During Thursday’s meeting, the first since February, Jacksonville’s Special Committee on Resiliency voted to establish three new subcommittees, which residents are being encouraged to join.
Committee Chair and At-Large Group 4 Councilman Matt Carlucci proposed the subcommittees.
“Resiliency is really a big subject, and in order to do it justice I feel like we need to break this up into smaller, bite sized chunks in order to really get to the substance and in order to develop something that we, as a council, can act upon as policy and law,” he said during Thursday’s meeting.
Related: Jacksonville Resiliency Committee Chair Proposes 3 Subcommittees To Engage Public
All the committee members in attendance — Michael Boylan, Randy DeFoor, Garrett Dennis, and Joyce Morgan — voted for Carlucci’s proposal.
The three subcommittees are:
- Environmental Planning
- Infrastructure and Continuity of Operations for Essential Services
- Education, Protection of Local Neighborhoods, and Community Outreach
Carlucci said he hopes residents and outside experts will join the subcommittees, which should allow for more in-depth thinking than could have been accomplished by the main committee alone.
He said, “I just felt five minutes of public comment once a month wouldn’t even scratch the surface of the expertise that we have that comes to our meetings.”
"Resiliency is really a big subject, & I think in order to do it justice I feel like we need to break this up into smaller bite sized chunks in order to really get to the substance & in order to develop something that we as a council can act upon as policy," says @matt_carlucci.
— Brendan Rivers (@BrendanRivers) May 28, 2020
To sign up for one of the new subcommittees, call Alyson Lee, Carlucci’s assistant, at 904-255-5159 or email her at ASLee@coj.net.
Carlucci also said he’s received a commitment from Mayor Lenny Curry that Jacksonville would hire a chief resilience officer.
Related: Jacksonville City Councilman Looks to Hire Chief Resilience Officer
“Of all of our work that we do on the council, this is the one that I think looks towards future generations perhaps the most,” Carlucci said, “because we’re working against Mother Nature the best we can to make sure that our city remains resilient and viable for our children and our children to come.”
The Resiliency and Climate Change Coalition, formed in part to support the work of Jacksonville’s Special Committee on Resiliency, is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Friday via Zoom to discuss next steps.
Brendan Rivers can be reached at brivers@wjct.org, 904-358-6396 or on Twitter at @BrendanRivers.
