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Jacksonville Resiliency Committee To Vote On Recommendations In Next Meeting

Residents make their way across a flooded street after Hurricane Irma brought floodwaters to Jacksonville on Monday, Sept. 11, 2017.
John Raoux
/
Associated Press
Residents make their way across a flooded street after Hurricane Irma brought floodwaters to Jacksonville on Monday, Sept. 11, 2017.

The Jacksonville City Council’s Special Committee on Resiliency is getting close to wrapping up its work as members are scheduled to vote on and finalize recommendations during their next meeting.

Two of the committee’s three subcommittees presented recommendation reports during Friday’s meeting, which included everything from infrastructure improvements to community outreach.

But Councilman Michael Boylan said he wanted time to read through all the recommendations before voting.

“I applaud the work, I think it’s excellent,” Boylan said following a presentation by Brooks Andrews, one of the committee’s many subject matter experts, on recommendations from the Subcommittee on Environmental Planning. “I’d hate to move it forward without first having a chance to give it the kind of diligent review I’d like to do.”

Councilman Matt Carlucci echoed that request.

“I don’t want anything passing on this without it having a thorough review. And once it’s had a thorough review, if there are any questions we’ll button up the answers to those,” Carlucci said. “So when we’re through, it’ll be right. It will have been done right.”

Committee Chair Randy DeFoor agreed and scheduled a vote for the following meeting on Feb. 26 at 2 p.m.

“I think within the next three weeks, we should be able to come back and vote on the findings of all the subcommittees,” she said.

The Resiliency Committee is also scheduled to get an update that day on the status of the hiring process for the city’s chief resilience officer.

Assistant General Counsel Susan Grandin told the committee that funding is in place to hire a CRO, but Mayor Lenny Curry’s office has not yet started searching for candidates.

“I’m not sure why, but the job hasn’t been posted yet,” Grandin said. 

“I wanted to give a status on this today — on the position — and thought perhaps we would have had something by now on that,” Carlucci responded. “But not to worry, the position will be filled.”

Brendan Rivers can be reached at brivers@wjct.org, 904-358-6396 or on Twitter at @BrendanRivers.

Special Projects Producer Brendan Rivers joined WJCT News in August of 2018 after several years as a reporter and then News Director at Southern Stone Communications, which owns and operates several radio stations in the Daytona Beach area.