Forty-four years of consolidation

[Jaxson]

It's time again to say happy birthday to our unique consolidated government.  On October 1, 1968, the City of Jacksonville and Duval County fulfilled their urge to merge - with the obvious exception of the municipalities that retained their relative autonomy (e.g. Atlantic Beach, Baldwin, Jacksonville Beach and Neptune Beach).
It is hard to believe that, prior to C-Day, our city and county governments were mired in corruption, redundancy and decline.  It is also hard to believe that civic involvement on the part of our voters helped to create a new municipal system that replaced a form of government that best served those living in the horse-and-buggy days.
As a Duval County social studies teacher, I have tried annually to educate my students about our consolidated government, flaws and all.  I hope that you all join me in sharing your perspectives on what was once deemed 'The Bold New City of the South!'
Even to this day, when I am driving back into town from my parents' house in Orange Park, I ponder the size of the old city when I drive up Roosevelt Boulevard and pass by the old city limits at Verona Avenue in the Ortega area.  I guess I am an old wonk!  :-)
HAPPY C-DAY IN THE LAND OF CONSOLIDATION!!!

[ChriswUfGator]

Consolidation ruined the place. Changed the government structure such that suburbs have the greater voice. Obviously I don't need to harp on what the result has been.

[vicupstate]

Consolidation ruined the place. Changed the government structure such that suburbs have the greater voice. Obviously I don't need to harp on what the result has been.

Do some research on what was going on in the 10 years prior to Consolidation, and you will see how off-base that comment is.   Cities all over the country have sought to replicate Jacksonville's version of Consolidation, and have for the most part been unable to.

As someone who lives outside of the Jacksonville 'orbit', it was just about the only positive thing the city was known for pre-Jags.  A very strong case can be made that the Jags would not have come to an unconsolidated Jax.

Suburban sprawl already was rampant in Duval County(just look at the population figures from that period), virtually no one was moving into the city proper, in fact it was the opposite.   

Surbanban sprawl is no respector of city limits or county lines either.  Neither is sprawl a phenomenon unique to Jacksonville.

Jacksonville would literally be the Detroit of the South had consolidation not occurred.  Consolidation lessened or eliminated many problems, but nothing is a miracle utopia-inducing structure of government. 

Jacksonville's problems today are the result of  weak leadership, nothing more, nothing less.             

[Tacachale]

Consolidation ruined the place. Changed the government structure such that suburbs have the greater voice. Obviously I don't need to harp on what the result has been.

Do some research on what was going on in the 10 years prior to Consolidation, and you will see how off-base that comment is.   Cities all over the country have sought to replicate Jacksonville's version of Consolidation, and have for the most part been unable to.

As someone who lives outside of the Jacksonville 'orbit', it was just about the only positive thing the city was known for pre-Jags.  A very strong case can be made that the Jags would not have come to an unconsolidated Jax.

Suburban sprawl already was rampant in Duval County(just look at the population figures from that period), virtually no one was moving into the city proper, in fact it was the opposite.   

Surbanban sprawl is no respector of city limits or county lines either.  Neither is sprawl a phenomenon unique to Jacksonville.

Jacksonville would literally be the Detroit of the South had consolidation not occurred.  Consolidation lessened or eliminated many problems, but nothing is a miracle utopia-inducing structure of government. 

Jacksonville's problems today are the result of  weak leadership, nothing more, nothing less.             

Totally agree. Suburban sprawl was well in place long before consolidation. If we hadn't consolidated we'd just have ended up with a more powerful county government such as exists in Orange or Hillsborough, and they are clearly equally capable of railroading their urban cores. If Jacksonville's problems were really due to consolidation we'd see the same in the other city-counties that have adopted this form of government. Considering how corrupt things had become here in the 50s and 60s it's hard to see the old system as a better way of doing things.

Leadership is certainly the issue here. Weak (or corrupt) leaders have made things worse in Jacksonville while strong leaders have made things better both before and after consolidation.

[Jaxson]

I agree with Chris that we sacrificed a great deal with regard to our urban core, but we have what we have and it is so firmly in place that any efforts to undo this work would be next to impossible.  Even many leaders in the Black community recognized the need for a new system lest they end up having a Black mayor over a city sapped of its vitality and tax base.  I would have been a 'Black hat' back in the day, but it is what it is...

[tufsu1]

Of course there were (and are) pros and cons to consolidation...but overall, I believe it has been a positive

[ChriswUfGator]

Consolidation ruined the place. Changed the government structure such that suburbs have the greater voice. Obviously I don't need to harp on what the result has been.

Do some research on what was going on in the 10 years prior to Consolidation, and you will see how off-base that comment is.   Cities all over the country have sought to replicate Jacksonville's version of Consolidation, and have for the most part been unable to.

As someone who lives outside of the Jacksonville 'orbit', it was just about the only positive thing the city was known for pre-Jags.  A very strong case can be made that the Jags would not have come to an unconsolidated Jax.

Suburban sprawl already was rampant in Duval County(just look at the population figures from that period), virtually no one was moving into the city proper, in fact it was the opposite.   

Surbanban sprawl is no respector of city limits or county lines either.  Neither is sprawl a phenomenon unique to Jacksonville.

