Surprise! COJ taking back control of Hemming Park

[Tacachale]

This depends entirely on who they put in charge of this. That was the problem with FOHP - great ideas and a lot of improvements, but they couldn't stick the execution. If they get someone who can pull off the improvements FOHP has been talking about (on a more sustainable level), it could go well. If they get someone that seriously considers cutting down trees and removing amenities, it won't.

As you may recall, several of us opposed the idea of a private management group taking over the park.

That said, once it was done, the fault did not lie with the FHOP group, it lie in the fact that they were chartered to do something else that what the original council people wanted done.

FHOP was charged with making the park vibrant again.

The councilmembers really just wanted the poor people and retirees and black people in the park removed.

Making a park vibrant takes time and money.  Neither of which was provided.

Two council people sabotaged the fundraising (and still haven't been held accountable for it)

The city's Park Director has been a controversial position ever since about a year after your dad left office.

I don't know why, but its one of the highest stress jobs with a shockingly high turnover rate in the city.

I can't imagine that they will make the council people any happier.

And of course they are talking about cutting down the trees.

That particular brand of poison was spilled into the downtown waters for 10 consecutive years by Jerry Moran, and like a post hypnotic suggestion it gets triggered every time someone says vagrants in connection with Hemming Park.

But FOHP's problems are deeper than just a failure to get the "vagrants" out. There's also the mismanagement of the budget and refusal to take constructive criticism even from the people controlling their purse strings. It undermined the good work they did, and it wasn't just City Council who was unhappy with them.

Yes, Parks hasn't been well run for some time either.

[thelakelander]

We have some pretty negative issues, from a social justice perspective, if this is the real objective of park improvement:

The main objective will be ridding the park of the ragged people who congregate there.

In Miami, the "ragged" people and their activities are promoted:

Maximo Gomez Domino Park is a landmark on Calle Ocho, and is always full of neighborhood domino players - usually older men who have mastered the game over years of practice. Named after the famous soldier Maximo Gomez who fought for Cuban independence from Spain, Domino Park sits on the corner of Calle Ocho and 15th Avenue. It is surrounded by shops and restaurants. The park is free and opened to the public during sunlight hours, and you're sure to find a loud, spirited domino game going on at any time of day.

http://www.miamiandbeaches.com/places-to-see/little-havana/calle-ocho-domino-park

Reading between the lines, these code words can come off as offensive. The reason I say this is because I've personally seen great change in the park after Friends of Hemming came in. For years, I spent little time there, despite working one block away. It wasn't because of the people there. It was because there was no reason for me to be there. The conversion of surrounding street retail and restaurant space into public offices simply killed most of the activities that once gave the park life.

Now I go there a lot more. The shade is great when it's hot outside. The visual greenery is attractive as well.  Because the rest of downtown's streetscape is pretty bland, the tree cover definitely gives the area a unique sense of place. That's an important element for pedestrian scale vibrancy.

Also, there's always something going on now. Just yesterday, I got lunch from a food truck in the park, noticed a diverse amount of people eating and listening to music. After I got off work, it had a night market event in it that also attracted a good mixed crowd of people. None of this was taking place there a couple of years ago.

So I bristle when I hear people say there's been no change and when the definition of change revolves around removing the "ragged". Let's get it out in the open, call a spade a spade and let's address our real underlying issues at hand.

If we really want to improve the park, then lets apply some sound planning principles to the space and the surrounding vicinity. Eliminating its amenities as a method of removing a group of people, is a path destined for failure and waste of public funds.

[lowlyplanner]

There's no doubt that Parks is chronically underfunded. 

Almost every park improvement in the last 5 has been largely privately funded (e.g. the Riverside Dog Park and the new playground at Boone Park - which is amazing by the way).  At Boone Park the organizers also raised money to maintain the new equipment...

I agree with Lakelander that we need to be clear about what we're trying to accomplish.  If the goal is just to move the ragged people along, why not just pay them to stay away?  It's cheaper than spending millions of dollars on poorly thought out improvements.  It wouldn't ruin the park for the rest of us like removing the trees would.

Once you lay it out honestly you see how awful some of the goals really are.

[Tacachale]

This depends entirely on who they put in charge of this. That was the problem with FOHP - great ideas and a lot of improvements, but they couldn't stick the execution. If they get someone who can pull off the improvements FOHP has been talking about (on a more sustainable level), it could go well. If they get someone that seriously considers cutting down trees and removing amenities, it won't.

As you may recall, several of us opposed the idea of a private management group taking over the park.

