CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION MEETING DATE: Thursday ...apps2.coj.net/City_Council_Public_Notices_Repository/09-26-19CRC.pdfSep 26, 2019 · 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

FIRST COAST COURT REPORTERS

CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION MEETING

DATE: Thursday, September 26, 2019

TIME: 9:04 a.m. - 11:43 a.m.

PLACE: Jacksonville City Council ChamberFirst Floor City Hall at St. James Building117 West Duval StreetJacksonville, Florida 32202

BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT:Lindsey Brock, ChairpersonAnn-Marie Knight, Vice ChairpersonJessica Baker, Board MemberFrank Denton, Board MemberCharles Griggs, Board MemberChris Hagan, Board MemberHeidi Jameson, Board MemberEmily Lisska, Board MemberCelestine Mills, Board MemberBetzy Santiago, Board MemberHon. Matt Schellenberg, Board MemberHon. Ronald V. Swanson, Board Member

ALSO PRESENT:

CRC Staff:

Carol Owens, Chief of Legislative ServicesJessica Smith, Legislative Assistant Anthony Baltiero, Council ResearchJeff Clements, Council Research

Paige Johnston, Office of General Counsel William Coffee, Information systems

administrator.

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P R O C E E D I N G S

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: We're going to

begin. I will call the meeting to order at

9:04. I want to thank everyone. And we

will start off with approval of the minutes.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: So moved.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Any discussion?

All in favor, aye.

COLLECTIVELY: Aye.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Any opposed?

All right. The meeting minutes are

accepted.

Remarks from the Chair, those of you who

watched, I believe, as Ms. Lisska did to the

bitter end --

COMMISSIONER LISSKA: I did.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: I'm still Chair and

a member.

And more importantly, we have Judge

Swanson, who has joined our ranks. So I

can't remember if I had you do what I asked

everyone else to do, which is tell us a fun

fact about you that is not on your résumé,

it's just something that, wow, you know, let

me tell you this.

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Hit the white mike button and then --

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Okay. Got it.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Put you on the spot.

Now you know how it feels for us attorneys.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: I went to

undergraduate school in Tallahassee at

Florida State. And in 1967 I met my wife at

a keg party. She was out on a date with my

roommate. He was six-five and she's

five-foot-one. And I asked him after he was

out with her if he'd mind if I asked her

out. And he said, heck, no, man, that girl

doesn't even come up to my chest. So that's

a fun fact.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: That's awesome.

That's great. Thank you.

A bit of scheduling that I wanted to go

over. As Former Councilman Schellenberg

indicated, the date that I was looking at

for our town hall was October 9, and that

was a -- excuse me, was it October 9? Yeah,

October 9. And that was a -- had a conflict

with Yom Kippur and Wednesday services for

many. So the next one that I was going to

look at to see if it met with everyone's

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schedule was October 17, that's after our

meeting on the 15th, two days after, but it

will be before what I hope will be our

meeting to where we begin to rank our

priorities. And I don't have the calendar

where we had all marked good dates or bad

dates.

You do? Okay.

We would do it from 5- -- I believe we

said 5:30 to 7:00, hour and a half, or we

can do 5:30 to 7:30, two hours. That allows

people who would be coming in, but we would

do it at the main library downtown. And

we're good?

COMMISSIONER DENTON: I'm not.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: You're not and

you're not.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: (Inaudible.)

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: For the 17th, the

evening of the 17th, you're okay?

COMMISSIONER MILLS: I'm okay. I can do

it.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Okay. Then we will

reach out to --

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: I won't be

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here, but that's fine.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: So we would only

have two -- all right. So we will move

forward then with the 17th as our town hall.

And I'm going to do everything I can to make

sure that that date gets out there and that

people are aware of it so that hopefully we

will have a lot of input from the public on

that.

I also want to make sure everyone is

going over -- you should have your copy of

the topics. Again, what I'm hoping to be

able to do -- what I'm hoping to be able to

do is -- you'll notice we have broad topics

and then we have smaller bullet points

underneath. I'm trying to gather those

small bullet points under the broad topics.

My thought, and I wanted to get the

input from the Body on this, is that when we

are ranking, we will rank these broader

topics. And we will get -- because we have

so many smaller bullet points that will

probably fall underneath them, my thought is

that we'll have probably three that we say

we're going to work on for these broader

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topics.

Underneath those broader topics will be

a lot of bullet points. Like, you'll see,

you know, with OGC we had several that had

fallen underneath it, government structure,

those types of things to where we have a lot

of different ideas within that.

Then we will have the subcommittees that

will be formed for each of those. And when

we're doing the committee work, again, it

will be much like what we're doing here,

we'll bring in folks to come and talk,

educate us, help us begin to see what areas

have the best traction where we can really

make a difference.

Then those subcommittees will be coming

back and reporting to the Body as a whole,

which means as a -- as an entire body, after

October, I believe, unless we see there is a

need to meet more often, then we will meet

as a whole once a month.

And we will have at that meeting all the

subcommittees will come back and report

where they are, what they're working on, get

feedback from all of us on those issues.

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And then we can go back and do the committee

work that needs to be done. So our meetings

as a whole will simply be reporting back,

getting feedback from the other members on

the Commission and, you know, going through

that.

Now, our report is due the end of March,

but if your subcommittee says, you know

what, we think we've got it, we think we've

got our consensus, we've got our language

down and it's before then, we can go ahead

and lock that in and have that set so that

we're not scrambling at the end of March

trying to put together our final report.

Does that seem like a good process?

Mr. Denton.

COMMISSIONER DENTON: I assume your

number three broad topics is arbitrary and

aspirational --

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Yes.

COMMISSIONER DENTON: -- but that once

we start working through these, it might be

more. Otherwise, I think we might end up

trying to fit something that might not fit

under that broad topic. And if this group,

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we decide we want to look into that area --

three seems a little small to me, but I

appreciate it as a goal.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: And you're exactly

correct. If when we go through the rankings

that the top two are very small, discreet

issues with a rifle view on it, then,

absolutely, we can certainly go through and

add more on to it. My concern is if we end

up with three broad shotgun ones with five

or six bullet points underneath there,

that's going to take a lot of committee work

to go through those.

So with that --

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Mr. Chair.


COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Sorry. The three

broad topics, do you have at this point any

inclination where you would like to go with

that or is that something that we're going

to determine as we go?

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: So the three broad

topics, my goal is that next-to-the-last

meeting in October, we will have worked out

the language -- that's why I want everybody

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to look at those topics, and then we can get

a fresh copy circulated around to everyone.

But that's why I want you to look at those

topics, because we're going to rank them.

You're going to say, this is my number one

priority. We're going to get our own little

experiment of rank choice voting. We're

going to go through and we're going to write

them number one, number two, number three.

And we're going to go through and we're

going to count them. And we're going to

say, okay, this one got the most number

ones. Then, okay, what is our number two,

does everybody agree with that.

And we're going to go through, and those

top three vote-getters, I want us to look at

those and say, do we think this is enough?

Or as Mr. Denton suggested, perhaps one of

these is very discreet and we can say, you

know what, we can get another broad topic in

there that we're looking at.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Are you at all

concerned that our town -- our town hall

meeting is scheduled for the 17th -- it may

produce some significant information that

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may require us to do additional work prior

to determining what our broad areas are, our

focus areas are?

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: That may occur. If

it does, we will deal with it at that time.

That's why I was trying to get us two

meetings before we would actually, you

know -- reserving those last two meetings of

October for the priorities. It may be that

you're exactly right, that we look at it and

come back and we're there on that third one

and we're saying, you know what, we need to

get some people in here or perhaps even

after the town hall meeting we can go ahead

and get people to come in and speak.

But at this point, that's the plan, but

as, you know, Mike Tyson says, Everybody has

a plan until they get punched in the face.

We'll see how it all works.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Okay. My last

question is related to the town hall

meeting. Have you sort of thought through

what the format of that would be? Is it

just primarily a listening session for us?

Or is it give-and-take for us to ask

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questions of the public? Or what are we

looking for? Are we looking for people to

come with ideas? Or they're coming to see

what we're doing?

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: My --

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Or is this a

meeting that we're conducting at the library

so people can have another opportunity to

participate in a formal CRC meeting?

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Yes. That is it.

It is designed -- my goal for it was to

simply have it be us listening to the

public. Obviously, if somebody has a

question, I'd like to keep the questions

down to a minimum so we can get the most

input from the public, but the goal is to

have that town hall meeting as us listening

to them.

We will pass out our topics, our broad

topics that we're looking at, so that

everyone has that there, the public does,

they'll have access to that and they'll be

able to look at it. But then it's for us to

listen to them.

COMMISSIONER JAMESON: Will there be a

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format, structure and time limit for these

comments just so that we can get through

everybody in a short period of time?

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: My goal, again, is

to use the same as here, have a three-minute

time limit for those making public comment.

If we have questions and everything in

there, obviously, we'll extend the time for

any give-and-take, but that was my first

thoughts on it.

COMMISSIONER JAMESON: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Mr. Schellenberg.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Thank you,

Chair. As I mentioned to you before the

meeting, I just wanted to update you. I

spoke to Dr. Leon Haley. He sent me and I

think that Carol is going to forward to you

his presentation that he did to Jax USA

about six months, maybe a year ago, I can't

remember. But I think it's -- I'm not going

to tell you the direction, but the City owns

the facility. The City has to make a

commitment for infrastructure for the next

five years at $15 million a year.

Operational-wise, though, if you look at

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the numbers, it really -- our contribution

to them has basically been flat. It has

gone up, but basically been flat for like 25

years. And they take care of most of the

indigent in town.

So I think it's something that, if you

would read it -- I asked him if he wanted to

come today. He -- I said, no, why don't we

have an opportunity to read his program and

then we'll be prepared to ask some questions

when he does, in fact, come this next week,

or the next meeting.

I want to echo Frank's comment. I don't

want to do what the Florida Constitution

Revision did bundling all these things so

really no one knows what actually we're

voting for, and be more focussed. I also

believe this one town hall meeting will be

the first one, but as you break out to these

subcommittees, that's when you can get a lot

more input going forward for that specific

topic. Because some people might not be

interested in everything we're looking at,

but they might be interested in one idea.

So greatly appreciate your willing ness to

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do all this, having multiple town hall

meetings in the future.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: And I will add that

if your subcommittee believes that it would

be helpful for you to have a town hall

meeting for your subcommittee, you're more

than able to do that as well.

Ms. Lisska.

COMMISSIONER LISSKA: Mr. Chairman, I'm

a little concerned about several of the

items under the big headings. So in many

cases some of these items, I think, need to

be looked at anyway, and yet the broad topic

may not come up as a priority. Is it

possible after we -- you know, can we maybe

create a list of items that don't come up

under a broad topic for this Commission to

take up as a whole, a body of the whole?

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Make it a list of

items that don't come up?

COMMISSIONER LISSKA: If we follow what

your charge roughly is, you haven't held us

to this, we pick three main topics, or

roughly three, and divide into committees,

so that leaves quite a bit of the list. And

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there are some -- a cleanup issue or two,

there are a few other issues, where I

consider them the priority, I might not some

others. These are just issues under main

headings that perhaps we could take up if

they don't make the cut.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Yes. Again, the

goal of the ranking of the broader topics

assigned to the subcommittee is for that

subcommittee to be focused on that

overarching topic. So I hope that all the

subcommittees will stay in their lane on

that broader issue.

But the point of having those smaller

items underneath it is just a guidance of

saying, here are the things -- under this

topic, here are the things that we have

collectively said should be looked at under

that topic.

As you go through in your committee

work, you may say, okay, well, we've got

five items under here, but we really think

if we focus in on these two, that we can get

consensus and, you know, do that. But it

doesn't mean that you don't consider

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anything that's not listed there.

COMMISSIONER LISSKA: Or not in that --

well, you're saying stay in our lane, I

certainly understand that for a committee.

I'm talking about areas we do not select

that perhaps have a cleanup issue, an issue

of great importance but the major area is

not a priority. That's -- I'm really

talking about the areas that don't make the

cut, don't have a committee assigned.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Those areas would

not be taken up.

COMMISSIONER LISSKA: Okay. I'm going

to spend some more time studying this and

pull out some items, if you don't mind.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Please do, please

do, because that's what I'm hoping, you

know, especially through these next few

meetings, that everybody is doing, so that

when we get down to the Commission updates

and discussion, is you can come in and say,

hey, I've gone through it, I'm looking at

this and I would like for us to break this

up.

I don't want to do formal, you know,

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motions and votes. I prefer that we do that

kind of work on a consensus basis so that

we're all looking at it and saying, okay,

that makes sense, let's adjust the list that

way so that we've got a good, solid list

that we can all understand what it is, all

understand what each topic covers, and we

can then rank our priorities. All right.

COMMISSIONER LISSKA: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: I don't see anyone

else on the queue, so we will go into our

first period of public comment. And I have

Ms. Bussard.

I apologize, I mispronounced your name

the first time. Give us your name and

address, please.

MS. BUSSARD: No problem. I want to

clean up a couple of comments made from the

last meeting, the Australian --

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Name and

address, please.

MS. BUSSARD: Oh, I'm sorry. Billee

Bussard, 2115 Forest Gate Drive East,

Jacksonville 32246.

I want to clean up a couple items from

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the last meeting that people commented on,

they talked about Australian schools and the

number of nongovernmental schools that they

had. I studied this a little bit about 15

years ago and there was a lot of controversy

because it wound up that lobbying groups for

nongovernmental schools were very strong and

politically powerful. And those schools

wound up actually getting more money than

public schools. So I suggest if somebody is

suggesting that as a model, that they look

at it, look at the schools, the Australian

schools.

The other thing I did -- as I mentioned

to you, I've been trying for years to write

a book. As a result of the research I did

when I was a journalist looking at

education. And I made for you notes that I

had taken. It's kind of a timeline showing

you what set the stage for school

privatization and charters and the money

motives behind it. If anybody wants more

information or a list of books and

references, I'd be happy to give it to you.

The other thing is when -- I was

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concerned about Jason Fischer's public

comments. In 2014 he was pressuring the

school boards to drop out of a race -- I

mean, drop out of a lawsuit about public

money, tax money in public schools. I --

prompted by no one but my concern, I did

this timeline showing Mr. Fischer's

connections to charter schools. And if you

look at his campaign contributions, you will

find a lot of the ties there. So I think we

have to look at some of this testimony with

a jaundiced eye. Am I done? I'm done.

