A.G. Gancarski
Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry is going to address the Jacksonville City Council Tuesday on hurricane damage and recovery.
He will have no shortage of subject matter, as hurricane mitigation and recovery has been the signature test of his administration so far.
After Hurricane Matthew’s impact on Jacksonville, there are known knowns and known unknowns.
A known known: power is headed toward restoration, though the optimistic timeframe of having everyone back online by midnight Monday was not met.
The JEA Outage Map, as of noon Tuesday, shows 40,347 electrical customers offline.
Part of the delay in that process is the nature of the outages. In many areas off the main roads, trees or branches fell on lines, with lines wrapping around trees due to the swirling winds of the storm.
Outside crews are in town helping with recovery efforts; however, even JEA’s ability to meet its original default timeline of having power recovered by Tuesday at 4 p.m. is in doubt.
As one might expect, Mayor Lenny Curry has gotten copious citizen feedback.
Some feedback has been laudatory, some indicates room for improvement.
An email the mayor got Monday pointed to frustration: “JEA was supposedly prepared for this and yet it it Sunday night almost 10 p.m. and me and my family have been without power since Friday before 1 p.m. Our neighbors across the street lost power after us two times and have been restored, both times, with JEA in our neighborhood, which I saw there trucks near my home Saturday morning, why was the whole neighborhood restored before leaving our area. I was prepared for food, water, ice. I have called JEA several times and told different things. It is a wire down, something they deal with all the time. I explained to them that I have my 89 yr old mother with me, my brother with congestive heart failure and an asmatic in the home.” [SIC]
Many emails register similar frustrations, with customers confused that JEA assessments don’t lead to immediate repair: “My son attends Andrew Jackson and will have to miss school because of three blocks with no power … I am being told the larger amount of outages come first. So just forget about the sickly elders affected? One neighbor uses a CPAP when she sleeps to keep breathing. Can’t u se it with no power she lives alone … My mother is seventy and is prepared for an outage with her supplies food and water. There is a disconnect with the seniors and what they need regarding their health during an outage.” [SIC]
And then there was this bit of feedback: “It will be difficult for you to get re-elected, because you act like a dictator, bossing the people around like you alone make the laws.”
Curry exhorted Jacksonville and beach community residents who were in evacuation zones to get out of harm’s way. Apparently, to the consternation of at least some.
And — ironically given the lack of attention the previous mayor paid to the beaches communities — at least one correspondent chided Curry for paying too much attention to conditions on the other side of the Intracoastal Waterway.
The correspondent said the “only thing it seems to concern you or at least that’s what comes across is the beaches. I’d like to remind you mayor there’s a more to Jacksonville than just the beaches and there are a lot more people out there that are hurting then what just lives at the beaches.” [SIC]
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Curry has wrestled with a number of problems, not necessarily of his making.
One such problem: raw sewage released into local waterways by the JEA.
At least 7.4 million gallons — or eight gallons for every Jacksonville resident — was released into local tributaries when power went out and generator backup apparently failed.
Another problem Curry wrestles with is perception.
After previous storms, Jacksonville took weeks to get some people their power back. With the current storm, and the fact that Jacksonville seems to have the hardest time getting back up to full power, critiques like those above become salient.
Another perception issue Curry is having to address from administrations gone by is dilatory debris removal.
Curry wrote Sam Mousa, the city’s chief administrative officer, on this subject Monday.
“Debris pick-up from previous storms have taken up to 6 months. That is not acceptable. I know you are on top of this — lets sit down and back into a timeline that gets this done,” the mayor wrote.
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These issues will be handled, of course.
At this writing, there are still known unknowns, such as the ultimate cost of recovery efforts to Jacksonville.
Curry has expressed confidence the city has the resources to proceed as needed, with federal and state reimbursement to come.
Meanwhile, the recovery efforts will soldier on and, in addition to governmental resources, a private relief fund has been formed.
Monday found Curry and local stakeholders announcing the formation of the First Coast Relief Fund.
The fund, kicked off with a $500,000 commitment from the local Jessie Ball duPont Fund, will make grants to nonprofits helping those impacted by the hurricane in Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau, Putnam, and St. Johns counties, filling in the gaps left by governmental programs.
Curry, in his remarks at the Jacksonville branch of the American Red Cross, extemporized at some length about the real struggles locals are experiencing.
Jacksonville, Curry noted, is a place where, even under the best of circumstances, there are people and families making the choice between groceries and paying the light bill.
Of course, storm recovery isn’t close to being the best of circumstances.
Yet Curry found reason for optimism in the people of Jacksonville: “the most caring, giving people I’ve met and come to know anywhere.”
“Jacksonville,” said the mayor on Monday, “is a resilient city full of resilient people.”
