leaders to acknowledge this new reality by establishing clear guidelines and building the necessary skills and alliances required to negotiate these agreements from a position of strength.  If individual citizens are expected to view government assistance as “a hand up, not a handout” – corporations should be held to the same standard.  Most important, government officials and corporations alike must understand that taxpaying citizens will increasingly demand significant and verifiable returns on these incentives along with transparency into processes in order to hold all parties accountable for performance.

Earlier this year, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, in conjunction with the South Florida Water Management District, began the public comment phase of an ethnographic study of Gladesmen Culture as part of their Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). The Corps commissioned the study to determine the existence of traditional cultural properties that would help qualify places such as Mack’s for registry under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.  In order to qualify, these sites must be deemed to have been “associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or embody distinctive characteristics of a period.”

Although a final determination has yet to be made on registry of these sites, the cultural influence Gladesmen have made on the landscape of Southern Florida needs to garner historic protection.  Gladesmen have carved a unique culture out of a landscape fraught with challenges and have played a pivotal role in preserving a unique American frontier.  Today the family members who run Mack’s are among the staunchest proponents of Everglades’ restoration and certainly some of most knowledgeable naturalists the State of Florida has at its disposal. Nary a tree-island, gar or panther are unknown to these unique individuals.  Federal and State scientists and biologists regularly call upon their years of indigenous knowledge to assist in ongoing studies aimed at protecting this vital aquifer.  Thanks in large part to their generational knowledge of the land, its nuances and condition, the Gladesmen have shaped the direction of many of the restoration efforts currently underway.

As funding battles rage and restoration theories are hypothesized; it is the Gladesmen who can tell us that the Everglades are truly threatened.  They have seen, firsthand, the damage that over-development and disregard have had upon their land.  For over a century, these folks have had their finger on the pulse of the Glades and they feel it weakening each year.  Littered canals, pockmarked sawgrass prairies and invasive species are putting a stranglehold on Florida’s last great natural gem faster than ever before and protecting the Gladesmen culture is an integral part of reviving this great landscape.

State and Federal governments must recognize this threatened culture and way of life before it disappears.  Monies promised nearly a decade ago for preservation projects to undo the environmental and cultural damage caused by 70 years of greed, political pandering and ignorance are drying to a trickle.   Protecting the Gladesmen culture is the last best hope to keep the Everglades from becoming an historic footnote and erasing an important chapter in the annals of Florida history.

JPO will continue to follow progress of the Gladesmen Ethnographic Study and the CERP in future installments covering the health of the Everglades.

Local leaders successfully lobbied to have the ban temporarily lifted, but ARC’s decision illustrates how slippery a slope conservation efforts can become. Conservation of natural resources is a tremendously important policy issue that cannot become politicized or unduly influenced by one group, no matter how noble the cause may be. When this happens, due process becomes an endangered species and our environment becomes stripped of a precious resource we all cherish.

The recent action of the Florida ARC illustrates how fragile representative democracy can become in the face of lopsidedly zealous debate. Ignoring opposing viewpoints, shirking proper notification protocols and threatening park officials with draconian measures does absolutely nothing to promote the duties the ARC is charged with. If anything, the manner in which they acted, when considering this proposal, erodes their efficacy and standing with reasonable individuals.

Natural resources certainly need to be protected, but not at the cost of due process. The Florida Division of Land and ARC do some very important work, but when duplicitous measures are used to promote their agendas we all suffer. Proposals, such as the Huguenot Park closures, need to be judiciously reviewed before being hastily implemented. Detached reflection is what is expected of a policy making body when faced with difficult decisions; anything less amounts to a toxic mix of politics and passions.

To learn more about the proposed Huguenot Park Closures, read Scott Shine’s letter to the Duval County Legislative Delegation, reprinted in its entirety below:

To: Duval County Legislative Delegation

December 14, 2009

Subject: Beach Access Closure Proposal Catches Local Officials by Surprise.

Vehicle access to Florida Beaches is an area of responsibility delegated by the Florida Legislature to local municipal government (FS 161.58).