Thank you and thank you for your patience

with me.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Thank you very much.

Next we have Mr. Nooney.

Name and address, please, sir.

MR. NOONEY: Hello. My name is John

Nooney, 8356 Bascom Road, Jacksonville,

Florida 32216.

And I just want to start by saying we

need to make our Charter great again. I

pledge allegiance to the flag of the United

States of America, and to the republic for

which it stands, one nation under God,

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indivisible, with liberty and justice for

all.

Now, we have so many boards and

commissions. And it just came to me that

here is the agenda for the Charter Revision

Commission and after call to order, we don't

have the Pledge of Allegiance.

Now, I have some handouts. And I was

just told it wasn't really time -- or -- but

I'll have to make them again. And I'll just

flip through it, but here is the agenda from

the July 31st Charter Revision Commission

and we don't have the Pledge of Allegiance

after the introduction by Council President

Scott Wilson and we didn't have public

comment.

Now, you open it up, and I'm just going

through some -- well, and the other thing

too is the time limit. I hope -- you know,

I'm just down to a-minute-20.

But here is a Task Force on Safety and

Crime Reduction. You know what, and on the

agenda, this is a subcommittee, we don't

have the Pledge of Allegiance. Here is

another one with the Waterways subcommittee,

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we don't have the Pledge of Allegiance.

But yesterday -- and I'm just down to a

minute -- I attended the Council on Elder

Affairs yesterday right here, yesterday's

meeting, the Council of Elder Affairs, call

to order, the Pledge of Allegiance.

Councilman Sam Newby, at-large, Group 5, was

at the meeting, at the beginning and also at

the end of the meeting. And he addressed in

his remarks, at the beginning of the

meeting, about the greatest generation. And

here is the Pledge of Allegiance.

And so during public comment I just

simply said, Will the Council on Elder

Affairs sponsor a resolution to the CRC,

Charter Revision Commission, that will

create a Charter amendment to our Charter

that will have the Pledge of Allegiance on

the agenda for every board, commission,

subcommittee meeting in Duval County? It's

that simple.

So that is something I hope that you

will look into. I'm down to five minutes

(sic). That should be in our Charter.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Thank you, sir.

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MR. NOONEY: Thank you for listening.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: All right. We now

move to presentations by invited speakers.

And I see the Honorable Mr. Jim Overton in

our audience.

Sir, you have the floor.

MR. OVERTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning. How do you want to proceed?

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Well, I know you and

I had spoken. And so I think probably if

there are some ideas that you have that you

think we should be looking at as it relates

to your office and then we may have some

questions ourselves.

MR. OVERTON: And how much time do you

think you want to devote to this?

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: In general -- what

we're trying to work for is about 15 to 20

minutes and then the questions after that.

Sometimes it gets a bit long, but we'll be

respectful of your time.

MR. OVERTON: I want to be respectful of

yours is more the issue. You have a lot on

your plate.

So I've been Tax Collector since July

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the 1st. In this term, I was selected for

the unfilled term of Michael Corrigan in

last year's November election. Prior to

that I was Property Appraiser for 12 years.

Prior to that I was on the Council for ten

years, Tillie Fowler was an unfilled term in

1992. Then was elected twice after that.

So that's my experience in this government.

I would say that what happened at

consolidation in terms of the Tax

Collector's Office is that it was sort of

lumped together with the other

constitutional offices. And they didn't

have any real notion of what to do with it

other than they had originally intended to

put the Tax Collector in the treasury of the

city. And they realized that was going to

be problematic.

So they -- what the Charter says is, to

conform to typical Florida government, we're

going to have these people elected. So

that's where it stood all these years.

The Tax Collector, Property Appraiser

don't have the autonomy they would have in

any other county and state -- well, most

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other counties in the state of Florida.

Miami is another example of a county like

this.

So only Volusia, Broward and Dade and us

that have sort of the system we've got where

the Tax Collector and Property Appraiser

present their budget to the City in this

case. In any other county, that wouldn't be

the case; they'd present it to the

Department of Revenue in Tallahassee, and

the department would -- they have a bunch of

ratios and they look at people across the

state and they would determine what the

budget should be. So that's called a --

we're called a budget county and everybody

else is called a fee county.

So counties that we compete with that do

a little better in these jobs, I think,

Orlando, Hillsborough, Palm Beach, in

particular, have a different system.

We operate on a budget of about $18

million. We collect over $2 billion. So

our cost to collect is under one percent.

In any other county it would be about a two

percent fee.

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In any other county, the City would pay

that two percent fee. The City doesn't do

that. So we're cheaper to operate than

other counties and we suffer somewhat by

comparison because of that. That's what I

was talking with you about the other day --

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Okay.

MR. OVERTON: -- that we've got this

budget system versus a fee system, the

people who do better have the fee system.

Right now we -- we're spending about

$18.8 million in the city budget every year.

If we were on a fee system, we'd be

spending -- or we would have access to 53

million, $53.6 million. So that's a

significant difference.

Now, what happens in those fee counties

is they remit back to the county -- well,

the various taxing authorities, not just to

the county -- but leftover money at the end

of the year. So DOR, when you prepare a

budget that way, they would expect you to

return a large portion of that budget back

to the various taxing authorities from which

it came. They charge two percent to every

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one of those taxing authorities and you send

some of it back at the end of the year after

you've expended your budget.

We also -- I think it's important to

realize that we are -- and every Tax

Collector in the State of Florida does

state -- deliver state services at the local

level. So virtually everything we do is

mandated by statute or constitution. Very

little of what we do is mentioned or

controlled by the City of Jacksonville.

If you look at the Charter, we're

mentioned a few times in there. We're

described as what the office is going to be,

and if it's going to exist, and it's going

to be part and parcel to the City of

Jacksonville, but there is almost no mention

of it. So everything we look at in terms of

what our rules are comes down to statute or

the administrative rules of the State of

Florida, the 12D rules.

We use all of the services of the

consolidated city, which I think is a good

idea, by the way; I think it's economical to

do that. We use HR, we use IT, we use legal

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services. Some of those things are not

without their problems because we stand in

line with every other division and

department of the City for whatever it is

we're getting.

Right now I'm waiting for a contract

from Jones Services, it's been in their

possession since July. And we can't get it

going. We've got a lease agreement that

took three, four months to prepare. We've

got -- I asked for -- to get in line on

rehabbing our website the first day I came

into office in last November. I don't know

where we are in the queue, but we're -- we

haven't been -- we're not touching it yet.

So those types of things -- in other

counties those things would be -- you go get

a bid, you procure the services and you

start. In this county, you know, we're in

there with everybody else. So it's --

that's a bit of a frustration.

With IT, for example, I think there is

almost no way we would want to be separate

from the county. One of the clerks in the

past tried some of that and I don't think it

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worked that well. In procurement, I think

it works pretty well, the way we've got it

set up. We use the procurement department

and we go through the same public service --

what do they call it -- committees, the

selection committees that the City is using

for all their procurement. That seems to

work pretty well.

We have some complaint with the General

Counsel, which -- this won't be any surprise

for them to hear. They assign us a part of

one of their staff, who is also assigned to

the property appraiser, but she's also got

15 other things on her plate, litigation,

all kinds of complaints and stuff like that.

So we have a -- we kind of have to fight for

attention from the General Counsel's Office.

So that's one of my complaints about

consolidation.

I don't know if anything else is

something that we want to discuss. We can

discuss term limits, but I'm not sure that's

an issue that I'm -- on my level I don't

have much to say about it, what you might

say about it, sir.

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Generally, I think term limits for

constitutional offices are too short, an

eight-year term is too short. I don't know

what the answer is. Orlando put in a

16-year term, they seem to think that's

okay. Most counties don't have term limits

on constitutional officers, including the

sheriff.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: I'm sorry to

interrupt. You said 16-year term limit, did

you mean four four-year terms or --

MR. OVERTON: Yeah, four fours. That

was the Orlando solution to sort of -- see,

Orlando had -- the guy's name is Woods. He

was in office as the Tax Collector for a

couple of generations. Left office at 94, I

think. And you can imagine that he was only

partially fulfilling his obligations at that

age. Not that there is anything wrong with

being 94, but it's a long time to stay in

office.

I think -- their solution was a 16-year

term. I don't know that it's -- any of

those term limits are legal, by the way,

post Amendment 10, which is in the last

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election. But, you know, somebody is going

to try that one day, and we'll see what

happens.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: All right. I

have -- oh, a bunch of people popped up on

the queue.

Mr. Schellenberg.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Through the

Chair to Mr. Overton, thank you very much.

I only have five minutes, but have you

looked at rank voting at all?

MR. OVERTON: I have never looked at --

I mean, I know they use it in Australia, but

I don't know much about rank voting.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: They do it

in Maine, as well as a county in Florida.

MR. OVERTON: What county in Florida?

Is it okay to --

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: You can.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: We know each

other.

I can't remember what it is.

MR. OVERTON: I knew one in Maine did

it.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: So a couple

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other questions. Kind of interesting that

you served ten years at City Council and, I

think, eight years is good for City Council,

you probably -- but couple questions:

During my time we're losing a lot of polling

places because of religious issues, I think,

going forward. Do you see eventually we'll

go to online voting?

MR. OVERTON: We could go to online

voting now. There is a security issue, you

know, to make sure that there is a handshake

on both sides.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: The reason

why I say it is, is because this would save

substantial amounts of money, because you

have to hire -- I can't remember the number

per polling place, but they have to be there

from 7:00 to 7:00. And this would, I think,

save money, that's why I'm asking the

question.

MR. OVERTON: We have the same issue in

our office as far as email addresses are

concerned. We're not really allowed to keep

email addresses and use email, but we can

pay our taxes that way too. I can send you

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your tax bill by email in a secure way, and

you can then pay your taxes without having

to get a bill, which is, of course, 3-,

$400,000 a year we'd save in that.

So one of these days we're going to

figure out a way to make the Internet secure

enough so we can do things like that.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Well, I

would say that a lot of people do a lot of

things on the Internet and they feel fairly

secure.

The priorities that you said, web pages,

why do you think it is that it's taking so

long to get the priority for you to have a

good -- I obviously look SOE occasionally,

it is very cumbersome and not very user

friendly.

MR. OVERTON: You know, I'm not SOE, by

the way.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: I'm sorry.

Tax Collector.

MR. OVERTON: But I -- well, I use the

Property Appraiser's website all the time.

It's, frankly, the website I put together

when I was Property Appraiser, so, yeah.

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COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: What is the

incentive for them to be more responsive to

you? Okay, how about this question: We are

a consolidated government. Are there

certain areas of consolidation today that

aren't working? And you mentioned a couple

of them. Would you say that maybe we should

have a certain amount of independence in

some of these? Is that what you're

implying?

MR. OVERTON: Well, in other counties

that's the way it works. And they produce

better, they do better. They're more --

they're more impressive in terms of the

level of service they provide, than we

offer.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Then would

you do me a favor, send me and the Committee

areas in which you think it would be better

to -- not de-consolidate, but be a little

bit more efficient on your end to let us

look at and see if there is anything in the

Charter that we might be able to address.

MR. OVERTON: I don't know what in the

Charter. Years ago -- this is a Mullaney

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decision years ago. Hogan -- is it okay to

talk about a little history here?


MR. OVERTON: Mr. Hogan, when he was Tax

Collector beginning his second term, elected

to be a fee county and sent the letter to

the Department of Revenue. And they

responded by saying, well, what does your

General Counsel say as to what you may or

may not do under your Charter. And the

decision came back from Mullaney -- it's a

long decision -- it essentially said the Tax

Collector is part and parcel to the county,

so consequently part and parcel of the

consolidated government. And so it will

present its budget to the City Council -- to

the Mayor, actually, in this system, and

then be voted on by the City Council, rather

than going to DOR with a copy back to the

county. So that decision has been -- it's

never been challenged, but it's out there,

and that's the one we're operating under

right now.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Thank you

very much, Mr. Overton.

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CHAIRPERSON BROCK: All right. Next I

have Mr. Griggs.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Thank you,

Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Overton, thank you very much for

being here and offering your thoughts on the

Tax Collector's Office. It is my

understanding that the Tax Collector's

Office, under our consolidated government,

operates pretty much as, you know, the

catchall for all of the utilities and bills

that need to be paid to our government;

correct?

MR. OVERTON: Yes. Everything that's

collected goes through us, dog tags, to

automobiles, to business licenses. If it's

paid to the City, there's only about two or

three places -- parking, anything that --

almost everything that goes through the city

budget or the county -- or what would be a

county budget or in this case the state

operation, which is Department of Motor

Vehicles, registrations, driver's licenses,

all that comes through us.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: And so those

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people outside of the consolidated

government, like the driver's license

offices, which is state, Department of Motor

Vehicles, you charge them a fee?

MR. OVERTON: We charge them a fee. We

charge everybody a fee except the City of

Jacksonville.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Okay. What would

happen if one of your -- I call them

customers; correct?

MR. OVERTON: I should correct that. We

don't charge the School Board a fee either.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Okay. What would

happen if one of your customers, because all

of them seem to be customers of yours, went

away? I mean, if there was a change in how

our consolidated government operated or

collected a certain utility and that

organization or that authority or that

agency no longer needed you to collect for

-- on behalf because they were not attached

to the --

MR. OVERTON: If it ws big enough, we'd

just cut staff and, you know, not do that

anymore. I mean, suppose the JEA goes away,

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let's say, which is maybe where you're

heading, we collect the JEA fee, but we

don't collect the bulk of JEA. We do that

as kind of a courtesy, and it's a headache

for them. And we can't operate like the

JEA, but we can take their payments. But

you can take your JEA payment to a lot of

places. But if we didn't have the JEA, it

wouldn't affect us very much. It's not a

big part of our business.

If we didn't have Motor Vehicle, that

would be a huge part of our business. We

have more people and more assets devoted to

Motor Vehicle and driver's licenses and

state business, straight-up state business,

than we do the City.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: And just kind of

following with Mr. Schellenberg's question.

I think why we're here is we're always --

when people come to the podium, we're trying

to find a way to support any improvements,

any deficiencies through our recommendations

at the end of the day. Can you see anything

that you haven't said that you want to say

that would be better for --

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MR. OVERTON: No, I don't. And I noodle

over this a lot about the fee versus the

budget thing, and I know that we have a lot

more freedom. But right now we're spending

less than one percent on overhead to collect

$2 billion in monies, a-million-four which

goes to the City of Jacksonville, the rest

goes to School Board, back to Motor Vehicle,

and all that.

