A.G. Gancarski
Jacksonville City Councilman Reggie Brown has a community meeting scheduled for Thursday evening at the Legends Center on Soutel Drive.
The meeting kicks off at 6:00 p.m. at the Northwest Jacksonville landmark.
Councilman Brown has made news on a number of occasions in the last few weeks.
Brown called into question the nature of consolidation in a public notice meeting about civilian review boards last week.
As Brown told Action News Jax after that meeting: “If we are really going to talk about the reason that we consolidated the city in the first place, it was because the minority population was growing rapidly and we wanted to reduce that population so they couldn’t control the city. And that’s not a reason to consolidate the city.”
Questioning consolidation is actually not new for Brown: he did essentially the same thing in 2015, in a discussion with Florida Politics.
At that point, he asked: “Is Jacksonville really a consolidated city?”
Brown asks, in part, because Baldwin, Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, and Atlantic Beach all have their own mayors.
Is that, he asked, “consolidation with exceptions?” Has it “veered off from the true direction” of what consolidation was meant to be?
Councilman Brown sees community meetings as essential, and sees his role on the council in District 10 as being a conduit for city services and help for his constituents.
In this context, he filed a bill this year to unlock $70,000 of the approximately $133,000 council constituency for neighborhood events for members of the council.
Despite skepticism from certain members of the council, Brown was able to shepherd the bill through the committee process — albeit with numerous amendments and an occasional no vote.
Councilman Matt Schellenberg was concerned that there would not be enough money for every council member to do a successful event.
The $70,000 “might be successful for three or four people,” Schellenberg said, “but it wouldn’t be so keen for the other 16.”
Of course, Brown’s district has different pressures from that of Schellenberg.
Crime and tension is much closer to the surface.
Last month, after another shooting outside the Cleveland Arms apartments, Brown addressed the community at a press conference in the parking lot of the Lil Albert food store across the street, a staging area for more than one press event after a shooting.
Brown spoke with urgency against the “notion that we as a community should not snitch,” saying people should be the “eyes and ears of the community.”
Brown noted that while the mayor and the sheriff have dedicated resources, “we have to take responsibility for our actions.”
Many council members hold community meetings.
But for Brown and his constituents, the meetings have a different impact than in some other parts of town.
