Jacksonville to kids — 'Get lost'

COMMENTARY | Every child and every grandchild in Jacksonville will one day be forced to use their tax money to pay off billions of dollars in public pension debt they had nothing to do with.

To thank them for this, the city is doing its level best to make sure these children learn in public school buildings that are deteriorating into shabby hot boxes. The city will do almost nothing to stop the Atlantic Ocean from gradually reclaiming their neighborhoods. And it won't protect vulnerable children — specifically, those in the LGBTQ community.

Kids don't trade in the currency of the moment: They don't make political contributions, and they have no work to offer political consultants. Perhaps this is why they've been up a creek lately. 

What message does it send to these kids — what message does it send to the outside world — when the city library system has to cancel a small celebration of gay pride because it claims it can't guarantee the safety of attendees? Is it at all flattering to know that other cities, places Jacksonville business leaders like to consider peers, hold pride parades that attract hundreds of thousands, and manage to keep them safe?

The low-stakes of the now-canceled library event — a "Storybook Pride Prom" that about 100 teenagers planned to attend at the Willowbranch Library in Riverside — makes the pseudo-controversy around it that much more absurd. To be clear, the library intended this event to allow teenagers "to be themselves, connect with peers, and learn about available resources from local community partners." A few misguided carnival barkers and bloggers have twisted this into something sinister.

The city really can't guarantee their safety — all because a few angry residents (and non-residents) complained? This is shameful and pathetic. It's embarrassing.

Across the top of the doors to the main library in downtown — one of the finest libraries in the nation — these words are inscribed: "Open to all." Those teenagers are citizens of this city.

Where are our City Hall leaders?

Mayor Lenny Curry likes to say his top priority is public safety. Public safety for whom?

Shelton Hull, a local columnist, said it well: "If I were mayor, I would have said that the LGBT prom couldn't be held at that library because of safety reasons, and then offered to let the kids use the atrium at City Hall instead."

It now looks like JASMYN, a local nonprofit that serves Jacksonville’s LGBTQ youth community and already does so much heavy lifting, will have to step in to make sure Jacksonville's teenagers are cared for. Bless them.

FAILING ON SCHOOLS

On Tuesday, the city reverted to familiar form: The City Council refused to place a half-cent sales tax on the ballot, something the School Board says is needed to update the sprawling district's aging facilities — among the oldest in Florida. The problem is acute. In a story last weekend, my colleague Emily Bloch took district data and found that school administrators responded to thousands of incidents over the course of about a year — about $9 million worth of work — when air conditioning was out inside a classroom, main office, media center, a whole building or a block of rooms.

Although it upsets the powers that be to note this, there is a racial component to this debate as well: At 43 percent, black students make up the largest ethnicity in the Duval County Public School System.

The City Council and mayor will snap into action and squander millions to pad a developer's pocket, even those with questionable track records, sometimes on an emergency legislative track. Remember the obscene $36-million taxpayer incentive package the Curry administration wanted the City Council to approve for a strange Ferris Wheel-style development on the downtown waterfront? That imploded after my colleague, Christopher Hong, found that the developers had unpaid taxes and millions in unpaid judgments against them. 

They will spend millions more to demolish old buildings, with no plan ready to fill the wreckage with urban life. Just look at what's set to happen with The Jacksonville Landing — the city's latest lawn-in-waiting.

But a half-cent sales tax to save Duval County's public school buildings? The $6 per month, per family cost is simply too much for the political system to bear, apparently. The City Council won't even put the half-cent sales tax on the ballot so voters could have the final say. Instead, the council quietly kicked the can to a new group of council members who take office next month.

What is it exactly about the School Board's proposal that merited more scrutiny from an otherwise cowed City Council than other issues of enormous consequence it routinely voted on without such thoughtfulness? Council members eagerly signed off on Curry's pension-reform plan, despite lacking even basic knowledge about how the proposed series of complex changes would affect city finances.

The council hemmed and hawed this time about needing more financial information from the School Board. So the superintendent brought the school system's financial expert to meetings to answer questions. The council asked no questions of this official. The critics complain of a lack of details from the schools, but it's they who lack details. What, precisely, do they still need to see?

THE BIG QUESTION

This is a city that never fully desegregated its schools. It's a city that reneged on a promise made a half-century ago to provide modern infrastructure to predominately black neighborhoods, which forever lost their political power when the city and growing, mostly-white county communities consolidated into one large government.

Faced with the highest murder rate among Florida's largest counties, Jacksonville relegates the problem to task forces.

There always seems to be a lack of urgency — reasons to delay — when it comes to righting certain wrongs in this town.

Is it fair to put all this bad history on the current city leadership? No. But this is the city they inherited.

What kind of city will they leave behind?

Nate Monroe’s City column appears every Thursday and Sunday.

nmonroe@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4289