JAX2025 has been an exciting opportunity to have the community come together to craft a vision for our future. We began the process by asking the community to Imagine It -- and the outpouring of responses was nearly overwhelming. You had thoughts, hopes, dreams of the future of this community, and over 16,000 people let us know what you wanted the future to be for Jacksonville.

We have the 10 Vision Targets in place. We've determined the metrics of accountability we will use to measure progress toward that vision. We've determined what our priority strategies are to reach that vision.

And now it's time to get to work.

On Saturday, May 18, at the West Touchdown Club at EverBank Field, we will release the full JAX2025 report, celebrate those who have created it, and launch the implementation effort. Working together, we will build that vision.

How will the JAX2025 Vision get implemented?

Implementation will have three components, and there's a place for you in all three areas.

First, the Visioneers identified at the April 27 meeting which key organizational partners need to be involved in reaching the vision. Institutional action -- public, private, and non-profit -- is a necessary component for sustained community change. This is the strategy area called They Should -- we highlighted the institutions, organizations, agencies, and coalitions that need to be involved as we align our efforts in the community to reach the vision. Part of the implementation process will be advocacy teams working to assist and encourage these institutions in their important role in the process.

Second, the Visioneers also created a list titled You Can for each of the Vision Targets. These are the places where individual action is an important component in moving the Vision forward. Part of the implementation effort will be linking individuals in the community to where they are most needed in helping build the future Jacksonville -- in both large and small ways, we all need to be part of creating our future together. If we are serious about creating the future we want, we can't wait for someone to do it for us. There is no place for people to sit in the bleachers and criticize the action on the field -- it's time for us all to suit up and move forward. Together.

Third, coordinating and aligning institutional and individual action requires constant communication with the community. We've created a new email address -- Progress@JAX2025.org -- for people and institutions to report in. We encouraged (and will continue to encourage) people to make personal commitments to action on I Will pledge cards -- one task they can complete within six months in order to move the vision one step further. We'll be sharing stories, measuring progress, highlighting areas that need additional work, and keeping you informed on what's happening. There is no shelf for this report -- it's an active document, and you'll be hearing a great deal more about that activity.

So join us on May 18, and find your role in building Jacksonville's vision. We need your help.

JCCI makes democracy work - that's why after 15 years, I still love this organization.

Now that I'm approaching 15 years of working with JCCI, I'm often asked what brought me to the organization and what keeps me here. I'd like to share a few thoughts on why I feel that JCCI is such an important part of our community, and why we've been helping communities around the world set up their own JCCI's for close to three decades.

Scott London wrote a piece called Doing Democracy that captures, I think, the heart of our work. 

When Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United States in the 1830s and 1840s, he marveled at Americans’ propensity for civic participation. “Americans of all ages, all conditions and all dispositions constantly form associations,” he famously wrote. ... What was distinctive about these civic organizations, Tocqueville observed, was not just how numerous and variegated they were, but how they embodied what he saw as a unique and distinctly American understanding of democracy. Associations were the means by which Americans acted together in pursuit of their common goals and aspirations. They were carriers of what he called “habits of the heart”—the essential beliefs and practices that shape our character as democratic citizens.

But today, civic participation -- the underpinnings of successful democracy -- is at risk across the country. "Once a nation of joiners, we’ve become a nation out of joint, more disconnected from each other and from our communities than ever," London adds, quoting the work of Robert Putnam. 

So what do we do to make our democracy work? Suzanne Morse, in her book Smart Communities: How Citizens and Local Leaders Can Use Strategic Thinking to Build a Brighter Future, devotes a chapter to Practicing Democracy. In it, she writes, "Evidence shows that education, dialogue, and deliberation can make the public more aware of the seriousness of local problems and can provide a catalyst for addressing those problems. In turn, greater public involvement may encourage a culture of collaboration, which not only solicits citizen participation but also encourages and expects it. In turn, the public requests and accepts responsibility for helping solve community challenges. At its best, community problem solving can harness the energy and enthusiasm of citizens working together, putting their talents to work to address problems, and at the same time promote a sense of ownership over the processes and outcomes of democratic community life."