So we are -- I think we're efficient to

a fault is what we are in terms of

restricted ability for Tax Collector to do

the colorful things that they do in Orlando,

for example. But I don't know that we could

achieve any more efficiency than we already

have.

Now, over time we will drive more

business to the Internet, to

Mr. Schellenberg's point. And as we do

that, we will be able to reduce our head

count over a long period of time.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Thank you.

Next I have Mr. Denton.

COMMISSIONER DENTON: Hello,

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Mr. Overton. You said a few minutes ago

that you're -- almost everything you do is

controlled by state law. In reading the

section in the Charter on the tax collector,

and I'm not a lawyer and I'm learning here,

it says the duties and their compensation

and their qualifications and the election

and the term and what happens if there is a

vacancy. And all of that cites state law.

The only thing that cites city ordinance is

the term limits. So all these other things

are controlled by the state law and the only

thing that really is -- that might be

considered by this Commission is term

limits.

MR. OVERTON: I believe that's the case.

I don't know -- well, no, the fee versus the

budget issue would be addressable by the

City as well. That would be -- see, what

the state law says is that every year the

Property Appraiser and the Tax Collector

will submit a budget to the Department of

Revenue. And the Department of Revenue will

comb through that budget and approve or

disapprove or change things or whatever.

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And but in certain counties where the

Charter requires some other method, then

that count will do something else, which is

the budget process. There is nothing in our

Charter that says that. There is nowhere in

our Charter that says we're going to be --

that the Property Appraiser and the Tax

Collector, which are specifically, like I

say, delineated in the statute, are going to

do anything different than they do in any

other county. We just have had over the

years this agreement and now decision by

Rick Mullaney when he was General Counsel

that this is the way we do it, it's part of

consolidation, and we're going to do it this

way. So we don't lean into that -- we don't

lean into that statute any more than we can,

I guess.

COMMISSIONER DENTON: So the fact that

your office is elected is governed by state

law, not the city charter?

MR. OVERTON: Interestingly, the

constitutionals in this county are less

autonomous than they are in other counties,

but they're also less autonomous than the

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independent commissions, boards here. Like,

we are less autonomous than the JEA, Airport

Authority, Port Authority, the Downtown --

the Investment Authority. We're more in the

government than the Port Authority is, which

is -- I've always thought was interesting.

COMMISSIONER DENTON: Well, despite all

the jokes about the DMV and the agony of

having to wait hours, I have to give you a

compliment. I went down to your office, the

main office, recently and was able to get a

new license plate, a new registration and a

new driver's license, all of which expired

about the same time, in about 15 minutes.

So take that as a compliment. Thank you.

MR. OVERTON: You know, one of the

problems that we have in, I think, every

government office -- I know the General

Counsel has the same problem and I know the

Council Auditor has the same problem -- we

tend to bring people in, train them and then

they take the skills that we have given

them, used in the process of onboarding

people, they take those skills someplace

else.

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So we pay our -- the people that you

would be dealing with in a situation like

that, we pay them less than $14 an hour in a

lot of cases. Well, once they get the

skills to operate in the marketplace,

they're going to go someplace else. Our

turnover rate approaches 20 percent a year

at that level of the organization. So it's

a real problem for us.

COMMISSIONER DENTON: Well, something is

working right, at least in my one

experience.

MR. OVERTON: We're very careful about

hiring, and that matters.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: All right. Thank

you.

My list here says Steve Swan.

MS. OWENS: They're working on that.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: But it started with

an S and had Swan, so I figured I'm going to

go with that.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Thank you,

Mr. Chair.

This is kind of follow-up to

Mr. Schellenberg's line of inquiry. I'm

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going to bifurcate my questions, the first

from about 50 feet and then go up to 50,000,

if we could. And I'm going to zero in on

some issues you raised concerning General

Counsel.

So from the 50-foot perspective, if you

have an issue that's emergent and requires

you to seek counsel, you're limited to where

you can go. You can go to the General

Counsel's Office; is that correct?

MR. OVERTON: That's correct.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: You have a

designated person in the General Counsel's

Office that you can go to; is that correct?

MR. OVERTON: Yes.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: I'm sure this

happens routinely where something has a

greater priority than something else. If

you prioritize this as a high priority, that

person that's designated as your point of

contact, they may have many priorities; is

that fair to say?

MR. OVERTON: They do.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: So what might be

your number one priority, might be that

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person's number eight priority; is that fair

to say?

MR. OVERTON: That's correct.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: So if you have

something that's a number one priority,

that's emergent and time sensitive, and it's

that point of contact's eighth priority,

what option do you have to try and reconcile

your issues quickly, if any?

MR. OVERTON: Persuasion.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Which is

telephonic --

MR. OVERTON: Yes.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: -- or email?

MR. OVERTON: Either one.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Do you have the

option to go to that individual's supervisor

and urge a more timely response?

MR. OVERTON: Yes, sure.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: And this happens

routinely, I would assume.

MR. OVERTON: Absolutely.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: But you are

limited to where you can go, to the General

Counsel.

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MR. OVERTON: That is true.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: So if on one

occasion you're dissatisfied with the

response, that doesn't matter, that's the

response you have.

MR. OVERTON: That's true.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Have there been

times when you were dissatisfied with the

response?

MR. OVERTON: I can't give you a

specific, but we -- you know, waiting three

our four months for a contract to be

reviewed is a good example.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Is the contract

always reviewed by that one point of

contact?

MR. OVERTON: No.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: It might be

somebody -- it might be the contract

division of the General Counsels' Office.

MR. OVERTON: It might be somebody that

handles contracts in their division, yeah,

or department, I guess, yes.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: So, basically,

you and many others stand in line for the

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services from the General Counsel.

MR. OVERTON: That is true. We stand in

line with every other department in the

City.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Are there times

when you believe that your office or the

citizens of the community, that there is a

disservice, not by the input that you

ultimately receive, but by virtue of the

timeliness or --

MR. OVERTON: Yeah. In some counties

there is a General Counsel within the Tax

Collector's Office and a General Counsel

within the Property Appraiser's Office that

only handle those things. This county,

we -- the General Counsel is the final

arbiter of all decisions in this county.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: In those counties

where there is a General Counsel assigned to

respective office, does that General Counsel

operationally report to your counterpart or

does that person report operationally to the

General Counsel?

MR. OVERTON: They would report to

elected official, which would be the Tax

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Collector.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: So it would be an

independent individual working directly for

you to --

MR. OVERTON: Yeah.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: -- hire or fire

as you saw fit?

MR. OVERTON: And our caseload is not

nearly what the Property Appraiser's

caseload is --

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: But they have the

same issues.

MR. OVERTON: But they have the same

issues. This issue was more frustrating

when I was a Property Appraiser than it is

as a Tax Collector. Our stuff is more

routine. The Property Appraiser gets sued a

lot. And we get sued only occasionally or

have a problem, legal problem, only

occasionally.

Most of our work through the General

Counsel's Office is contracts, leases,

decisions on run-of-the-mill business

issues.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: In terms of

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deficiencies and service -- let me -- in

terms of cost, are there occasions where you

see that this delay results in cost to the

city government?

MR. OVERTON: Well, levels of service,

certainly, probably not cost, not dollar

cost.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Okay. Little bit

of time. But moving to 50,000 feet, what

would you suggest?

MR. OVERTON: I would have General

Counsel assign a lawyer to -- and put

somebody in our building that's assigned to

us to -- probably to the Property Appraiser

and Tax Collector.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Is that something

we can fix with a Charter issue?

MR. OVERTON: I think you can fix that

with an ordinance.


Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.


Next I have Chris Hagan -- Mr. Hagan,

too familiar.

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COMMISSIONER HAGAN: Mr. Overton, thank

you for being here. When I start to think

about the Tax Collector, I think we've had a

long run really with Tax Collectors in my

opinion. That includes you. And I thank

you for your service over the many years.

That kind of leads into my term limit

question. You know, we've had -- since

we've had those long runs of very good Tax

Collectors, in my opinion, you occasionally

have an instance where you have, like,

Michael Corrigan, where another opportunity

comes and he vacates that seat. So it kind

of gets into the: if we do it 16 years and

we do continue to have brilliant tax

collectors, you know, you may lose those,

they may drop off, you may get an

opportunity that you can't turn down. And

so that is a little bit of a concern of

mine, that we extended that to 16 years. So

I would like for you to address that as

well.

Also, in that question, if there was a

16-year, would you be okay with, you know --

your suggestion was 16 based upon what

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Orlando does. Would it be only for

constitutional officers? I think you

addressed that in Mr. Schellenberg's

question, but if you'll kind of expand on

that a little bit. And, also, would you be

exposed to doing election every two years

for a term limit of 16 or would you stick

with the 4 or would you want to extend those

out to 6?

MR. OVERTON: I have a lot, but

generally speaking, I think two-year

election cycles are too short. You see it

in the House of Representatives, they're

always running, and Congress is the same

way.

Fundamentally, I would vote against term

limits in any case, just because I think the

voters can go to the polls and get rid of

somebody they want to get rid of any time,

every four years if they want to do that.

But given the fact that the populus in

this county and most of the people in this

state want term limits, I think that maybe a

different system than and 8-term might make

sense. Maybe a 12-year term, you know, you

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never know what that appetite for this sort

of thing is in the public realm.

I would say that in the case of the

counsel, which is another issue, that an

8-year term is pretty short as well. Maybe

a 12 is about right.

But, in any case, the Council ought to

be staggered so that you don't have a

wholesale turnover in the Council at any

given time. And, also, I've always agreed

with the Council election being held earlier

so that the first day that you come into

city Council on July 1st of the year, you

don't get the budget presented to you at

that point.

As you've seen, the budget is pretty

thick. And if you haven't seen that process

before, it's pretty daunting to just jump

right into it, the budget process the first

day.

Those are all the things we discussed

ad nauseam in this county. And maybe you

guys are going to do something this time

around, I don't know.

By the way, the Council is too large,

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frankly. We took the national example when

we consolidated in Jacksonville, and we

accepted the fact that we were going to have

14 council people from wards and 5 at-large.

And there was no need to really do that,

except there was a political reason to do

that. The Council should be 11, 9 or 11,

something that kind of size. It's an

unmanageable small legislature, is what it

is.

We have all these committee -- the

interesting thing about the Council, the

Council will have a committee meeting where

they make a decision, and the decision is

just a recommendation, it can't -- it's not

in the legislature where you can kill a bill

in committee. The bill still lives outside

the committee, so the Council has to kill

the bill.

So we have a system that has sort of an

odd quirk to it; and that is, that the

committee is not really making a decision,

the committee is an advisory board to the

Council. So that's -- I've never seen that

any place else. It's unusual.

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COMMISSIONER HAGAN: Mr. Chairman, I

have a follow-up. I was going to ask

something else about the fee system and all

that, I think you run very efficiently so

I'll leave that one out.

A question did come up in comment

concerning the Office of General Counsel.

When you described what kind of the issues

that you may run into, it sounds more like

maybe a staffing issue. I know that I

worked with Paige from the Planning

Commission and a lot of other things, and I

know they work tirelessly.

Would the answer or could the answer be

we need additional attorneys or staffing in

the Office of General Counsel? Because it

sounds like you're represented great, in my

opinion; I haven't heard that as an issue.

But maybe we need to look at hiring initial

attorneys within the Office of General

Counsel or maybe some help that they can

kind of get some of these things out a

little quicker.

MR. OVERTON: The issue that I described

earlier about quality people coming in,

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learning the system, being a lawyer in the

General Counsel's Office, or the State

Attorney's Office, or the Public Defender's

Office, for that matter, it's all great

learning. And those people tend to learn

and leave.

I also have always thought -- well,

anyway, so you're right about my opinion

about the quality of work. I think it's

excellent. We get excellent work from the

General Counsel's Office. What we can't get

is their attention sometimes when we need

it. And that's a staffing problem. They

have a staffing problem. It's just like the

Public Defender and the State Attorney have.

It's people want to get some government

experience and go someplace else.

I had one more point in there, but I

forgot it. I'll think of it in a second.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Okay. I have

Mr. Griggs on the queue for the second time.


Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Overton, I really appreciate the

comments you made regarding City Council and

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the Council makeup and some of the

challenges regarding committee work. It

sounds like we may have been -- we may not

have taken the opportunity to ask for your

advice around the structure and operations

of City Council.

I'm a little intrigued by your

description of committee work, because we do

see that a lot where committee makes a

recommendation and then, by the time it gets

to Council, there are major changes to it,

or the full body gets the chance to, you

know, change or vote on something different.

Can you talk a little bit more about

some of the other challenges you see around

our City Council structure and what

recommendations you may have, other

recommendations besides the size of the

Council, which I would imagine would

probably be very difficult to adjust --

MR. OVERTON: There is a reason we ended

up where we ended up.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: And just the

recommendations around some of the

operations, because in ten years you had to

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have seen an awful lot that would

probably --

MR. OVERTON: Well, if you let it, the

Council will ruin your business, that

happens to a lot of people, because it's a

demanding job. There is another meeting,

another meeting and a big issue coming up.

So you tend to collect -- you walk away from

your business for a big part of a lot of

days and you're down here. And so your

business is sort of falling to the wayside.

And anybody -- the best people for Council

are retirees and people who are

independently wealthy and don't need to

work.

To get a citizen on the Council and just

say we're going to -- you're going to go

make these decisions for the City of

Jacksonville in your spare time, it's a

crazy system. It will take all your time

and then more. It's like church: It will

take all your time and then more if you give

it.

So, anyway, I've always said the Council

needs to be smaller and needs to be paid a

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state wage instead of half the state wage

and just make it full time. And you'll get

better results out of Council that way.

Now, there will be more people who will

want that job probably because it then

becomes a real job as opposed to -- or pay

them nothing, and that's another solution.

If you pay the Council zero, you will get

people who can only afford to give spare

time and they will -- but then you'll

probably end up with a lot of wealthy

people, because they will have the

wherewithal to do that. It's a problem in

every government, not just this one.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: So how do you

think -- if we had 11, what would that look

like in your mind, how would that -- in

terms of representation? Because one of the

challenges that we've heard through many of

our presenters is that consolidation was bad

for the urban core. And if we had 11 or had

a different number, whatever that number is,

how would we assure that representation for

those communities have been left behind are

not further underrepresented going forward?