On December 10th 2009, the City of Jacksonville (COJ) Parks Management met with the Florida Division of Lands to review changes to the city’s management plan for Huguenot Memorial Park (HMP). The changes were offered by COJ on its own initiative, in an effort to facilitate wildlife and habitat protection at HMP. These actions included closing the emergent inlet shoals at Ft. George Inlet to vehicles and a plan to manage pedestrian activity in the Rufa Red Knot feeding areas along the shoals. Neither of these actions is required by federal or state law – Red Knots are not a “listed” species protected as threatened or endangered.

Audubon of Florida has been a member of COJ HMP Advisory Board and Shorebird Management Team for the past two years. Audubon has consistently said they are not for closing beach driving and have presented no such request to the COJ. As is noted in this quote last week from Audubon:

“Duval Audubon Society President Carole Adams said … the group isn't seeking to prohibit vehicle driving at Huguenot beach,” Florida Times Union 12/4/2009

However, on December 10th, the Florida Division of Lands Acquisition and Restoration Council (ARC) were presented with a proposal from Audubon to close approximately half of the beach at HMP managed under a lease from the state. The ARC took up the recommendation in its meeting on the 10th, acted unilaterally, affirmed it, and moved it for a vote of the full ARC on the following day.

While Audubon had been telling COJ officials and parks management that it did not support general beach closure to vehicles prior to the meeting, an email surfaced from Audubon’s Executive Director stating the following while the closure issue was pending in the ARC:

“In a fund-raising e-mail to supporters Friday, Draper [Audubon of Florida Executive Director] wrote he was on his way to hearing joining another staffer “in asking that one of the last refuges for shorebirds in Northeast Florida be closed to beach driving.” Florida Times Union 12/12/2009

In this same article, the leader of a statewide beach access advocacy organization, Florida Open Beaches Foundation expresses alarm. “It was an ambush, pure and simple,” said Robert Taylor, the group’s president.

Continued concern resulted from the fact that the closure proposal was not up for consideration and was not on the ARC agenda. It was not known to, or supported by the COJ Parks Department. No member of the Duval County Legislative Delegation, or the Jacksonville City Council were aware of the pending closure action by the ARC and had little opportunity to react to it. Vehicle access to Florida Beaches is one of the few areas of responsibility delegated by the Florida Legislature to local municipal government regarding beach management. Under Florida Statute 161.58 vehicle access limitations are the jurisdiction of the Jacksonville City Council and, by law, can only be eliminated with a 3/5ths majority vote of the City Council.

Quick actions by local elected officials persuaded the ARC not to act on the beach closure proposal in its full meeting on the Dec. 11th. This gave our leadership approximately one hour to react on the morning of the final meeting. Still, the ARC is withholding final approval of the COJ lease for the third time, now requesting a 100 year environmental impact study. Huguenot Park has existed as a landmass in its current configuration for only about 70 years. The ARC is also requiring the city to produce a “carrying capacity” anticipated to be used as mechanism to place a numerical cap on park access. The plan will be reviewed again by the ARC in one year.

Over 90% of the Florida state land in the upland at HMP’s beach front is designated as a Critical Wildlife Area by FWC and there is no public access of any kind allowed in that area. This Critical Wildlife Area makes up the vast majority of the city’s lease. It is ironic that COJ primarily provides beach access on the sovereign submerge lands areas of the beach (section Xs11 Florida Constitution, FS 161.58), while providing law enforcement and environmental protection to state lands the city and public have no recreational access to. Providing beach access is a mandate for COJ/Duval County under Florida’s Growth Management Act.

The COJ has successfully managed HMP for more than 25 years. Its management plan is supported by many organizations and individuals including the regional biologist for Florida Fish and Wildlife. The COJ has never been cited or deemed to be in volition of any wildlife protection as mandated under the Federal Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, or any other law mandating the protection of wildlife at HMP.

Scott Shine
HMP Advisory Board
HMP Shorebird Management Team