The example she uses to show how civic participation works in communities? Jacksonville Community Council Inc. Of us, Dr. Morse said, "In my judgment, this is the preeminent non-partisan civic organization in the country."

So why have I worked at JCCI for the past 15 years, and why am I still excited about coming to work each day? Because at JCCI, we make a difference. Because we truly believe in the bold idea that together we can build a better community. Because I see it happening every day.

Professor Daniel Schafer wrote: “There is a spirit alive in JCCI; it is the spirit of thousands of civic volunteers who have come to the aid of their beleaguered community from the 1880s until the present.” Thank you for being one of them. 

I'm in Washington DC for the annual conference of the National Association of Planning Councils. JCCI is a founding member of this organization, which brings together like-minded organizations from around the country (and Canada!) to improve the human condition through encouraging research-based community planning and action. These are organizations that, like JCCI, bring people together to identify needs and work toward solutions, mobilizing community involvement, developing and coordinating services, advocating for informed decisions by funders and policy makers, and linking people with community resources. 

The conference began in the U.S. Capitol, where we met with Howard Hogan, Chief Demographer of the U.S. Census Bureau, who presented detailed information about where we are as a country and where the trend lines are heading. This sparked a rich discussion of the trends we needed to be paying attention to in local communities that will affect economic development, social service delivery, and the types of issues we're going to be facing in the next 50 years.

Melissa Boteach, Executive Director for the Half in Ten Campaign, challenged us to think bolder about how we address the human condition, and showed that bold visions were attainable.

Leaders of community-based organizations in Dallas, Chicago, and Tulsa spoke of the impacts of poverty and changing demographics on communities, and how their organizations were addressing the issues.

We brought together representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, Housing and Urban Development, Department of Transportation, National Association of County and City Health Officials, Office of National Drug Control Policy, United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, and me (representing JCCI and the local community perspective.) We talked about the need for cross-jurisdictional and cross-disciplinary collaboration to address the kinds of issues we were seeing across the nation and in local communities, with the clear understanding that no single agency had within their purview the kinds of things that had to happen if they were to be successful in their missions. In order to efficiently and effectively serve community needs, we have to break down the silos between the programs and initiatives to reach people where they are. We took local examples as talking points to engage in a three-hour conversation to find out how to really get good work done.

By the time we were through, we had a greater understanding of the barriers that Federal agencies have in working together, where they are making progress, and how we can better braid and blend programs. We also clarified some of their regulatory statements to find ways to open up systems to better serve individuals and families. And they heard from us on where what they were doing was helping, and where it was not. Special thanks to Vanessa Sarria from the Community Action Network for her facilitation -- panelists remarked that it was among the best they had ever experienced.

The conference is continuing. I will be presenting the work of JAX2025 to the conference later. But I wanted to let you, the supporters of JCCI's work, know how proud I was to represent the work you have been doing for so many years to come together to learn, engage, and act for community change. Your willingness to address community issues outside of traditional silos and systems has helped our community make a real difference in people's lives. And from what we've learned so far in the conference, it's the only way we're going to face the next 50 years successfully. 

JAX2025 Ten Targets Series: Health

What specific strategies would YOU like to see implemented in regards to the Health Target? To put your voice in the discussion, join the next JAX2025 community visioning event on Saturday, April 27th.

The next JAX2025 meeting discussing strategy implementation will take place Saturday, April 27th from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn Convention Center. Parking and entrance is free, with coffee provided. For more information and to register for the event, visit www.JAX2025.org.

Name:  Michelle Simkulet

Role with JCCI:  Chief Financial Officer, Director of JCCI Forward, Volunteer Coordinator, Goddess

JCCI: What do you do from 9-5? 

From 9-5, I split my time between being the Chief Financial Officer and the JAX2025 Volunteer Coordinator. After 5, my focus is JCCI Forward, our leadership development program.  In the past 15 years I have held many positions for a variety of JCCI programs. And as with all positions with JCCI, I am focused on the volunteer experience, logistics and supporting the work of the committees.