That said, once it was done, the fault did not lie with the FHOP group, it lie in the fact that they were chartered to do something else that what the original council people wanted done.

FHOP was charged with making the park vibrant again.

The councilmembers really just wanted the poor people and retirees and black people in the park removed.

Making a park vibrant takes time and money.  Neither of which was provided.

Two council people sabotaged the fundraising (and still haven't been held accountable for it)

The city's Park Director has been a controversial position ever since about a year after your dad left office.

I don't know why, but its one of the highest stress jobs with a shockingly high turnover rate in the city.

I can't imagine that they will make the council people any happier.

And of course they are talking about cutting down the trees.

That particular brand of poison was spilled into the downtown waters for 10 consecutive years by Jerry Moran, and like a post hypnotic suggestion it gets triggered every time someone says vagrants in connection with Hemming Park.

But FOHP's problems are deeper than just a failure to get the "vagrants" out. There's also the mismanagement of the budget and refusal to take constructive criticism even from the people controlling their purse strings. It undermined the good work they did, and it wasn't just City Council who was unhappy with them.

Yes, Parks hasn't been well run for some time either.

Parks began to go downhill during the Peyton Administration (as did a lot of civil service departments that had traditionally been rock solid since consolidation), then crashed during the recession and Brown Admin (removing the institutional memory position of Assistant Chief was a terrible idea) But its been a travesty and a tug of war with individual council members for at least 6 years now.

Cant decide whats at the bottom of that.  Whether the division is underfunded, or whether there is some structural problem with the position that puts it into the political process to directly.

I would be curious to see what you think FHOP did that was out of the ordinary for a park project of their sort.

The biggest criticism seems to have been that they weren't taking corporate sponsors out foraging in dumpsters for recovered food items as lunch.

But no criticisms for the two council members who bungled Community First's substantial sponsorship.

FOHP's budget was not acceptable. They were spending too much, and not getting enough sponsorships and donations, or competitive bids. Some of that was just rookie error, and would have been more palatable if they learned from it and improved. But their general tendency was to use their social media and general goodwill to circle the wagons any time they were criticized. By the time they finally started acknowledging that mistakes were made, the Council was so exasperated that they were ready to drop the hammer anyway.

The city isn't blameless either, but it was always obvious that there'd be skepticism about a project like this from some quarters. Ditto that Council would be scrutinizing every penny they spent. Being irresponsible with the money just gave the doubters the ammunition they needed to write the whole thing off and undermined the positive changes they brought on.

It'll be interesting to see where the city goes with this. The right people should be able to continue positive changes (though probably less than we've seen, as FOHP's path isn't sustainable). People who agree to just cut down trees or remove amenities to chase the hobos out will just make things worse.

[Tacachale]

Thanks for the answer taca.

I wonder what you mean by the budget being unacceptable.  Unacceptable compared to what?

And don't get me wrong on this. I criticized the scheme to go private on exactly these grounds.

I wondered if we would have to spend a million dollars per year on every block where 'vagrants' might gather.

But then once commenced, I felt I should reconsider the project.

Do you mean to say that the budget was unacceptable compared to other city parks?

Or similar projects around the country?

I mean compared to other departments or groups using taxpayer money. They weren't careful with the money they had, and they didn't do enough to make it go farther or find private funding. At one point, they didn't even solicit multiple bids for the stage project. At another, they got grant funding for the Black Sheep kiosk, but then spent most of it on other things on the assumption that the Council would given them more later. Again, they did a lot of good work, but they made too many mistakes and weren't quick enough to improve.

[jumpingfish]

I'm simply opposed to any project where the mission is to get rid of the ragged people. The city has no clue what to do with Hemming. They blew it before FOHP and probably will do the same after. And making it vibrant should include the "ragged people". THEY ARE vibrant. Much more so than council members and Parks, in their dim ragged offices, making decisions based around the raggedness of people.

[KenFSU]

Could have been Hemming, had the city not screwed it up.

http://jacksonville.com/entertainment/2017-01-04/community-first-credit-union-becomes-year-round-sponsor-florida-theatre

[johnnyliar]

Could have been Hemming, had the city not screwed it up.

http://jacksonville.com/entertainment/2017-01-04/community-first-credit-union-becomes-year-round-sponsor-florida-theatre

Wow, that's infuriating. Can't believe Hemming is reverting back to it's former self.

[Tacachale]

Lots of blame to go around on this one.

[Todd_Parker]

and around and around we go.....

http://jacksonville.com/metro/news/2017-04-11/local-nonprofit-gets-second-chance-oversee-hemming-park