A.G. Gancarski
Jacksonville City Council President Anna Brosche released charges last week for three special committees that will convene over the next year.
Brosche previewed these committees during her inauguration speech last month.
The Special Committee on Parks will deal with a continued decline of Jacksonville’s park system.
“The Trust for Public Land recently ranked Jacksonville’s park system as the 90th best among the 100 largest cities in the country based on a combination of factors including size of the park system, per capita city spending on parks, percentage of the city’s population living within easy walking distance of a park, and the amount and diversity of park facilities,” Brosche notes.
The committee will produce a “community-wide assessment of parks for access, maintenance, and more robust integration of our parks system in youth development and youth engagement,” amidst an inventory of park resources and a refining of park quality measures.
Councilman Scott Wilson will chair that committee.
“Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods,” chaired by Councilman Reggie Brown, will “make recommendations on what actions, policies, programs and funding we can propose to lift up our neighborhoods.”
The committee will “consider social, economic, criminal, transportation and other factors that affect neighborhood growth and success, solicit the opinions of experts in the fields of economic and community development, social justice, grassroots organizations, and the like, and consider a wide range of actions to realize our potential for safe and healthy neighborhoods.”
The special committee on the Opioid Epidemic, chaired by Bill Gulliford, will continue the work Gulliford began during the previous Council Presidency.
With $1.5M already earmarked toward a six-month pilot opioid treatment program for overdose victims, a big part of the committee’s charge will be to “oversee the progress and evaluate the effectiveness of the recently-approved opioid epidemic pilot project.”