JCCI:  What do you do outside of work?  

I have had to focus my “loves” in an effort to find more balance but I will always get out of bed at 6am in the cold for theatre, mental health and young people.  Currently, I serve in an officer position on the board of Mental Health of America of Jacksonville. I’ve just finished directing the International Theatre Fest at Theatre Jacksonville and a staged reading of A Lesson Before Dying as part of the WJCT Big Read.  I have planned annual special events like the Tom Coughlin Jay Fund December Holiday Party and Empowerment Resources’ Journey into Womenhood Scholarship Banquet for many years.

JCCI:  How & when did you get involved with JCCI or JCCI Forward?

I moved to Jacksonville on October 31, 1997 and my first day at JCCI was November 12. I briefly went to work for Leadership Jacksonville and a PGA/Ryder Cup contractor but never quite stopped working at JCCI. Ultimately, I was convinced that JCCI was where I belonged.   I was an inaugural member of JCCI Forward but I was not the staff person. That came in 2001. JAX2025 is the newest role for me and I learn something new every day, either about people or the community we live in.

JCCI:  What is your favorite hidden gem in Jacksonville?

The tech booth at Theatre Jacksonville.  It’s a 4’x 9’  black booth that looms over the audience in the building in San Marco.  Theatre has long been my “comfort food” of activities. Going too long without it makes me unwell.  Sitting up there watching the amazing talent and strength of stories that are shared in this community rejuvenates my soul and spirit. Not everyone can see its beauty or healing properties but those who do are my kin. 

JCCI:  What community issue is on your radar that doesn’t get enough attention right now?

Without question, mental health.  For all.  Everyone. I feel strongly about preventive versus intervention healthcare but in this case I’d settle for more focused intervention.  It seems that although tragedies nationwide have brought more attention to mental health issues, locally it’s a very difficult subject to broach and work on. Funding is tougher because the stigma of being associated with mental health concerns seems to steer people clear.  Yet, I remember when the city was up in arms over the murder rate taking 100+lives per year.  People were willing to show up, speak out and put money in to solve the problem. The suicide rate that year, what I feel to be a highly preventable mortality, took 200+ lives. The rate has been that way for too long and it goes on without notice.

JCCI:  Why is JCCI important to you and Jacksonville?

Action, plain and simple. Everyone can have a say but ‘a say’ is just that. Opinions are like brains, everyone has one. But if you go beyond: Use that brain to learn, get involved and engage in action and see it through…well, that what it is all about.

JAX2025 Ten Targets Series: Environment

What specific strategies would YOU like to see implemented in regards to the Environment Target? To put your voice in the discussion, join the next JAX2025 community visioning event on Saturday, April 27th.

The next JAX2025 meeting discussing strategy implementation will take place Saturday, April 27th from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn Convention Center. Parking and entrance is free, with coffee provided. For more information and to register for the event, visit www.JAX2025.org.

JAX2025 Ten Targets Series: Arts & Entertainment

What specific strategies would YOU like to see implemented in regards to the Arts & Entertainment Target? To put your voice in the discussion, join the next JAX2025 community visioning event on Saturday, April 27th.

The next JAX2025 meeting discussing strategy implementation will take place Saturday, April 27th from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn Convention Center. Parking and entrance is free, with coffee provided. For more information and to register for the event, visit www.JAX2025.org.

The first three JAX2025 meetings have provided citizens a chance to voice their opinions on what they wish to see in Jacksonville’s future. Taking a look at the “vision statements” for the year 2025.

Thousands have gathered at the Prime Osborne Convention Center over the past three months to participate in envisioning a future for Jacksonville. These visioneers met in January to decide which priorities the initiative would focus on over the last twelve years.

From that event, Ten Targets were elected (in no particular order):

Arts & Entertainment, Clean & Green, Diversity, Downtown & Neighborhoods, Economy,
Education, Governance, Health, People, and Transportation.

