A "Blight Fight" Mascot For Jacksonville?

[thelakelander]

^That's the problem. No campaign is needed. Roll up the sleeves, start picking up trash and make the dedication to keeping public property well maintained. Lead by example. Not by photo op. Anyway, if you can't deal with your neighbors desiring better than the status quo, your own advice is applicable as well.

[Bativac]

Umm....ok.

There are people in town (like me) who are professional illustrators and mascot designers (like me) who could have come up with something better than this (like me) so I hope they at least hired somebody local. Other than that all I can say is it's yet another Jacksonville "photo op by design masquerading as good policy making" which the city seems to excel at.

[Noone]

Love the picture. That is funny. Does everyone remember Drippy? The EPB mascot I believe. May still be around. There was legislation as I recall to spend a $100K and the breakdown was $25,000 for the costume, $25,000 for the informational material, $25,000 for someone to wear it. and $25K for diapers?

Stay positive.

The legislation for Drippy was 2005-1414 and I stand corrected it was $150,000 not $100K. So what is the budget for our cash for trash guy?

[Rob68]

Id love an account of the amount of hrs any of our city council has spent outdoors picking up anything to help clean this city...most of them are just talking like they always do...when do they actually do something? Ive never seen one pick up a thing

[Jaxson]

Detroit is not as bad as some posters might claim...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/26/corktown-detroit-is-not-an-urban-wasteland_n_5883520.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/05/detroit-stereoptypes-misconceptions-blank-slate_n_6800606.html

[thelakelander]

Corktown is nice but make no mistake about it, Detroit does have some serious issues. There's some pretty large swaths of hopelessness. What we call blight would fall for viable in the worst parts of Detroit.  What's left of Sugar Hill between Cleveland Street and I-95 and Brooklyn, west of Park Street, is the closet thing you'll see locally to what exist in inner city Detroit on a large scale.

[TheCat]

We're such a strange city.

Downtown's not working. The last dozen marketing campaigns didn't work. So, let's spend millions more on another marketing campaign and convince everyone that "downtown is on fire". A campaign I always felt was in bad taste.

If the creative directors of that campaign were transplanted...

new orleans: It's Overflowing.

San Francisco: It's Shakin' in San Fran

Moore, OK: Feel the Breeze

There's blight? Of course there is, no one's tried to create a mascot creature to tell everyone to stop blight.

Maybe that's why our city government isn't working as well as it should. We've been reasoning with our policy makers. We've tried logical explanations. Apparently, our council needs to spoken to with mascots.

A few ideas we should launch, from the citizenry to the government:

Lawnmower Larry : Let's encourage the city to keep parks, public spaces and right of ways clean.

Debtless Debbie: Wow, look how happy Debbie looks when she says "no" to spending money on loan.

History Harry: Historic preservation is the just right thing to do.

Football Frankly: Frankly loves football but Frankly also loves the honest exchange of information between the jaguars,  the city government and the tax payers.

[I-10east]

I always felt was in bad taste.

new orleans: It's Overflowing.

So NOLA's is not (going by your catastrophe logic)?? Especially since Katrina was really recent.

[TheCat]

that's my point. it is in complete bad taste, at minimum.

[sheclown]

How about Mr. Clean --



Let's clean up the procurement process

[sheclown]

or Mr. Slimy as a Mascot for transparency.



Let's clean up our act!  Wipe away Mr. Slimy!

[Jaxson]

Older Rust Belt cities (e.g. Detroit) may have their share of blight, but they tend to have fairly decent central entertainment districts.  Detroit, for one has a great ball park for their baseball team, among other things.

[thelakelander]

^I wasn't knocking Detroit. It has come a long way and there are a lot of things they've done in and around downtown that Jax could learn from. However, in the grand scale of things, there are some serious issues that Detroit has to deal with that Jax does not. Detroit has lost over 1 million people over the last 50 years. It makes sense for them to plan to use demolition as a tool in their plan to abandon some areas of town. In Jax, a growing Sunbelt community, it does not.

[Noone]

or Mr. Slimy as a Mascot for transparency.



Let's clean up our act!  Wipe away Mr. Slimy!

+1

[Ocklawaha]

Now that I'm awake enough to read some of these older threads, I'm not really so upset over the 'Trash Bully'. I think the misread here was trying to sell this mascot to the general (adult) public rather then focusing on our elementary schools. A 'Trash Bully' going out to schools, organizing and going through the playground picking up with the kids is a very positive thing... Trying to do the same with Lakelander, Lucian, Stephen, Steve, TheCat or Ocklawaha is a whole different (and rather pathetic) thing. Even great weapons can miss their targets and this one is a classic.