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MR. OVERTON: Consolidation has been

good in a lot of ways, but to the

neighborhoods it hasn't been good, because,

you know, we agreed, when we consolidated,

that we were going to provide city services

to the county line. And, unfortunately,

some of the urban core just gets overlooked,

because we're always building a fire station

way out where the growth is. So it's tended

to under-serve certain parts of the

community because of it. Particularly in

drainage and just curb and gutter traffic,

the kind of things that people care about.

Parks, people who work in parks, you

know, we used to have -- when I was a kid,

we had -- there was a guy in the park, you

know. He was a coach or something. And he

kept the park going and organized games and

stuff. We can't afford that. I don't know

why we can't afford it, but we can't.

And the urban core is part of the town

that particularly takes a hit when we don't

have people doing that.

So, yeah, I don't know what the answer

is. If you had 11 councilmen or 9, they

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would be individually much more powerful.

The mayor -- in a strong mayor system that

may not be the way to go. We have

intentionally a strong mayor system of

government here. And so we have --

therefore, we have an intentionally weak

City Council, that really has only the

budget as the major lever. And, frankly,

the Council -- generally speaking, the

Council is not properly prepared to work on

a budget with the complexity that ours is.

It's a big ask to have somebody walk in here

and look at that budget and understand it.


you. I see the Sheriff is here. I have

just a quick question for you, Mr. Overton.

Did I understand that, under the general

system, the way the majority of the state

works is that your office would submit a

budget, it would go to the State Department

of Revenue, they approve it, the office

collects a two percent fee, and then at the

end of your budget year, you, up to, say,

18.8 is what you spent here, say you

collected the 20, you only spent the 18.8,

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would the balance then be returned to the

general fund of the City?

MR. OVERTON: The balance would be

returned to the various taxing authorities

from which that money came. So the City

would be one of those taxing authorities.

But, yeah, I mean, in our current situation,

it would be -- we're spending 18.8 million

to run our operation. And that situation

would be receiving $53.6 million. So a big

portion of that would go back to those

taxing authorities.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Okay. Because I'm

looking at this -- for fellow Commissioners,

it's Section 6.04 is where the Mayor is

submitting the budget to the Council,

because I'm trying to figure out where in

this -- is your proposal to have your budget

approved by the Department of Revenue or

could we still have it approved by the

Mayor's Office and the Council, and then

still have you collect the two percent fee,

but then that money would set you -- all the

approval process -- in the spirit of

consolidation, the approval process would

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61

still stay here locally, but the collection

would be through the fee instead of --

MR. OVERTON: It would cost the City

more money, the City itself would -- the

municipality of the City of Jacksonville.

Right now the City contributes about $7

million on our $18 million budget, that's

their contribution, yet they control the

whole thing. So it's -- it would cost them

more than that $7 million if we were to do

it that way. And that's always been the

objection. I get it. But it doesn't work

that way in most counties.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Okay. And, also,

for my fellow Commissioners, I believe it's

Article 7 is where we got the General

Counsel's Office, and there is discussion in

there in 7.02 where they talk about Council

for the independent agencies. And I know

that there are certain authorities that have

inhouse assistant General Counsels. So I

think that was -- in fact, Mr. Weinstein was

here several weeks ago and talked about just

that. If you have an Assistant General

Counsel for each of the independent

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62

authorities and for the constitutional

officers, and then you maintain a General

Counsel who is, for lack of a better phrase,

above the fray, then the ability to be that

single arbiter for consistency within the

City, it removes any, you know, perception

of favoring this one or that one because you

have --

MR. OVERTON: So the mayor would have --

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: An assigned, yeah,

so General Counsel for the Mayor's Office.

MR. OVERTON: And we have one and the

Sheriff would have one and those people

would have to argue things out and then the

General Counsel, the main General Counsel,

would be the arbiter -- the final arbiter,

of decisions. I think that system would

work if you want to propose that.


you very much for your time. Thank you for

your service to the City.

MR. OVERTON: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: All right. Next on

our agenda is Sheriff Mike Williams.

Sir, you have the floor.

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SHERIFF WILLIAMS: So good morning. It

was good to come and see Jim's presentation.

I was preparing for today and looking at the

Charter. I'm really prepared to answer more

questions. I don't have a presentation.

There is not a lot in the Charter that

really ultimately concerns me. I'm not

bringing an issue here today. I know there

is some issues that I can comment on, but

really, in terms of the Charter and how it

impacts the Sheriff's Office, I don't have a

lot of major concerns as I stand before you

today.

Some of the things I've heard in

conversation, again, I think I can weigh

into the conversation about. But in terms

of any big impacts or any recommendations

that I'm bringing you, I'm bringing you none

this morning in terms of the Charter.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Sheriff,

your name and address?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Mike Williams,

Sheriff, Duval County, address 501 Bay

Street, 32202.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Thank you. I do

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have somebody on the queue if you're ready

to take questions.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Absolutely,

absolutely.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Ms. Mills.

COMMISSIONER MILLS: Good morning,

Sheriff.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Hey. Good morning.

COMMISSIONER MILLS: Thank you for

coming to speak to us. I just have a few

questions. I wanted to talk about how the

body cameras that have been in place, how

they're working so far. Also, I wanted to

talk about the emphasis on juvenile fighting

in school. And I had some questions about,

you know more, Coffee with a Cop, I wanted

to ask you about that.

Also about the 100 officers that you did

receive, the adversity training and have you

looked into -- is there any way we can look

into like -- I know as a little girl coming

up, we had certain police officers that we

got used to being around, so it opened up

the relationship to trust, to be able to

talk about if you see something, say

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65

something. So I just wanted to know your

thoughts on that.

And, also, I see that the Tax Collector

is doing the new concealed weapon licenses,

I wanted to know how do you feel about that;

and also the buyback program.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Okay. Great. So a

lot to unpack there, you have to walk me

through that, keep me on track.

So body cameras, first of all, so we --

almost immediately upon coming into office,

we explored the body camera program. I had

some privacy concerns initially. Those were

addressed by the state legislature with some

legislation, obviously. Once that was

corrected, really no need at that point to

not move forward with the body camera

program.

The concern I had was with Florida's

broad public records laws, we could

potentially have a situation where an

officer was wearing a body camera, went into

a home and made no arrest. So there was no

criminal case, which happens a lot. Maybe

it was a domestic issue, maybe it was an

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argument between a husband and a wife,

again, nothing that rose to the level of

even potentially a report being written.

But all of that interaction would have been

recorded by a body camera.

So prior to this legislative change,

your neighbor could have called us and said,

hey, I would like the body camera footage

from that call last night in my neighbor's

house. And by law we would have had to give

that to them. And so lots of footage of

dead bodies, other things like that, none of

that was really addressed when the body

camera program first began to be discussed

in the state.

So the legislature made those changes.

So it was nothing about privacy of police

officers or transparency; it was really

about the public's privacy that gave me some

concern. Again, once that was addressed, we

moved forward with the program.

We did a lot of research, spent a lot of

time -- we have seven community-wide

meetings in town, really town hall type

meetings to discuss people's concerns about

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body cameras, pros and cons. That took

several months.

We, again, researched camera policy,

labor contracts, lots of things from --

really in one box or another about 75

different agencies around the country we

looked at. And we really chose, after that,

someone to model an implementation plan. We

chose LAPD because they are really five

times the size of JSO, but they were

implementing a complete agency-wide body

camera program.

So many agencies in the country will

tell you they have a body camera program,

but it's not a complete body camera program.

For instance, Philadelphia was about -- I

may get this number off a little bit,

roughly 5,000 police officers, 3,000 police

officers, somewhere in that neighborhood.

They only have 500 officers in body cameras.

So our vision was to have every officer

below the rank of lieutenant to wear a

camera every time they were in uniform. So

that's why we chose LAPD, that was their

model.

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So, really, as we get to fast-forward to

the end of this year, we will finish our

really issuance of the body cameras to all

uniform officers. So we've done about,

again, three-quarters at this point, and

we'll finish that out end of the year.

We were very fortunate to receive a

grant from the Department of Justice. We

got a million dollars for implementation of

the body camera program here in

Jacksonville.

This budget year, the budget we just

passed Tuesday night, this is the first

budget that has any body camera dollars in

there. Most of the -- we talked about the

anticipated cost, implementation and annual

cost had come in under what we expected. So

we anticipated really about a $5 million

startup and about $3 million a year. And we

came in at probably just under 3 million on

startup and right at a million a year for

the maintenance of the program.

So we have seen great benefits really,

to be honest with you, in the body camera

program. You have a couple different

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69

avenues where it's very helpful. People

really like to focus on the interaction

between the community and the officers. And

there is a lot of that and a lot of it is

good.

So I talked to one of the officers who

was wearing the camera -- we did a pilot for

several months. I talked to one of the

officers wearing the camera, I said, hey,

how do you like the camera. He said,

Sheriff, I love it. He said, every time I

walk up to someone, I tell them, I just want

to let you know our interaction is being

recorded by the body camera.

If you haven't seen it, it's a big black

box laying right in the center of their

chest. They look down at that box and fix

their hair and say, well, we just want to

thank you for your service, officer.

And, again, I've always said, listen, if

it makes the community act better, good. If

it makes the police officers act more

professional, that's good too.

And we've seen that. We've seen what's,

I think, beginning stages of a significant

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reduction in complaints on police officers.

And, again, why that happens, it could be

both sides of the equation, and I'm okay

with that.

And then we've seen some investigative

benefits. We've got some -- we're able to

capture street interviews on camera. I

mean, all those things that we typically

would document and report. Now we have

video evidence to support that documentation

as well.

So still working the bugs out between --

it's a process that works now. We have

still a lot to learn in terms of the

interaction with the State Attorney's

Office. They're still trying to digest what

is really an enormous amount of video

evidence to process and look through, you

know, as we continue to collect this.

So we've addressed it on the cost end,

being that the storage, all of it, is

impacted in one fee for the year; so we're

not paying additional money for storage.

It's unlimited storage based on the fee you

pay. So it's really now about processing

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all that evidence and what does that look

like and how do we use it appropriately in

our interaction with the State Attorney's

Office and the Public Defender's Office, all

that. So we're working through that. But

we've got some of those things in place to

help with that, streamline that a little

better.

But other than that it's been a very

beneficial program for the agency. So we're

happy with it.

Part two I can't remember now.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: I was just going to

say, for our process here, if we could

really try and focus our questions on

Charter related issues. There is a lot of

stuff, obviously, that we would want to

discuss with the Sheriff, but if we can keep

our focus on Charter related issues. If you

want to repeat back your questions and then

you can wrap up --

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Sure. Some of those

I can wrap up.

You had two or three questions about

community engagement. So, obviously, we put

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a heavy interest in community engagement.

I'm a firm believer that you have to work in

partnership with the community; and that is,

you mentioned having officers in an area

where people become familiar with that, we

do that. We leave officers assigned to --

unless you request a transfer, you're

assigned to the same neighborhood for as

long as you are working in that division,

again, unless you request to be moved

somewhere. That does help build that

rapport with neighbors and relationships in

neighborhoods.

Coffee With a Cop is one example of the

things we do to try to drive the community

and the officers together in an environment

absent the need for police service, if that

makes sense.

Obviously, we're talking to a

million-plus people a year who are in need

of police service, but we want to try to

have some conversation with people in the

community when there is no need for that so

that we're not building a relationship in

the middle of a crisis. Even if it's just a

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crisis in their mind, it's a crisis for

them. So we want to have to continue to

create opportunities to do that. Coffee

With a Cop is one way.

Our Sheriff's Watch program is one way.

You know, we meet with policemen working in

your neighborhood once a month, talk about

issues -- not big city Jacksonville issues,

but what's happening in your neighborhood

and bring problems to the table and work

together to solve those problem. So that's

a great program.

A lot of different things with our

communication section, really pushed out all

the way to the patrol division. One of the

things we adjusted was to have a lot of

community engagement-type activities driven

throughout the agency, not just in one

division, not just in the communication

division, but have all the officers involved

in that. So we've been able to put a lot of

things in place that have done that. It's

been very successful.

We're running a program now that really

hasn't gotten a lot of attention, but it's

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going to be hugely beneficial. It's a

partnership with Bethune-Cookman. And it's

a great -- it's led by Randy Nelson, who is

the Criminal Justice Chair, who is a

terrific guy.

And so it's really a series of three

meetings that you have, about 30, 40 people

at a time. They meet with the community,

talk about law enforcement concerns, then he

meets with a group of officers, talks about

community concern. Then we all come

together and lay all those concerns on the

table.

It really does a lot to -- we have a lot

of officers very community minded. We have

a lot of young officers who haven't been

exposed to this as of yet. So this is a

great way to do that. So we just renewed

another cycle of training with them. And

really it's going to take a couple years.

I'd like everybody in the agency to go

through, and that's really our plan moving

forward. So one of the best community

engagement programs, so to speak that I've

seen. And we've tried a lot. And this is

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one of, again, the most productive ones that

we've seen. So we do a lot in terms of

that, you know, outreach and community

engagement.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Okay. I've got

seven people on the queue here we want to go

through.

Next I have Mr. Griggs.


Mr. Chairman. Sorry about that. I was kind

of reading the Sheriff's section of the

Charter here.

But I know that -- and thank you,

Sheriff Williams, for being here.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Yes, sir. Good

morning.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: I know that as

part of the Charter there is something

that's called the Sheriff Disciplinary

Hearing Board. And the board is made up of,

I think it's five people; correct?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Correct.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Two people you

appoint, two people who are appointed or

recommended by the person who is being

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accused and then one person from all four --

of the other four people; correct?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Right, yes, sir.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: What is the

rationale for not having a citizen be a part

of that?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: So in that

disciplinary process, that board is one of

several ways that an employee can choose how

to have his discipline grieved. So in this

case, this is not really a review of the

discipline the employee is being charged

with in that circumstance. It's the

employee grieving really the discipline that

was issued to him, if that makes sense.

So as an employee, let's say I have a

policy violation and I receive a, you know,

level-two reprimand. I think that's too

much. I'm going to go to the union and I'm

going to appeal that discipline. That's

where this process comes in play.

So there is an avenue for a civilian

review of that, and that is the Civil

Service Board. So the Disciplinary Hearing

Board is not something that has to occur.

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It rarely happens, to be honest with you.

Most employees will -- really the tactic is

they schedule the board to buy themselves

some time, and then they cancel it and wait

to go to the Civil Service Board.

So the Civil Service Board, obviously,

is all civilians. And then they review the

discipline.