At the second meeting in February, visioneers convened again to create draft vision statements for each Target. Then, the third and most recent meeting in March provided visioneers a chance to decide which metrics to select and track in order to ensure that the vision for each Target was on track to come to fruition.

At the March meeting, visioneers were able to hear the finalized vision statements for each of JAX2025’s Ten Targets. They are, again in no particular order of importance, as follows:

In 2025, Jacksonville’s creative community fuels a vibrant Arts and Entertainment scene.

Art and culture is integrated into the fabric of Jacksonville, with creativity and innovation contributing to the economic vitality of our city. Jacksonville teems with artists and active audiences alike, with an abundance of options to experience and participate in the arts community. Jacksonville is known as a destination for international arts festivals, major sporting events, and world-class entertainment.

In 2025, Jacksonville is a Clean and Green city.

Jacksonville is a national leader in sustainability, stewardship, preservation and conservation by integrating environmental ethics in our everyday life. Our naturally lush environment is preserved, as the St. Johns River and its tributaries, the ocean and beaches, and Jacksonville’s green spaces are accessible, interconnected, and interwoven into the fabric of our community.

In 2025, Jacksonville is renowned as a Diverse and inclusive community.

Jacksonville welcomes all residents and visitors with dignity and respect.  Ours is a diverse community in many dimensions that carefully protects the rights of all its citizens, regardless of gender, gender identity, faith, race, ethnicity, age, disability, national origin, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, or marital or family status.

In 2025, Jacksonville’s distinctive Neighborhoods flourish, along with our Urban Heart.

Jacksonville’s rich array of distinctive neighborhoods, each with its own historic character and irresistible experiences, are livable, walkable, and safe. They converge in the city’s dynamic central neighborhood, Downtown, which is a business powerhouse fostering an entrepreneurial spirit and our community’s 24-hour epicenter of first-class arts, culture, sports, and unique shopping opportunities.

In 2025, Jacksonville’s vibrant Economy is a global magnet for new business.

Government and civic leadership actively promote the growth of diversified industry that keeps our cost of living low and quality of life high.  We work together to reduce poverty and promote financially secure families and individuals in stable and affordable housing. Our quality of life, business environment, and innovative, well-educated workforce foster an economically resilient community.

In 2025, Jacksonville prioritizes excellence in Education at every age.

Jacksonville challenges, prepares, and actively engages learners at every stage in life. We are a community of teachers who infuse learning and a sense of discovery in everyday activities within Jacksonville. Our schools and libraries are a hub, connecting caregivers with community resources so that the whole child thrives, competes in the global economy, and contributes fully here at home.

In 2025, Jacksonville thrives due to exemplary Governance.

Well-informed citizens actively engage to solve problems together with outstanding elected officials. Jacksonville’s diverse representative leadership is accessible, fiscally responsible, and accountable for delivering public services in a cost-efficient manner.  Our transparent, ethical public policy reinforces effective financial investment in common goods.

In 2025, Jacksonville is among the Healthiest communities in the country.

Our region’s health research and delivery industry catalyzes the economy and provides high quality and accessible healthcare to all, emphasizing prevention and wellness. Jacksonville residents have affordable care, including mental health, vision, and dental, and maintain a healthy lifestyle, with access to healthy food, safe housing, and neighborhoods built for active lifestyles.

In 2025, Jacksonville is a place where People matter.

Front-porch friendliness and kindness inspire our service and philanthropy, as people are Jacksonville’s highest priority. We promote well-being among all citizens through all stages of life, connecting people to resources to ensure everyone has the opportunity to have their needs met, from earliest childhood through the dignity of aging. We retain the best of our small-town past in a metropolitan population.

In 2025, Jacksonville is a regional hub of smooth Transportation.

Our region is a recognized leader in our commitment to unrestricted movement, utilizing smart technology and connectivity to move people and cargo safely and efficiently. Sustainable multi-modal mass transit reliably connects the region’s unique neighborhoods, suburbs, downtown and the beaches, and is part of a network of transportation options including walking, biking, driving, and riding.