Jacksonville would literally be the Detroit of the South had consolidation not occurred.  Consolidation lessened or eliminated many problems, but nothing is a miracle utopia-inducing structure of government. 

Jacksonville's problems today are the result of  weak leadership, nothing more, nothing less.           

Wholly disagree, and by an informed opinion, one which, unlike yours, does not start with "do some research" thereby devalidating any opposing viewpoint without requiring yourself to actually address it. Sprawl has been around since the dawn of time, or else we'd only have one city in the world, wouldn't we? That doesn't explain why some cities do well and others don't. Jacksonville is akin to Detroit and Gary Indiana in terms of urban decline. Quite remarkable considering our location and the otherwise booming historical growth patterns of the region and state we're located in. Which is what sets us apart from cities like Detroit, where the decline of the urban core has followed a general decline in both population and prosperity, we've managed a precipitous decline despite a growth explosion. Quite a feat.

I stick by my assessment, consolidation played a large role in the current mess, by granting suburbs that had no economic reason to exist an outsized political voice in our local government structure. With the result being that the self-sustaining portions are now supporting the massive infrastructure needed to maintain economically unfeasible low-density growth patterns. If the urban areas were more than a couple council votes I doubt the results would have been anywhere near as devastating.

[simms3]

I used to be an anti-consolidation guy, even wrote an editorial on it, but I have changed tunes somewhat.

I'm certainly not pro-consolidation, but I'm not anti-consolidation either.  I agree with Tacachale that most of Jacksonville's woes are due to incredibly short-sighted, narrow-minded and shitty leadership both in publicly elected/appointed office and in the private sector (with a few exceptions).

Jacksonville was in serious decline prior to consolidation, but so was just about every other city in America.  Consolidation was at minimum a good short term fix for funding and effective government.

Many cities such as Philadelphia and Baltimore are also consolidated, as are Louisville, Nashville, and others.  None are 800 square miles, however!  Therein lies our biggest problem.  Consolidated to 300-400 square miles is one thing, but covering an 800 square mile county with just one city government is another.

An analogy to public disagreement between city and metro is in the recently failed TSPLOST for metro Atlanta.  The only municipality to pass it in metro Atl was the city of Atlanta, which ironically already pays a penny extra sales tax for transit and doesn't face traffic woes like the sprawling suburbs.  It just goes to show how differently people think in the core 100 square miles versus the 8,000 other square miles in the metro (the difference between borderline very liberal/progressice city stuck in a borderline very conservative metro).

In Jacksonville one only needs to look at the election map of the past primaries to see that it is 3 different cities.  I used to think the inner core of Jax including parts of the northside and the riverfront neighbs would do better for themselves to break off from the westside/southside, given the election map and the potential of those neighbs and what I thought was a desire of the residents in these areas to "progress".  Unfortunately this past year I learned/realized the inner core is hardly any more progressive than the suburbs (perhaps even less so).

The city council up here just voted TODAY for the 2nd time to block a Walmart development from being built in city limits.  The City of Atlanta does not need another.  However almost any of the metro suburbs/counties would have pushed it through in the name of increased economic development/tax rolls.  In Jacksonville's case, the CC is dominated by suburban interests so the handful of residents who would turn out against a Walmart would have no chance of stopping it.

I guess you have your advantages and disadvantages to consolidation.  Advantage = potential for more uniformity in decision making and more progressive stance (maybe not so afterall in Jax).  Disadvantage is you're stuck trying to balance the needs of the poor/indigent against the need to stay out of the red, so taxes are likely much higher (and middle class/families priced out...again taxes will never be raised in Jax to cover things for the "public" good like transit and social programs).

[Jaxson]

The problem lies not in the structure, but in the power structures that manipulated our consolidated government to serve their own interests.  Corruption took over in our post-1968 government and we still have the power to make things right!

[Tacachale]

I think the best way to look at it is that are advantages and disadvantages to consolidation. However, I believe the advantages have outweighed the disadvantages, and I don't believe that the city's problems are the result of adopting this form of government.

I used to live in Orlando for college. Orlando is even more sprawled out than Jacksonville, and while the city proper has never declined in population (I don't think), it hasn't kept up with the suburbs and surrounding counties. As a result, nowadays the Orange County Commission has more power than the City of Orlando government (not to mention the governments of the other municipalities) and even has its own mayor, who is the real power in metro Orlando. The Orange County government has proven equally capable of overemphasizing the burbs as the City of Jacksonville.

Many other Florida counties are structured similarly to this (Miami-Dade is quasi-consolidated; Broward also has its own county mayor, and Pinellas and Hillsborough have powerful county commissions.) This is almost certainly what Jax would have ended up with if we hadn't consolidated. It would be a lot of the same problems, but we wouldn't have the benefits of consolidation, such as the increased tax base, less duplication of services, and of course mitigating the corruption that had taken over the previous system.

The problem lies not in the structure, but in the power structures that manipulated our consolidated government to serve their own interests.  Corruption took over in our post-1968 government and we still have the power to make things right!

The consolidated government has been substantially less corrupt than the old city government had gotten in the 50s and 60s. However, any system can become corrupt.