But, really, from the standpoint of -- I

think, if I'm understanding the basis of the

question, they're reviewing the discipline

based on is it appropriate based on the

incident. They're not reviewing the

incident, if that is kind of where you're

coming from on that.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Thank you for

that. So what would be the proper posture

for, say, a citizen who had a challenge with

a law enforcement officer? Where would that

entry point be and where -- and is that a

part of the Charter? It is something that's

just your policy? It will change from

sheriff to sheriff? Or is it something that

we can make -- that we can kind of work with

here as a part of Charter Review?

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SHERIFF WILLIAMS: So in order to make a

complaint, again, you can make it with

anybody. Obviously, it's routed through

internal affairs and it's investigated. One

of the things that stops really the whole

state, kind of a civilian review board, is

state statute. So Law Enforcement Officers

Bill of Rights really keeps complaints on

police officers confidential until they're

complete, so the end of process.

So when you have some agencies around

the state who have some component of that,

really it's a review of something that's

already completed. They have no ability to

impact at all.

So rather than -- so that really

draws -- people realizing that I don't have

an impact in the way this discipline is

issued, it's not -- people are not going to

get engaged in that.

And so you really want these issues kind

of dug into -- and it's got to be based on

facts and evidence, not a motion, it's not

those type of things. So that's the

challenge there is that, once that process

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is complete, it's all open. And I think

that's where you have some challenges around

the state. How open is it? How open should

it be? We try to be as completely

transparent as we can in accordance with

state law. As soon as we're able to release

findings, we release them immediately.

We've got a great web page that we put

up just probably a year ago, maybe a year

and a half. We track all officers while

shootings. From the day the shooting

occurred, we put suspect demographics,

officer demographics, location, press

conferences that we've held, all the way

through the review board of that, which is,

again, confidential by state law. But we

post that video online to be able to, again,

be transparent with the community about what

that process looked like.

So I think one of the -- as I talk with

the community about review boards and that

type of thing, one of the challenges is and

the main driver is we don't know what

happens in that process. Well, that's on

us. You may not by state law be able to

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weigh into the process as it's going on.

But at the end of it, we should be able to

show you the process so you can see A to Z,

here is what it looked like, here are the

decisions that were made, you know, here are

the people involved. None of that is

confidential after it's complete.

So if that's where you're headed with

that question -- and that's come up a couple

times in the last few years, it's the same

around the state. We're not unique. It's

not a JSO policy that drives that.

I would say, in terms of transparency,

we are one of the more transparent agencies

in the state when it comes to sharing this

information when it's appropriate and

allowed by state law.


Mr. Chairman, just one quick follow-up

to that.

I do believe that your process is

probably one of the best in the state. What

I would like for us to do, if there is a way

for us to be part of or at least look at it

as a part of our recommendations for the

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Charter, I don't know at this point what

that would look like, but what I would like

to see is us try to get as close to

transparency in how these situations are

handled so the public feels more comfortable

about the process itself.

Because the way it is now, the people

feel like the information goes into a vacuum

and, like you said, they don't know anything

about it until it's over. It's very

difficult to trust the process when you have

no information about what's going on as the

process is happening.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Yeah. And I think

that's the challenge. You're right, as the

process is happening. I think in terms of,

you know, showing the process A to Z, as

soon as state law allows us to, I think we

do. I appreciate that, thank you.


you.

Next we have Mr. Schellenberg, followed

by Ms. Knight.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Through the

Chair to the Sheriff, good to see you again.

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SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Good morning.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Couple

questions: Some sheriffs are appointed

versus elected. Your opinion on that?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Obviously, I'm in

favor of an elected sheriff. I think the --

what you see in terms of if you look around

the country, police chiefs that are

appointed, I think immediately upon any

crisis in a community, that police chief is

fired. It buys whoever the elected official

is a little more time to make a change or

get the heat off of them, that type of

thing. The average tenure of a police chief

in the United States is about three years.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: I read the

same thing. I agree with you.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: That can be a

challenge.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: So how about

the term limits on sheriff? Rutherford did

12. It makes sense, you get a feel for it.

What do you think about two four-years or

two six-years or some number longer than two

four-years?

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SHERIFF WILLIAMS: I think term limits

is a good thing. I think you can have a

discussion about how long that is, is it 8,

is it 12, is it two sixes. I think there's

value in having that conversation. Having

been in the seat now for five years, there

is -- every -- not every sheriff's office is

the same, let me say that, obviously.

But being here there is a lot of things

that you learn in the course of five, six,

seven years. And you take those with you

when you go. As close as Rutherford and I

worked together, you know, day one in that

seat was nothing like I anticipated. You

just can't know it until you experience it.

So you do lose a bit of experience when the

term is over. But I think there is some

value to having a limit there as well.

So I would agree with the argument that

every four years the community gets to pick,

and that's a term limit mechanism in and of

itself. But, again, I think that, you know,

six sixes, I've heard that before, that's

something worth conversation, maybe 12

years.

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I'm all about fresh ideas, though. I

think 12 would be the max in my opinion. I

don't think that anything more than that is

really productive.


sir. Couple questions, because you have

basically an independent IT department; is

that correct?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Yes, essentially.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: I understand

your position. Maybe it's better for us to

know, because I know it's not consolidated

with the City.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Not completely. So

really I've driven more consolidation with

city IT in the last five years than we

probably ever have, quite frankly. And

there are areas where we can't consolidate,

that's what we're focused on; and there are

areas we cannot based on the data that we

store and how to seize this information.

Criminal justice information systems

nationwide are regulated by state and

federal law, lots of, you know, very

stringent requirements. The City, though,

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has come onboard with some of those

requirements allowing us to interact a

little more.

So we'll continue to look for those

efficiencies. They meet constantly now. We

talked about that. But there's, again, more

steps being taken. I don't think we can

ever completely merge because that data and

the way we have to share data with other law

enforcement agencies in state and federal

regulations, but I believe there are some

efficiencies we could create. And we have

worked and are working to try to --

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Just one

other quick question, it has nothing to do

with the Charter, just a little information.

The retirement changed a couple years ago.

How does that affect the quality and

quantity of people that are applying here?

Because it used to be we were the big dog

and all the other places would want to come

here. We had a time that they actually

left. Have you seen a change? And, of

course, the average age is substantially

less than it was many years ago.

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SHERIFF WILLIAMS: It is. On the

corrections side, it has been reduced at the

state level.

So we have not seen a negative impact.

Again, I was in favor of a move away from

the pension to that defined contribution

plan. We've not seen a negative impact. We

are now -- that's right side, so to speak.

We are drawing people in. We don't lose

people to surrounding counties anymore. We

see that course as corrected, and we do draw

people back in now.

There is a challenge nationally in

creating police officers. Our attrition

rate was higher last year than it has been,

but that's one year. I wouldn't call that a

trend as of yet. I would not equate that to

the change in retirement package.

Remember we talked about the retirement

package is part of the pay and benefits

package, pay is a big part of that as well.

The Mayor has been good at addressing that.

There is a new contract that will come up

next year.

And so, you know, you have to be

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competitive in the pay range. Our

retirement package is competitive. So those

two things together will keep us as

competitive as the market will allow.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Great.

Thank you very much, Sheriff.


Next up, Ms. Knight.

VICE CHAIRPERSON KNIGHT: Hello,

Sheriff. How are you?


VICE CHAIRPERSON KNIGHT: I see your

role as the protector. And we've worked a

little bit together in the past. And I've

seen what your staff do to make significant

efforts to measure your work, and I respect

that.

I see our responsibility as a community

to help you not have such a busy job. And I

define the community as, of course, us here,

the general population, our elected

officials, and our role as we respond to

things like this, you know, providing an

input.

There has been some discussion or lots

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of discussion here by my colleagues and

presenters around several of those terms,

the tale of two cities, unfulfilled

promises, communities left behind, services

to the county line was a recent comment

today.

You know I'm a health care

administrator. My focus is usually around

the social determinants of health. That

includes education, what we call a built

environment. For those that may not know

that term, that's roads, sidewalks, parks

and so forth, income and, of course, health

itself.

When we think about your work, as it

relates to some of these topics earlier,

ones I just mentioned, tale of two cities,

unfulfilled promises, communities left

behind, how can we as a Charter Review

Commission help you to decrease crime in the

sense of those topics?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: So we have -- that's

a great question. We have -- and you're

right. All of those things impact, you

know, what really is the main driver of our

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main crime issue in our community, which is

a violent crime issue. So if you look at us

compared to other cities around the country,

we have a similar challenge. We are very --

we're not worse, we're not better, but we're

not worse.

And I have conversations, again, with

law enforcement leaders nationwide. And the

conversations are always the same. And so

it's great in terms of the ideas I pull in,

but you do hear the same challenges in

communities all around the country.

So we have chosen to, you know, grab the

issue, talk about it as much as we can, stay

on top of it. And here is a great snapshot

of that: Crime in general for our city

today is down from where it was last year

almost five percent, that's really been the

trend for the last couple of years. Violent

crime is either flat or up, depending on

what categories you look at. So it doesn't

follow the normal crime trend. It is a

trend in and of itself, really. So that's

why we've chosen, again, to focus on it.

It's been that way for several years.

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So we do a lot when it comes to the

ground zero area of that. So the people

driving violence in our community is a small

number of people, but they drive a

significant portion of the violence. So

they are prolific in how they commit this

violence.

So we do a couple different things in

that area, both in terms of outreach and

enforcement, because you have to do both.

So we're knocking on doors, we're talking to

family members. We're engaging people

engaged in that street, gang, gun culture.

We try to have a lot of interaction with

them on the front end of the equation. When

I say that, telling them what they're

exposed to; telling them, hey, if you get

caught with a bullet in your pocket, you're

going to jail for 30 years, did you know

that.

So all we're trying to do is make them

stop for a minute and think about what it is

they're about to do. Because many of these

instances that we see that turn into five,

six, seven, eight shootings in a row start

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over something as insignificant as you

looked at me the wrong way, or you stepped

on my foot.

So that lands in our lap, we have to

address that. And that's the -- I call that

the concerns of today and this weekend.

Those are ours to handle.

We need the community support,

obviously, and we have to work to build that

in terms of solving cases and having

witnesses cooperate. And we get that to a

great extent depending on where the incident

occurred.

I like to say, you know, we have

something -- Grand Parks as a neighborhood

gets talked about a lot. Grand Parks made

some great headway, though. If we have a

shooting in Grand Park, we get a lots of

calls from the neighborhood of Grand Park

that says, here is what we know, here is

what we saw. If we have a shooting in the

club at 2 o'clock in the morning with 100

people there, nobody saw anything. So

that's the challenge, that's where the

driving force is.

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But when you talk about the community

at-large, now you start talking about

prevention opportunities. You start talking

about intervention. All of those things are

equally important. And so it's not

enforcement or prevention. So it's not do

we invest in kids, but not give officers the

resources they need to do their job, you

have to do both.

Is it we don't invest in kids, but we

are going to invest in the reentry program

for people coming back from prison to give

them an opportunity to be successful? You

can't pick one. You have to do that too.

So we talk a lot about that prevention,

intervention, enforcement.

And when community weighs in, other than

the incident base, be involved in the case,

be a witness, tell us what you know, which,

again, we get a lot of. The community's

role is really the prevention end: getting

involved in the lives of young people early,

making sure there is an opportunity for

them, making sure that they're not standing

on a street corner after school or in the

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summer, they're in a Boys and Girls Club,

they're in a PAL, they're doing something,

keeping busy.

So you look at a seven-year-old boy or

girl today, where are they when they're 17?

That's the question. Are they graduating

from high school? Are they going off to

college? Are they joining the workforce?

Are they joining the military? Or are they

already a gang member? Are they already a

drug dealer? Are they already indebted to

these circumstances? So that's where the

community has to weigh in.

And the other end of the equation with

reentry as well, we're heavily involved in

both of those areas, as well as the

enforcement piece of the equation. It's all

part of the package.

There are some in the community that

favor prevention over enforcement, some that

favor reentry over enforcement. And I

understand that. But enforcement is a part

of the equation as well. We just have to be

judicious about that. We've got to be very

strategic about that. And we work to do

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that and we'll continue to work to do that.

But the community-wide effort -- I get

asked a lot from business people in the

community: How can we help you, Sheriff?

What can we do for you?

And I'm quick to tell them, we're well

taken care of by the City and the City

Council from an equipment standpoint; you

don't have to buy us anything. And not

every sheriff's office and police department

in the state is like that. So, again, we're

fortunate in that area.

But if you want to help us, go get

involved in the life of a young person, get

engaged in a nonprofit that does that either

through your church or through -- I always

promote PAL, I love PAL, but there are

others that do it too. The Boys and Girls

Club is a great example of that. We're

great partners with them. Go get involved

in some reentry services, get involved with

Kevin Gay Operation of New Hope, hire an

ex-offender. Do those kinds of things as a

community and that's going to help us at the

end of the day.

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So this community-wide effort is just

that, I think you -- you know, if we're very

intentional about giving people a lane to

get in, you know -- we don't need roving

bands of citizens out patrolling the

streets, we don't need that. What we need

is a band of citizens engaged in the lives

of young people and helping ex-offenders as

they come back from prison, that's where we

need the community to weigh in, that's where

we need the support.

VICE CHAIRPERSON KNIGHT: I don't ask

many questions. So I'm locked in on your

comments as it relates to opportunities.

It's clear where the majority of violence is

occurring. And as it relates to some of the

discussions we've been having around these

unfulfilled promises, do you believe if we

can remedy that, however, with

infrastructure support, would it be directly

in support of reducing your workload, so to

speak?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Yeah. Infrastructure

in terms of education, in terms of job

opportunity, yeah, absolutely. There's no

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doubt about it. You're always going to

have -- you're never going to eliminate, and

you know that. But can you -- do we see

people who, were they given a different

circumstance, he may have made a different

choice, yeah, we see them every day. You

always have a sociopath, you're going to

have them. Especially in a community our

size, you have your fair share.

But can you -- I don't have any with me

today, it wouldn't take me an hour to bring

you a couple cases and say, in my opinion,

more opportunity, a different choice, more

opportunity, a different choice, absolutely,

I agree with that.


Next we have Judge Swanson, followed by

Ms. Baker.


Mr. Chairman.

Sheriff, thanks for being here today.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Yes, sir. Good

morning.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Sheriff, a couple

of years ago I retired as a judge from the

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First District Court of Appeals in

Tallahassee. There was a case that came

before me shortly before I retired that I

want to address as kind of a talking point

to get to a broader issue. The case

originated out at the beaches. It was a

child pornography case involving computer

pornography. And it was worked by both

Atlantic Beach and, as I recall, Neptune

Beach. And the case came up on appeal on

jurisdictional issues, cross city lines

between the two police agencies. And

however it was resolved doesn't really

matter.