The final JAX2025 meeting will take place on Saturday, April 27th, where visioneers both old and new will convene again; this time to decide what strategies to implement for each of the Ten Targets. Following the final meeting, the official JAX2025 Vision will be released to the city in May at a celebratory event downtown. Then the vision statements will be put into action by implementing the chosen strategies and tracking the selected indicators over the next twelve years. Everyone across the city is encouraged to be engaged to ensure that we reach our shared vision together.

The next JAX2025 community visioning event will take place on Saturday, April 27th from 9-11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn Center. Doors open at 8:30, with free parking and refreshments. For more information and to register for the meeting, please visit www.JAX2025.org.

With its largest group in attendance yet, the JAX2025 community visioning event held on Tuesday, March 18th brought visioneers together to discuss measurements of change. Taking a look at scenes from that meeting.

Excitement was building at the Prime Osborn Convention Center last Tuesday. The third JAX2025 community visioning event had a new feeling to it, as both previous events had taken place on a Saturday morning. This event was a Tuesday evening- visioneers were coming from work and from school, still dressed in their uniforms, wearing their work badges and school backpacks. It might’ve been expected that they were tired, but instead, they were enthused.

“I’m ready!” one visioneer told us as he walked in the door. “Let’s do this.”

As the group flooded in, they chose where to sit based on which of the ten Targets they wanted to discuss first.

“I’m ready to talk about mental health care,” another visioneer said as she arrived. “Where should I go?”

Mayor Alvin Brown sits down with visioneers to listen to their ideas for the city's future.

Visioneers immediately began making connections. As people sat down at their chosen tables, conversations started and business cards were exchanged. The room was buzzing with energy by the time JCCI President & CEO Ben Warner took to the podium to explain how the evening’s discussions would be structured.

“Lasting, real community change begins with a Vision,” Warner told the visioneers. “On February 2, we took the priorities set at the January meeting to create strong statements of Vision to guide us in our aspirations for what we want Jacksonville to become.”

“A Vision without measures of accountability is just a dream. Today we will take the Vision Targets and add to JAX2025 ways we want to measure progress. That will provide the knowledge we need to move forward.”

Warner challenged the Visioneers to discuss what measurements to track in order to know where Jacksonville stood in relation to the vision JAX2025 would lay out.  “We will need to continually evaluate our results to see where we need to focus further efforts,” Warner continued.  “You will see regular reports highlighting progress and targeting areas of concern through the year 2025 as we continue to move toward our vision.  Because the goal of JAX2025 is not just to Imagine It, but also to Reach It.”

President & CEO of JCCI, Ben Warner.

Each of the tables under the ten Targets had sheets available for the visioneers, asking them “What do we need to know?” and “How might we measure it?” Additionally, the sheets had printed on the back which measurements had been used in the past in relation to that specific Target.

Then, the conversations took over. The most interesting aspect of the meeting, as with all JAX2025 meetings, was the incredible diversity at each table. People sat together from different backgrounds, genders, races, age groups, businesses, interests, and agendas. Looking around the room, it was clear that the event was facilitating conversations between Jacksonville citizens who might never have met each other and exchanged ideas otherwise.

Of course it wasn’t perfectly smooth sailing. When the topic is as serious as the future of your city, emotions are bound to be involved. One of the first things visioneers had identified about Jacksonville is the love its citizens have for the city. Everyone involved in the discussion had their own specific ideas on how to improve the city, and while not all those ideas matched, each visioneer wished to see the initiative succeed. Through the structure of the conversations and the help of the JAX2025 facilitator volunteers, each table remained incredibly civil and productive- working through disagreements and honoring every opinion. If you had to choose one word to describe the environment of that Tuesday, it would be consensus.

Visioneers engaged in discussions.

After a short break, visioneers moved to a table under a new Target in order to cross-pollinate ideas and have a chance to work on a different area of focus. Finally, at near the end of the event, visioneers were called upon for one final task.