But that's kind of always been a thought

in my mind about the efficiency of multiple

police agencies within the county. And

whether or not there are conflicts that

arise as a result of that, whether or not

that's the best or most efficient policing

practice for the community and whether or

not there should ultimately be some

recommendations concerning changes

concerning the independent police agencies

at the beaches for any reason or no reason.

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And the answer may be yes, the answer may be

no. But I'd appreciate your thought process

on -- and you understand my question,

obviously.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Absolutely.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: So I'd just

appreciate your thoughts on the beach --

whether or not that's the best structure for

government policing agencies. Thank you.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Yeah, good question.

So we have -- we're fortunate in Duval

County. If you just look south to South

Florida, you have a county with 23, 30

different police agencies in the county.

Obviously, that's -- you're going to have

issues there, you just will with that many.

So we have the Duval County School Board

Police Department here that has their own

jurisdiction in the schools. And then we

have the three beaches communities. And

really, from a working day-to-day standpoint

with us, we don't have any issues. Their

working relationship together has improved

over the years. And so they've got to get

MOU signed, they have to do things their

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county -- city commissions have to get

together to allow some of that

cross-jurisdictional work to happen. And,

quite frankly, I don't know where they are

today in that. I know it's improved. I was

involved in the conversation about a year

ago with some traffic enforcement operation

that they wanted to kind of be able to merge

lines. It was a DUI arrest, I think, that

led to that conversation, a DUI arrest

outside of the jurisdiction.

So while we don't have an issue with

them, they do sometimes have an issue

amongst themselves. It seems to be driven

by the personality of whoever the chief is

at the time. They have a really good group

down there today, and so I don't anticipate

any issues there.

How efficient is it? I think the people

who live at the beach, the beaches community

like having their own police there. They

deal with some unique issues. And I don't

mean this in a derogatory way, but they deal

with a small town piece of that. So they

have their police officers and allow them to

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do things that we certainly would not have

time to do. And so they like that, they

like that personal touch, so to speak. So I

don't think that you would ever get them to

agree to give that piece up.

But as long as those agencies and

cities -- and, really, those police chiefs

work for those city managers. So as long as

you have good working relationships there,

you can work through any of those

jurisdictional issues that you have, because

everybody is going to manage their own

resources, nobody wants to patrol the other

city. But where those lines touch, you

know, crime doesn't know that, and public

safety issues don't realize that. So you

have to be able to have some flexibility

there. As long as they're working together,

they have that.

The best example of all of us working

together is during hurricanes. So we've had

three or four really, really strong

interactions with them in the last two or

three years, and they've been fantastic.

They've been great to work with. And I'm

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speaking just from the public safety

standpoint.

They were down here at EOC. They manage

their own EOCs in their city. And, again,

that's to get the information that they want

to get to their community directly to them,

and we're good with that. But they also

have a presence here at the county level.

So they are heavily engaged in that.

So as I stand here before you today, I

would make no recommendations about making

any changes.

I will tell you that issues that come up

that may prompt that conversation,

personally I believe are more

personality-driven than anything else.

There is -- the ability to have everybody

work together and it be effective and

efficient is there.


you.

Next Ms. Baker, followed by

Ms. Santiago.

COMMISSIONER BAKER: Hi, Sheriff.


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COMMISSIONER BAKER: I read about a

positive partnership that you have with the

Mayor's Office and the State Attorney's

Office. Can you talk about that partnership

and how it's grown or changed over the last

three and four years? And is there anything

that we can do as a Commission structurally

to further strengthen that partnership or

keep it for future mayors and sheriffs and

state attorneys?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Great question. We

have been very fortunate in our relationship

with the Mayor's Office and the City

Council, both. And none of this has been --

you know, I'm quick to tell people in the

community, this is not a rubber-stamp issue.

I go over and make -- the hundred police

officers that somebody mentioned earlier,

you had to go sell that and explain the

data, why that was important, why we needed

that. And we have done a lot of work up to

that point. But that's an example of the

kind of things we do. We go to the Mayor's

Office, here is what we need, here is why we

need it, here is the data to support it.

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And he listens, I think that's the number

one thing I can say that really drives that

partnership, is he's always willing to

listen when we bring these issues to the

table, as is the Council. Every Council

President, you know, I've dealt with every

Council Member at some level, all of them

are willing to listen.

In the city government today, from my

perspective, we're in as good a position as

we have been in a long time. Puts a little

pressure to get something positive done

because there is no -- should be no hurdles,

really. But that relationship, again,

continues to grow. We treat it very

professionally in terms of, again, we're

always going to provide the data to back up

information to be able to support our ask,

basically.

The State Attorney, similar. So we have

a unique relationship with the state, really

around our state. We work with them as

cooperatively as we can from the very

beginning of these cases. So I've always

been a firm believer that we can -- our

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arrest threshold and our prosecution

threshold are two different things. So

while we often, obviously, make arrests and

do that sometimes when we have to, it may

sometimes put undue pressure on the

prosecutor because the time table starts.

So what we try to do is get the prosecutors

involved early on so that we're building the

best prosecuting case we can from the very

beginning.

So do prosecutors sometimes drop cases

that we disagree with? Yes, but sometimes

we give them a case that's hard to

prosecute. And we both acknowledge that.

So we get that out of the way. And with

Angela Corey and with Melissa Nelson, we

have a great working relationship.

Really the CGIC, the Crime Gun

Intelligence Center, is a great example of

that. The Mayor put forth some funding to

build out the space. The State Attorney's

Office gave us the space. They have

attorneys working in that space. We've got

ATF. We've got our investigators working to

get -- every day working together, sitting

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105

in an office together working on gun issues

in this community. So that's really the

best example of seeing how that worked

together.

But those relationships are invaluable,

in my opinion, to public safety in this

community. You need only look back at the

previous administration, for whatever

reason, but those relationships didn't

exist. It certainly hurt the community

because of that. So, again, I think that

any time you can have a cooperative working

relationship, the better off. Fortunately

we have that.

COMMISSIONER BAKER: Just a follow-up:

So what can we do in the Charter

potentially? Can we require quarterly

meetings between the three of you? Would

that make sense? Is there anything we can

do for the future to ensure that there are

continuing relationships between the three

of you? Because it seems like those are the

most important relationships.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: That's a good

question. You know, really they don't exist

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exactly like that, but there are required --

we have to interact together. So I think

it's to the detriment of the Sheriff and the

Mayor and the State Attorney in the criminal

justice arena to not have those

conversations. So really for us, because

the Council and the Mayor are so heavily

involved in the budget, control the budget

so tightly here in Duval County, that drives

those conversations. So I think that's

there. The Sheriff can never pull away and

say, I'm not going to talk to the Mayor.

That's not going to happen.

So I think the best thing really is let

it happen organically. There are already

things there that would drive that, drive

those conversations to happen.

And, again, this is a great example of

take the people out of the equation, the

process works. It's working now. There is

no reason why it shouldn't continue to work.

So, typically, when there are partner

issues, it's just people in process. And

our process is good here.

COMMISSIONER BAKER: One more follow-up:

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107

So historically you think it has worked or

has been an organic relationship?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Oh, absolutely.

COMMISSIONER BAKER: Even previous to --

in your predecessor?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Correct. I'll agree.

Or not, and then you see the reasons why or

the outcome of that.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: All right.

Ms. Santiago, I saw you drop off the queue.

Are you still wanting to --

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: I think you've

addressed all my questions, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Then Mr. Denton,

first time.

COMMISSIONER DENTON: Good morning,

Sheriff.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Good morning, sir.

COMMISSIONER DENTON: One of the things

that we're thinking about, one of our big

topic areas, is whether or not the Charter

should include some requirement for

strategic planning of the City generally.

And given your area of responsibility as you

noted earlier, and I agree with you

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108

entirely, is those are well beyond law

enforcement. It also includes prevention

and consideration of some of the issues that

lead to some of the crime issues and then

all the way to reentry.

Could you talk about whether you think

from a sheriff's perspective that a

strategic planning process every five years

or one year would be helpful in your area of

responsibility?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: So short answer to

that is, yes, I think it would be. I don't

know what that would look like, the nuts and

bolts of that. But, as an example, so years

ago I want to say -- I may be going back to

2004. We had a matrix audit come in, so an

audit to the Sheriff's Office. And it was

really driven by -- you may remember the

process. It was driven by, at the time,

Mayor Peyton, Sheriff Rutherford, I don't

remember who the Council President was at

the time.

But they really were looking at -- the

Sheriff said, hey, we had a spike in violent

crimes. The Sheriff said, I need more

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resources. Mayor Peyton basically said,

hey, let's dissect the agency and find out

what exactly you need. So beyond just the

Sheriff saying, I need more, I need more,

Officer Rutherford was open to that.

So that assessment team came in and

spent months doing an assessment and then

provided a document, a report really, to the

Sheriff's Office, the Council President and

the Mayor. And not only did it have in

there a recommendation with a lot of

supporting data of the number of officers

that this community needed in their opinion,

but it also had efficiencies. For the

Sheriff's Office, it was a great checkup.

So we had some challenges with that

particular company, but the idea was, I

thought, fantastic at the time.

So we're in the process of doing that

now. So we have the International

Association of Chief of Police really onsite

this week, coincidentally, and they'll be

here two or three more times over the next

several months. And they're doing just

that, it's a checkup for the agency. It is

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a nuts to bolts, you know, how does this

work, are you being efficient here, is this

best practice. Part of it will also be, you

know, based on the challenges you have in

your community, do we feel like you're

staffed appropriately. If not, here is a

recommendation of what we think a staffing

number should look like. So, again, that's

just part of it.

They're going to analyze the zone lines

as well. Our zone lines have been the same

for 20-plus years. And population has

changed, growth has changed. You know,

that's something that we feel like we need

to look at as well, and they're going to do

that.

I mentioned a couple months ago to a

couple Council people not a bad idea to do

that every five to seven years for the

Sheriff's Office. Now, you know, another

Sheriff may have a different view of that,

but I think it's a good checkup. It's a

good way to drive, obviously, the Council,

the Mayor's Office and the Sheriff's Office

together and talk about the internal

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111

workings of the agency. I think it's

important. So we're doing it now. That's

something -- it's similar to that. But

that's the same kind of thing, I think,

where you sit down, you talk about the

direction, you set a goal, let's work

towards it.

We do those things now, but I don't know

if we do it at a high enough level maybe.

So it's definitely worth discussion to talk

about doing something like that as a

community, as an entire city and kind of

outline everybody's role in that.


you.

Let's see. Yes, so it will be -- oh,

Ms. Lisska popped up for the first time.

COMMISSIONER LISSKA: Sheriff Williams,

hello.


COMMISSIONER LISSKA: Thank you. I have

enjoyed listening to you.

I'm wondering what instigated the visit

of the International Association of Chief of

Police. Was that driven by you, staff or

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112

requirement of some sort?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Yeah. We just chose

to do it. So it was something I wanted to

do a couple years ago and then just didn't,

obviously. We put it on the back burner,

put it on the back burner. And this was the

year we chose to bring that to a head and do

it.

COMMISSIONER LISSKA: So no requirement

anywhere?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: No, ma'am.

COMMISSIONER LISSKA: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: All right. Next we

have Ms. Mills, for the second time.

COMMISSIONER MILLS: Hi, Sheriff.


COMMISSIONER MILLS: I just wanted to

tell you and congratulate you on partnering

with Bethune-Cookman for having the

workshop. I heard a lot of people say a lot

of good things about it. I do thank you for

sharing with me and with the Charter about

the relationships in the community as it

relates to the City of Jacksonville, because

I do think that that's very important that

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113

we know what's available so we can regain

the trust and hopefully take our City and

keep it in safe hands. Thank you so much

for your input this morning.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Yes, ma'am. Thank

you.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Next, Mr. Griggs,

for the second time.


Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Sheriff Williams. Again, I

just wanted to -- Mr. Denton sort of stole

my thunder a little around strategic

planning. And, again, I, like Ms. Mills,

appreciate the work you're doing around

social justice with Bethune-Cookman, we

heard a lot of good things about the

program.

But I'm wondering if you are, the

Sheriff's Office, is involved in any other

long-term strategic planning efforts that

involve local partners. And when I say

that, I'm using the example when I was at

the health department, we worked, along with

other community agencies, organizations and

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114

the private sector, in developing, helping

to facilitate the development of a community

health improvement plan. And as part of

that, a representative from the Sheriff's

Office would be there. And at the end of

that process, there are deliverables that

each agency or partners or what have you

will participate in. And I recall the

Sheriff's Office being a part of that

because those are the things that identify

some of the social determinants of health

that are going on in our community like

Ann-Marie mentioned earlier.

So I'm wondering if you have any other

local strategic partnerships at addressing

social determinants of health and social

injustice issues.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: So if I understand

your question correctly, the answer is, no,

we don't have long-term strategic

partnerships in place that do that. We are

engaged in multiple partnerships working day

to day with, obviously, like Kevin Gay

Operation New Hope, prevention opportunities

that we weigh into. Those -- if that's

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115

where you're talking about, those type of

things, yes. But in a strategic plan that

involves other city agencies or nonprofits

involved in that, not really. We are not

driving any of that. We participate in some

of it, but we're not driving any of that.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: Okay. And my

follow-up to that would be is there a

process for the public or citizens or

organizations to be able to introduce data,

programs or policies they believe that will

be helpful to your job at JSO and specific

to a particular situation? Let's just say

an organization had a way, they felt they

had an evidence-based program or a new

policy they felt like would help reduce

problems in our community in a certain area

of town, what is the process of introducing

that information to you or to whoever in

your department to receive that information?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: So right now there is

not a formal process for that because we try

to engage -- every zone commander is heavily

engaged in daily activity -- I say daily --

activity with nonprofits working the area.

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116

I'm always available, as you know. I mean,

I'm always available to listen to those

ideas. And a lot of those were brought to

me directly from the community. A lot of

those come through the Sheriff's Watch

meetings or some other community outreach

avenue that we have where somebody says,

hey, I have an idea. And, again, a lot of

them, they call directly and say, I would

like to speak to the Sheriff about this.

And I make a point to always make myself

available to hear that.