“Now that you have been working on the details of the Vision Plan, I’d like you to take a mental step back and think about what’s most important for Jacksonville,” Warner asked the crowd. “If you had to describe with power and clarity what kind of city we’re trying to create, what would it be? In two or three words, describe the desired identity for Jacksonville – what is (or should be) our heart and soul? What are we striving to become? This is not a marketing slogan but an internal statement of power and purpose – if you had to describe the city we want to be, what kind of city is Jacksonville? A brainpower city, a city of connections, a friendly city, a laid-back beach city, a sustainable city – where’s our core motivator?”

Visioneers then went to work transcribing their words for the city. The results of the meeting are being entered and tabulated by the JAX2025 team, in order to find consensus and help finalize the Vision Plan for Jacksonville’s future.

These visioneers show their ideas on a future identity for Jacksonville.

We spoke with Mayor Brown, an active visioneer and Honorary Chair of JAX2025 during the event. “I think that JAX2025 is important because it gives us the ability as a community to engage and empower from the bottom up,” the Mayor told us. “It also gives us the chance to have a shared vision, and reminds us as a city that we are all in this together.”

From the Mayor himself, to the school board members in attendance, to the young professionals who showed up, to the teenagers that got involved, it is true: we are all in this together. This is our future planning for our city, and the time to start making that happen is now.

The entire community is invited to the next and final JAX2025 community visioning event on Saturday, April 27th from 9-11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn. Doors open at 8:30, with free parking and coffee. For more information and to register for the event, visit www.JAX2025.org.

Name: Carolyn McClanahan

Role with JCCI:  Happy to be a resource to JCCI on all things about health care reform & Guest for March 2013 Mystery Guest Lunch

JCCI:  What do you do from 9-5?

CM:  My primary job is as a financial life planner helping people who need help aligning their finances and their life so they can be on a happy path. My second job is educating physicians and financial planners around the country on the content of the Affordable Care Act.

JCCI:  What do you do outside of work?

CM:  My life outside of “real” work consists of writing for Forbes on health care reform and end of life planning, volunteering as a physician at Sulzbacher Center for the Homeless and We Care, exercising to mitigate how much time I spend sitting on my rear-end, and spending precious time with my wonderful husband and cats. My brain loves to think about the possibilities for making the world a better place.

JCCI:  How & when did you get involved with JCCI, JAX2025 or JCCI Forward?

CM:  I have kept up with the great work of JCCI for years. I was invited to share the vision of health care reform so JCCI can help Jacksonville realize it’s incredible potential in the realm of health care.

JCCI:  What is your favorite hidden gem in Jacksonville? 

CM:  KYV Farm – I have been a member of their community supported agriculture group since exception. Locally grown food is a key to personal and environmental health for our city. We should all eat local as much as possible.

JCCI:  What community issue is on your radar that doesn’t get enough attention right now?

CM:  It gets attention but not the resources – we truly need a pedestrian and bike friendly city if we are going to realize our vision of a healthy city.

JCCI:  Why is JCCI important to you and Jacksonville? 

CM:  Politicians and administrations come and go. JCCI does a great job providing clear ideas and direction for our city on a consistent basis.

As JAX2025 continues to shape its vision of Jacksonville’s future, taking a look at how past studies and attempts for change across the city are being taken in to account and utilized.

Imagining change for a city’s future is difficult to do without a clear understanding of where it is today. JCCI, the organization facilitating the JAX2025 movement, has as one of its primary purposes the ability to measure progress and help residents learn about the community. JCCI reports are utilized throughout the community as a sort-of litmus test of the city’s socio-economic climate. The annual Quality of Life Progress Report and Race Relations Progress Report are prime examples of these timely, community-minded inquires. Yet in working to envision a shared future for Jacksonville with JAX2025, it is not only essential to understand the state of current affairs, but is equally as important to look to the past.

One of JCCI’s primary goals in creating JAX2025 was to ensure that history would not repeat itself. Studies and inquiries have been held numerous times in Jacksonville’s past to find out how to improve the city. There has even been a similar community visioning process: Jacksonville Insight in 1992. (For more information on the Jacksonville Insight process and history, read our article here.) The issue with Jacksonville Insight’s goals coming to fruition is that while its outcome provided a vision for the city’s future, there was never a clear plan of action as to who would execute the plan, and how. Former Mayor Ed Austin’s office did the majority of the work that was a result of Jacksonville Insight, and the process sunsetted shortly after the end of his term.

Photo courtesy @mister_winter, via #igersjax.

JCCI studied the methodology of Jacksonville Insight with the goal in mind of insuring that JAX2025’s action plan would have a solid foundation, and could last through the changing of civic administrations. As an organization, JCCI has worked with other communities on similar initiatives, most notably San Antonio, a city reminiscent of Jacksonville in regards to its problem areas. JCCI worked along with Mayor Julián Castro to help create SA2020, San Antonio’s own community-visioning process. It has now been nearly two years since SA2020’s vision was announced to the public, and San Antonio has seen many remarkable changes in their community due to the fact that they had a strong implementation strategy as part of their vision. (For more information about SA2020 and how JAX2025 is looking to match its success, read our article here.)

Not only has JCCI relied on studying past visioning processes to help form JAX2025, they have also collected over two hundred and thirty reports, visions, and plans concerning Jacksonville issues from the past twenty years. A great resource themselves, JCCI has created and published numerous community reports since its inception, and their data alone provided a comprehensive cross-section of the community. Additionally, the organization collected and catalogued reports from other area organizations, agencies, and institutions. Together, all of these studies were combined into a “Vision Scan.”

Take a look at the JAX2025 Vision Scan by clicking here.

The Vision Scan provided JCCI with the means to review studies on almost every topic Jacksonville has encountered over the past two decades. The scan included data from Jacksonville’s Comprehensive Plan, the Jacksonville Public Education Fund, the Transit Mobility Plan, the Health Needs Assessment, and the United Way to name just a few.  From the results of compiling this scan, JCCI was able to track themes that emerged and measure changes in the city both positive and negative. The themes identified from analyzing the Vision Scan helped develop the community survey that JAX2025 used to introduce itself to the city’s residents. The survey asked questions based on information learned from the Vision Scan, in order to gauge if the current community response would accurately reflect the lessons learned from the scan.

Photo courtesy @jeremiahcowan, via #igersjax.

Over 14,000 responses later, the JAX2025 team utilized the survey results to produce concurrent themes that needed to be addressed. The results provided what Jacksonville residents loved about the city, as well as what they would like to see change over the next twelve years. This way, JAX2025 is not only working off of the ideas that the community has voiced today, but the theme and ideas of the past as well.

Themes, data, and strategic implementations were not the only benefits of this Vision Scan. The other essential component the scan provided was how this data was collected and measured. Through the results of the scan, the JCCI team was able to view which indicators were used to calculate change and success in the past, and get an idea of how successful these measurement methods were. One of the most essential components of the JAX2025 process is the careful selection of which indicators to use to track the movement’s success over the next twelve years. The Vision Scan allowed JCCI to truly learn from the past so JAX2025 could expand upon the work that has already occurred rather than start from ground zero.

Photo courtesy @sdogisthename, via #igersjax.

This notion and practice of honoring and learning from the past is what could end up being the defining reason of success for JAX2025. JCCI recognized that in this situation, the whole would have to be greater than the sum of its parts. A community visioning process is already a lofty ideal, and JCCI acknowledged the importance of grounding the idea as much as possible by giving it real, quantifiable context. The Vision Scan was an important tool for evaluating what went before, and it has the potential for being the cornerstone of the foundation of Jacksonville’s future.

The next JAX2025 community visioning event will take place on Saturday, April 27th from 9-11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn Center. Doors open at 8:30, with free parking and coffee. For more information and to register for the meeting, please visit www.JAX2025.org

This week, we hear from Stefan R. Stears, creator and manager of #igersjax, about his experience with JAX2025 and why our city matters to him.