And we've gotten some good things out of

that. That's where the Bethune-Cookman idea

came from, as a matter of fact. So we're

always open to hear that. Not really a

formal process when you put something in a

queue and, you know, have it evaluated and

all that. It's really just about having a

relationship with somebody. Now, that is a

formal process with a zone commander or just

reaching out to my office and getting the

opportunity.


SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Yes, sir.

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117

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Next I see

Ms. Baker, second time.

COMMISSIONER BAKER: Hi, Sheriff. I

just wanted to dig a little deeper into the

strategic planning process that you said has

been done before and you are doing now. Is

it really just looking into inefficiencies

in your office, like the details of the

zoning? Do you need more officers? Do they

also recommend programs that could help our

City, like, ShotSpotters that we've done?

And, also, does it include the Mayor and

the State Attorney when they're conducting

their investigations? And would it be

helpful to include them? Just, if we can

put that in writing to do this, I just want

to know more about what you would suggest.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: So they do include

them. There is an interview with the Mayor

and there is an interview with the State

Attorney, they actually interview the police

chiefs in the surrounding -- in

our jurisdictional area, they interview

those and they talk to the surrounding

sheriffs as well about relationships. So

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there are different facets to this.

The only area they are not covering in

this assessment is our corrections piece.

And that's a separate deal. And we're

looking to do a similar assessment for that

process. But they do all of that. So it's

in efficiencies, you know, looking at zones,

talking about staffing, and then

programming. From a programming standpoint,

what's the best practice as it relates to

this? What evidence-based practices are you

using?

I will tell you that, as much work as

we've done in the area of violent crime,

there is not an evidence-based practice in

the country that we're not doing here. Now,

all of that is kind of just now coming

together, but when you talk about the focus

of deterrent strategies, we do it with the

National Network For Safe Communities out of

John Jay College in New York, you talk about

true violence as a piece of that puzzle,

technology like ShotSpotter, the realtime

crime cameras.

If you look around the country at what's

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evidence-based and what works, everything is

here now, within the last, you know, six

months. So now it's time to let that stuff

work.

So they may bring something new to the

table, we're always looking. We're always

looking for new ideas and new things, but I

much prefer the things that we know have

worked in other communities. They have some

scientific evidence behind them or results

from somewhere else.

So right now we've got what I think is

the right combination of strategies and

programs and technology. Now you just have

to let it work.

But that's part of what they'll do.

They'll evaluate that. How are we using

that? Are we using it correctly? And, oh,

by the way, have you thought about adding

this? Have you thought about adding that?

So they do a lot of that work.

COMMISSIONER BAKER: And how often would

you recommend that this happen? Did you say

every five to seven years?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: I think five to seven

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years would be appropriate. It's been

longer than that since we had it last time.

COMMISSIONER BAKER: When was the last

time?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: 2004, and that was

the first time. And that was really driven

by a crisis. So, to me, I think, you know,

some kind of schedule where there is an

analysis done of the agency and how that --

because it doesn't take long to get off

course, you know, you can imagine. So

requiring something like that is going to be

beneficial to the community.

COMMISSIONER BAKER: Thank you. That's

very helpful.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Thank you. I don't

see anybody else on the queue.

I have a couple questions. One is

probably just more informative for our

Commission, and I don't know if you've had

the opportunity to see the City Council

strategic plan that was initiated by then

Council President Bowman. But Ms. Johnston

or Ms. Owens -- you're not going to be here

any longer, so I'm not going to ask you --

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if we can get a copy of that strategic plan,

as well as I know that the Council just

passed legislation authorizing that to

occur, go forward on, I believe, an annual

basis --

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Right.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: -- in there, that

might be helpful since strategic planning is

something that continues to percolate up to

the top in our discussions, that might be

something for us to look at as a Commission

in understanding -- look at the legislation

and the strategic plan itself in there.

I had a question about -- obviously, you

work with the State Attorney's Office. How

much interaction does your office have with

regards to OGC, Office of General Counsel?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Yeah, good question.

A lot, as you can imagine. I don't know

what the other volume is. I have to guess

we're probably top users of services from

OGC, close to it. And unlike Jim, so I have

a little different -- I've had a different

perspective. I approached Jason awhile back

to General Counsel about potentially having

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someone assigned in the office. So years

ago Larry Pritchard, who many of you may

remember, was actually assigned to work for

the General Counsel and sat in the Sheriff's

Office. And when Larry retired, we never

really replaced that position.

Larry originally started as a legal

advisor from the State Attorney's Office,

retired from the State Attorney's Office,

was hired by OGC, and really continued as a

legal advisor for the Sheriff in -- assigned

to our building.

We currently have a legal advisor from

the State Attorney's Office that is there to

advise on criminal issues. So they have a

period of time where they're on-call,

officers can call and ask questions. State

Attorney also provides an on-call state

attorney for that. There is enough work

volume, obviously, for them to stay busy

with that. But we've had, again,

conversations about representation in the

building.

Jason made a great point to me, and it's

absolutely true, we have such a wide variety

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of issues, I don't know that I can have one

attorney in our building to address all

those issues. So we have a number of labor

and disciplinary issues that come up.

Derrel Chatmon obviously is the lead at OGC

for a lot of that. We have Steve Powell,

Sean Granat that do a lot of the law

enforcement related litigation that happens.

People sue the agency for a variety of

reasons. And, again, five or six others

that we deal with on a regular basis. So

we're getting some expertise there in terms

of those areas, and they're so diverse.

What we asked for recently was really to

have somebody be a traffic cop, so to speak

for that, sit in our building. Andy Kantor,

who is there with the State Attorney's

Office, may assume that role for us; we're

in those conversations now. But not so much

to litigate for us. A little bit different

than, I think, what Jim was talking about.

Really just more of a -- again, to kind of

marshal different things, to keep tabs on

different legal issues as they're coming and

going.

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So maybe not a bad idea to have a -- I

may be the only Sheriff in the state that

doesn't have his own attorney that speaks

for the Sheriff. And so I haven't had any

issue. And, again, I get a lot of great

advice, so I can't bring you an example.

But it's -- this is a bad process for us, it

works for me. But it may not be a bad idea

to look at that, someone who is -- I don't

know how, if they would work for GC, I don't

know how that would work, but --

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: That was -- I don't

know if you were here when we had the

discussion with Mr. Overton, but I think it

was Mr. Weinstein was the one who put

forward this general idea of an Assistant

General Counsel with each of the independent

authorities. Obviously, to do that, you

know, with each individual constitutional

office as well.

One thing that is also interesting is in

the duties for the Sheriff under the

Charter, it talks about enforcement of laws

under the Constitution, general special laws

of Florida, but it doesn't reference our own

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municipal code. Along the lines of

Ms. Lisska, that might be something on a

clean-up. I was just going through and I

said, well, that's funny, it doesn't mention

anything about our enforcement of our local

laws through there.

And I also believe -- you talked about

with regards to the interaction with the

beaches, that grew out of the issue of

consolidation of those communities wanting

to maintain their autonomy within that.

Judge Swanson, far be it for me to

refuse a judge anything he asks. I saw that

you did pop up here on the queue.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: It's not user

friendly to me. I'm getting my sea legs.

Sheriff, I just have a very abbreviated

question. It goes to school safety, student

safety. And I know that there is another

independent law enforcement agency that's

involved directly in that. And your

relationship would be indirect or less

direct; is that fair to say?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Yes. On a day-to-day

basis, that is correct.

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COMMISSIONER SWANSON: This is a

structural question in terms of school and

student safety, active shooter issues, those

kinds of things that are so preeminent for

anybody that has a child or really

preeminent for anybody that's a citizen.

Structurally, are we doing it right or could

there be some structural changes that maybe

we could address with recommendation that

would enhance the safety of schools and

teachers and citizens in the school

environment?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Great question. I

think we're moving in the right direction.

The one improvement that I would like to

see -- and, of course, it's budget

constraints that impact this, but I'm a fan

of having a police officer in every school,

not a guardian, not a school safety

assistant. Although that's what we do today

to bridge that gap, and that's what the

legislature obviously has given people an

opportunity to do, it falls short of being a

sworn police officer in the school.

There is a lot of great benefit there,

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obviously, in terms of the interaction,

relationships, all that happens. Those

officers are rarely the disciplinarians in

the school. That's not what they do. But

they are well trained and they are there and

can respond should one of those crisis

incidents occur on campus.

You know, currently today, because of

the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act, we have

the ability to really train -- screen and

train an employee that the School Board

hires to be a school safety assistant. So I

like the idea that they have someone with

the sole responsibility of being protector

of the school.

I'm not a fan of arming teachers. I

think teachers have enough to do in the

classroom as it is and teachers are not

professionals when it comes to law

enforcement and responding.

The idea that there is a roving band of

retired policemen and veterans who will do

that job is just not true. Veterans and

retired police officers go get other jobs.

Our challenge here was that the school

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safety assistants from the School Board were

paid about $12 an hour. So, as you can

imagine, you don't have a very strong

applicant pool for that kind of work.

We experience -- and this started two

years ago -- or a year ago we started. So

we experienced, obviously, by the applicants

brought onboard by the School Board, half of

them did not pass the screening, which we

are required to do by state law now. And

the ones that did pass the screening, half

of that group didn't pass the training. And

we are required to train them because of

state law.

So there has been an adjustment made.

The School Board is paying 20-plus dollars

an hour now, so that's going to improve the

pool. Obviously, immediately, at the

beginning of school last year, when the new

legislation came into effect, we were short

100 police officers, guardians, something,

to cover elementary schools. So we had our

high schools and middle schools covered. We

had nobody in elementary schools.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Well, Sheriff, if

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I can just follow up on that, I'm trying to

understand the "we" in your response.

Structurally?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Structurally it's the

Duval County School Board's responsibility.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Structurally

would you before -- or structurally, in your

opinion, would it be safer for the community

to be -- for this to be your responsibility?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: So I would prefer us

or the Duval County School Board --

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Us, who is us?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: JSO or Duval County

School Board be staffed with enough police

officers to cover that, either one. As long

as it is a state certified law enforcement

police officer that is on campus, that would

be my preference.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Well,

structurally would that officer respond or

report to you or to somebody else? Which

would be the best practice?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Best practice, in a

perfect world, they all belong to me, in a

perfect world.

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COMMISSIONER SWANSON: So that's a

structural change --

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: That's a big

structural change, yeah, that's huge. So

you're talking about the addition of -- in

addition to what we may need in public

safety in Jacksonville, you're talking about

an initial 150, 160 police officers for the

Duval County School Board and the school

responsibility.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: That you would

absorb somehow.

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: Correct.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: But that would,

in your opinion, be the best practice?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: In my opinion, again,

if I were starting from scratch, all of

those -- there would be a police officer in

every school and they would work for the

Sheriff's Office.


Mr. Chair.


you.

Thank you, Sheriff Williams, for your

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time here today. Is there anything else you

want to share with us?

SHERIFF WILLIAMS: No. I appreciate

your work and thanks for having me.


All right. Now we come to Commission

updates and discussions. If anybody has had

an opportunity to meet with anyone or talk

about certain issues, I know

Mr. Schellenberg had already mentioned

talking with Doc Mullaney (sic).

And are you going to have that report,

that --

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: It was sent

to me last night. I had Ms. Owens print one

copy for me just because I like it. She's

going to send it out to all of you in a PDF

file.

Is that correct, Ms. Owens?

So you can review it and ask Dr. Haley

whatever you might ask.


you.

Ms. Jameson.

COMMISSIONER JAMESON: Thank you,

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Mr. Chairman. For discussion, I would like

to get a sense of how we are determining

these upcoming four meetings that we have

left as a large group before we get to the

committees. What is the structure of who

gets invited? How they're invited? Who

invites them? And then, again, because we

only have limited four meetings left, how do

we determine who gets invited?

Again, we have a lot of people on these

lists of resources that we would like to

hear from. But, again, with that limited

time, how do we determine who actually gets

those last four meetings, let's call it?

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Well, we've kind of

been maintaining a list as we go along for

scheduled speakers. And when someone has

said, hey, I would like to have this person

invited, we've tried to honor those requests

and get in there.

Again, there's nothing that prevents us

from talking to them once we get the

priorities and going back and re-inviting

them to come at the committee level.

So what I have tried to do as Chair is

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give us broad ones. Like, one, I'm going to

be following back up with Ms. Boyer to come

and speak. I have that set on there so that

she can share with us some of the things

that were accomplished and the things that

weren't accomplished through her task force.

And here is what we have so far, I have

here in my hand, we have Sherry Magill and

Audrey Moran set for October 2nd. We do not

have anyone as it is on October 11th. I

have -- we've sent out requests, I believe,

to the independent agencies, following up on

those, haven't heard anything back yet with

regards to those on the issue of strategic

planning and interaction with consolidated

government. But, again, if as it seems,

this idea of a strategic plan procedure that

we would put into the Charter, if that

becomes one of the big topics, then

obviously that would be something for the --

that subcommittee to really drill down in on

and understand the intricacies of how that

works with each of those independent

agencies.

COMMISSIONER JAMESON: Will we be able

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to get a copy of that list of who is

upcoming? For me, it would be helpful to

prep what exactly is in the Charter with

seeing who our presenters are for that day.

If we can get that list ahead of time, I

think that would be very helpful, that we

can all prepare what's specifically in the

Charter, what we would like to be included

in the Charter just so we can structure

those conversations.

Again, I'm a little worried with only

having four meetings left. I want to make

sure that we're able to go through all these

discussions.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Very good. I will

do it.


CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Next, Ms. Knight.

VICE CHAIRPERSON KNIGHT: So preface my

first comment with I joined the Commission

when I was at a previous institution, so

there is no bias there. In our Commission

topics, and I actually like to call it our

issues list, there was -- there is a bullet

listed as dedicated funding for the health

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department. And I'm wondering was that

comment regarding UF Health. Is that a

correction or should that be corrected?

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Yes, Mr. Griggs.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: I actually made --

sort of made that recommendation, but it

wasn't really a recommendation

recommendation. What it was, was an

opportunity to review this section in the

Charter that speaks to health -- I can't

remember the terminology now, but we do have

under there the health care facilities

authority, but there is something there that

allows for in the Charter dedicated funding

for health care issues. If I can get a

chance to look back, I can tell you exactly

what it is.

I think at an earlier meeting I asked

about the, I guess, dormant authorities that

are listed in the Charter, ones that we

haven't seen operational, like the Sports

Development Authority, whatever it's called.

And this was an opportunity to revisit a way

to have dedicated funding and maybe perhaps

support the needs of the indigent care

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136

dollars that UF Health needs, and as well

the public health unit.

VICE CHAIRPERSON KNIGHT: So I'll

definitely try to make sure I compliment

your recommendation on the list.

The other piece I have concern about is

on our list we have great sub-bullets around

some very heavy, important topics, but the

Urban Core Investment Authority is a sole

bullet. If you look at our topics list, I

just caution us as a Commission, there are

many of our topics and sub-bullets in other

areas that would easily apply to the Urban

Core Investment Authority idea that I think

Commissioner Griggs can -- suggestion, to

include the dedicated funding, to include

the strategic plan idea, to include creating

our own -- budget, City Council budget, and

comments around independent authorities.

So when we get to the point that we're

really flooding the list, I think it would

be important to really draw overlaps with

topics so we can see the magnitude of any

one of these major bullets, because I think

that's going to help us with our decisions.

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CHAIRPERSON BROCK: My question on

trying to organize this, are you saying that

those bullet points under the broader topics

should fall underneath that broader topic as

well?

COMMISSIONER BAKER: There's multiple.

VICE CHAIRPERSON KNIGHT: Yes. Say that

one more time to make sure --

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: I was just cheating

and looking over at your paper, and I saw

where you had marked individual bullet

points that were under other broader topics.

Are you saying that we should include those

other bullet points beneath that broader

topic of the urban core?

VICE CHAIRPERSON KNIGHT: Yeah, or

simply, instead of doing bullets, we could

order it by numerical -- alphanumerical

order and just do cross-reference, because I

think it will help us when we're deciding

what topics are most important to us, to

realizing the impact across multiple

editors. Does that make sense? Because if

we look at them independently, so just say

if you look at OGC by itself in some of the

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topics underneath, the sub-bullets, there

may be complimenting or other impact, other

bullets on the list. I think it would be

important for us to realize that, the

magnitude of any of these things. And,

again, to my initial point, the Urban Core

Investment Authority, we need to realize

that many of these sub-bullets do have

impact on that opportunity that we should be

paying attention to.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Okay. So what I

would ask and maybe we can get -- did you

receive that list? Do you have it

electronically in Word?

VICE CHAIRPERSON KNIGHT: No, I do not.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: All right. Then,

Ms. Owens, if we can get that list, I

believe I sent it to you in Word when I was

working around on it, and send it out.

If you have ideas or things to include

in that, then we can get that and we can

look at it, because that's exactly what I'm

hoping we're beginning to do, is refine that

list to where we all agree these are the

items that we're going to be looking at so

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we all know how we can rank them.

And I think it's a very good point, if

we did a Venn diagram, there would be a

bunch of overlaps on all of these. You

know, just again from today, strategic

planning is one that seems to really rise to

the top of making sure that the consolidated

government, that each silo is talking to one

another on that.

VICE CHAIRPERSON KNIGHT: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Mr. Schellenberg.


Chair, just a couple things. The funding, I

think, has to do with UF Health also is what

you were thinking of. Just to Jackson

Memorial in Miami and Tampa General and

Tampa, they have a dedicated funding source

for their hospitals that are almost

identical to UF Health. I think that we

should reach out to Dr. Haley as soon as

possible. He's a very busy guy, and rightly

so. I think he said he had like 7,000

employees, he's extraordinarily busy over

there. Find out what his schedule is and

also have him first on the list, the speaker

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so he can get in and out.

VICE CHAIRPERSON KNIGHT: I think he's

October 2nd.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Did he say

yes to that?

MS. OWENS: Yes.

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: If you could

put him right off the bat, I'd greatly

appreciate it. He asked me to do that.

Understanding scrubbing and all that

kind of stuff, I think when we go into

subcommittees, we might very much -- even

though we might have scrubbed them now, they

might come back in subcommittees because of

the various conversations we're having with

additional expertise. So I understand what

we're trying to do, but -- in subcommittees,

but you never know what directions they

might end up. And I think that's critical

for the chairs of these subcommittees to

recognize and for the whole Committee to

recognize going forward.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Yeah. And -- I'm

sorry. Were you -- okay. You put your mike

down, so that means yes. Do you know,

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141

Mr. Schellenberg, exactly how those

dedicated funding sources are created for

Jackson Memorial? I ask that because if you

could point us to --

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: Sales tax,

dedicated sales tax. And I think Jackson

Memorial -- these are old numbers, but I

think they get a couple hundred million

dollars a year to run that hospital.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: I was just looking

at specifically how it's structured. Is it

through an ordinance code? Is it through a

charter?

COMMISSIONER SCHELLENBERG: That part I

don't know, Chair. But that's easily found

out, and I'll find out. I'll see what I can

do. I'm pretty sure it will be open.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Mr. Griggs seems to

have some input on this.


Mr. Chair, I can answer that question, as it

used to be my job.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: (Inaudible) --

money.

COMMISSIONER GRIGGS: The indigent care

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dollars, public health unit money, under

Chapter 154 from the Florida statutes, each

county that's supposed to have a public

health trust fund, that fund -- that trust

fund is supposed to be funded through --

typically funded through a taxing district.

Jacksonville, Duval County, is the one

large community that doesn't have a

dedicated taxing district to support that

public health trust fund, which makes the

annual funding subject to who is ever, you

know, administratively in office and

whatever the Council approves. So

typically, whatever UF Health has gotten has

fallen underneath that number which they

typically can get, that's why it's been --

they work to maintain that.

And also the duties of the county health

department, which are the clinical indigent

care, environmental and disease control,

those numbers, those funding dollars, are

supposed to come from the city as well. And

that's why you see some of the facilities

that are owned -- that are run by the health

department, owned by the city.

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CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Excellent. We have

a subject matter expert. Thank you.

Judge Swanson.

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: Thank you. I

really am soliciting some guidance for

thoughts from the Chair. I'm new,

obviously.

And so one of my thoughts from today's

testimony of the Sheriff, in particular, was

concerning structure and the best practice

so far as school safety, student safety,

active shooter responses, those kinds of

things. And he clearly indicated in his

view a structural change might be

appropriate for consideration.

I don't know, given my database at this

point, whether or not that's something that

would be addressed by this Commission in

terms of a macro change recommendation or

not. So I solicit guidance from you, your

thoughts concerning that, number one.

And number two, if there is a thought

that that might be appropriate, I think we

should pursue that with some additional

testimony.

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CHAIRPERSON BROCK: And question to

Ms. Johnston, which I have all respect for

you and Ms. Sidman because I can't imagine

having any elected officials as my client

and worse than that be lawyers who are

elected officials appointed through here,

because you get questions and you have to

dance on the tips of your toes.

Do you know with regards to the Duval

County School Board police force, is that a

creature of local ordinance or is that a

creature of state statute?

MS. JOHNSTON: Through the Chair to the

Commission, I don't know that off the top of

my head. I would have to look into it. But

in terms of the structure with the schools

having police officers, I think a lot of the

new requirements came out of the state law

from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act. So

to the extent of having -- where the Sheriff

was talking about having police officers at

each of the schools, some of that seems to

be a result of the state law changes. So we

also have to look at what part of it is the

state law requirements versus what we can do

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145

in the Charter in terms of structure.

But I will look at how the School

Board's police force is structured and get

that information to the Commission.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: All right. And,

Judge, to follow up on that, our report goes

not only to the City Council, but also to

the Duval Legislative Delegation, so to the

extent that there are state laws that we

would recommend specifically as it relates

to Jacksonville, that is within our charge

to look at those things.

Mr. Hagan.

COMMISSIONER HAGAN: Thank you,

Mr. Chairman. When I was looking over this

list, one of the things that's pretty

important to me is streamlining. I don't

see streamlining government making sure that

we're operating efficiently. I don't see it

in there, but I've seen several different

spots where it can fit under. I want to

make sure that's either a bullet point or

something maybe that could be under

government structure or something like that.

And maybe if we made it a bullet point,

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146

the other thing I was going to mention is

city incentives. I know those have been

pretty important as we try to attract

companies in Jacksonville. And I don't know

how that would play into effect into the

Charter, but if it could, I think it would

be really important to make sure we had

something in there basically saying that

it's in our Charter, it's in our

Constitution, we are open for business and

we want to do everything we can to make sure

that we have a competitive advantage over

anywhere else in the state or country.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: And I have reached

out to Daniel Davis, there at the Chamber of

Commerce, to see if there were any issues

like that. I believe he was going to be

getting internally with his team to see if

there is perhaps something that could be

coming that way. So I haven't heard back.

Ms. Baker.

COMMISSIONER BAKER: Thank you,

Mr. Chair. I would like to add the

Sheriff's recommendations of the strategic

plan every five to seven years. I think

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that could fall under the citywide strategic

planning or maybe other areas.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: I agree, we'll make

sure that's in there.

Next I have Ms. Santiago.

COMMISSIONER SANTIAGO: Good morning. I

just have a quick question for you. I know

that we have invited Mike Hogan to come

speak, and that he addressed, based on our

list, that he didn't have any issues. But

do we have questions for him, since it seems

like there is so much on what we've

discussed about elections and staggered

terms and whether or not -- could we do the

same thing that we just did with Sheriff

Williams with Mike Hogan?

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: I can reach back out

to him, yes.

Next, Judge Swanson, did you want to

speak again?

COMMISSIONER SWANSON: No.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: You're off, okay.

Ms. Jameson, were you back on again?

COMMISSIONER JAMESON: I just had a

clarifying question. I thought we had

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re-invited those that had initially said

they didn't have an issue, I thought we were

going to re-invite them to, again, do that

same: if they didn't have a presentation,

we could still ask them relevant questions.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Did they go to --

just sent it to the authorities, okay. We

just sent that to the authorities. But

we'll send it out to those who have not

already come and spoken who are

constitutional officers.


CHAIRPERSON BROCK: All right. Seeing

no one else on the queue, any other business

or things anybody needs to talk about?

Then we will go to our final public

comment. And I have one from Mr. Nooney.

Name and address, please, sir.

MR. NOONEY: Hello. My name is John

Nooney, 8356 Bascom Road, Jacksonville,

Florida 32216.

I am so glad that we have a court

reporter. I swear that the testimony I'm

about to give is the whole truth and nothing

but the truth and not a Charter Revision

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Commission fib.

You know, what I just want to read is --

and this is my public comments that's in the

minutes. John Nooney, our waterways are the

soul of the community. He recommends a

Charter amendment requiring CRAs and the DIA

to ensure public access to waterways. The

School Board headquarters should be a public

access point. Mr. Nooney said that, since

the adoption of ordinance 2014-560E, he

wonders if citizens really have legal access

to 4.8 miles of city waterfront downtown and

whether that access is subject to federal

enforcement. The ordinance has a chilling

effect on public access. He recommended

inviting Kay Ehas of Groundwork Jax, to

speak at a future meeting about river

access. Speak for the river while you have

the chance.

And let me just say, you know, very

quickly, you know, when you look at the

structure, I just -- you know what, I

participated in One Spark. It had a

waterways component access to it. And they

wanted to seize my watercraft. You know, I

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just sat there.

In fact, I even called up the paper.

You want a front-page headline? Go right

ahead, just take me away. And so, anyway,

that's 2014.

Now right here, I'll talk about this,

you know, Florida Times Union, every issue,

it's still worth getting into. This is the

armory. Now the legislation was 2013-384.

Now, when you look at our Charter, the last

Charter Revision Commission was 2009. So,

anyway, this is just September. So then

after 100 years we have the Emerald Trail.

So where I'm going with this is you

know, when I did -- we are now under federal

with downtown. So your invited speakers

should be U.S. Coast Guard Sector

Jacksonville, Captain Jim Suber, FWC. You

know, you'll be -- and then JSO, Lieutenant

Shawn McCormick, we expanded the marine

division.

So, again, I want to be one of the

biggest cheerleaders, but like I said,

everything is legislation, 2017-1 was the

trespass, you know, public park. What will

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151

be the ramifications for this?

So, anyway, again, a Charter amendment

to address the CRA and DIA, if we're giving

away, for example, and I'll just use the

armory, because that's what's right now on

the table, the public access will be

guaranteed for the people of Jacksonville

for all.


MR. NOONEY: Well, thank you for

listening.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Next we have

Ms. Goforth.

Name and address, please, ma'am.

MS. GOFORTH: Claire Goforth, my address

is on file.

I'm just here because I'm writing a

story for Jax Lookout about the Charter

Revision Commission process. And I have

emailed most of you, heard back from a few,

and I've spoken to a couple, but I do not

have contact information for Judge Mills,

Ms. Lisska -- I'm sorry, Judge Swanson,

Ms. Mills and Ms. Lisska. So if you want to

see me after, I can give you my email

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address and we can work it out. There are

just a few questions, very simple. Thank

you.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Thank you, and thank

you for at least letting the public know

about the process we're doing and how we're

working hard to get their input. Thank you

for your --

MS. GOFORTH: My pleasure.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Anything else for

the good of the order?

Oh, you know what, I'm glad you stood

up, because I want to thank you for your

work here that you've been doing. I want to

thank you, I'm sure I speak on behalf of

everyone that's been involved in any aspect

of city government during your tenure, for

your service, your selfless service.

Folks, these folks have been here and

helping us, just us, because remember as

I've said, they all had full-time jobs that

took up their day-to-day activities before

we convened. And the efforts that they've

given to us and the support they provided to

this Commission led by Ms. Owens, soon to be

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taken over by Ms. Matthews, I personally

appreciate it.

I just wanted to thank you and to

recognize you and say, (applause).

MS. OWENS: I asked Jessica to come

down. This is Jessica Matthews, she's

taking my job as the Chief of Legislative

Services, which will include the Charter

Commission. And so you'll be in good hands.

CHAIRPERSON BROCK: Yes, I have had the

privilege of working with her as well. Big

shoes to fill. But I know you're going to

help us.

All right. With that, we're adjourned.

(Meeting adjourned at 11:43 a.m.)

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CERTIFICATE OF REPORTER

STATE OF FLORIDACOUNTY OF DUVAL

I, Amanda E. Robinson, Registered

Professional Reporter, do hereby certify that I

was authorized to and did report the foregoing

proceedings; and that the transcript, pages 1

through 153, is a true record of my stenographic

notes.

DATED this 4th day of October, 2019.

Amanda E. Robinson, Registered Professional Reporter

Documents

CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION MEETING DATE: Thursday ...apps2.coj.net/City_Council_Public_Notices_Repository/09-26-19CRC.pdfSep 26, 2019 · 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17