What in the world is a Visioneer? According to the JAX2025.org website, the definition is as follows:

Visioneer – vizh-un-neer – noun

1. Anyone and everyone who cares about the future of Jacksonville.
2. An active participant in JAX2025, connecting with others in imagining Jacksonville in 2025.
3. An attendee at a community-visioning event for JAX2025.

This week we talked with Stefan R. Stears, creator and manager of #igersjax (a four syllable title pronounced eye•jee•erz•jakks), a popular Jacksonville mobile photography group, and a Visioneer who has been actively involved with JAX2025 for an on-the-floor perspective of community visioning (and photographing) at work.

For many in the city, Stears is a man without a face. Despite the inherent narcissism of social media, Stears manages to remain strictly behind the camera, or iPhone, as it were. As the manager of #igersjax, he reaches over 2,000 people daily across the city through Instagram- the hugely popular social media device centered on photo sharing. Many became familiar with the app when Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram for a cool billion last year, allegedly without his board’s approval. Since then, the app’s popularity has skyrocketed, and resulted in the creation of many unique communities within its digital walls.

      
Photos from the #igersjax hashtag gallery. iGers responsible from left to right: @lissm21, @charliedraush, @mquitter904

Stears describes himself as an “evolving local Photo-Artographer.” #igersjax is the largest Jacksonville photo community on Instagram, representing the city and its immediate surrounding area, and proud member of the Instagramers Global Network. “Essentially,” Stears told us, “anyone with an iPhone or Android device can download Instagram, choose to ‘follow’ @igersjax, and start viewing the life and times of Jacksonville through the eyes of its inhabitants.” Any one of the 90 million+ Instagram users who take a photo in Jacksonville can “tag” their photo with #igersjax, and it is then instantly added to the #igersjax hashtag collection, a virtual gallery of sorts that captures moments across the city both large and small. Additionally, the @igersjax profile page works as a “Best Of” gallery, with Stears choosing the best photos from the #igersjax collection to re-post and share, giving credit to the original photographer (or iGer, as they are known on the app) and garnering acclaim from the profile’s over 2,000 followers. “We post a plethora of styles and skill sets from people of all walks of life, as long as it is 904 based and/or is relevant to the 904,” Stears said. “So anyone has a chance at being featured.”

 Creator and manager of #igersjax, Stefan R. Stears.
Photo by @strawberrychik on Instagram.

To visit #igersjax online, click here, or download the Instagram app from your phone's app store or marketplace and follow @igersjax.

It could easily be said that Stears’ “anyone has a chance” attitude is what likely landed him at a JAX2025 meeting. “I hadn't heard of JAX2025 until I came across the "Sound of the City" video (a JAX2025 creation featuring local celebrity Al Letson), the week it was released,” Stears told us, “and it gave me chill bumps.” The video resonated with Stears as containing the same essence of his work with #igersjax, and inspired him to attend the February community event held at the Prime Osborn. “I didn't necessarily have an agenda or any immediate thoughtful subjects to speak about. I just felt like I needed to be there.”

“Well,” he went on to add, “I might've expressed my childish concerns about building a giant Ferris Wheel at the landing, if given a chance!”

At the meeting, Stears was able to hear the voices of the same kind of everyday Jacksonville citizens that he normally only hears through photos. “I observed a fervor in everyday citizens to get talking,” he recalls. “Some folks had some very good points that were eventually pushed through a thick black marker.” These markers captured the ideas and visions of the meeting’s attendants, and those visions are being compiled into ten bold statements for Jacksonville’s future. “I see a Jacksonville of the future,” Stears told us. “Literally, a future city. How will we make it? I'm supporting JAX2025 because I think that planning ahead, with almost unbelievable but achievable goals, is very important for a society to not only grow, but flourish and thrive.”

Photos from the #igersjax hashtag gallery. iGers responsible from left to right:  @b_sprayed_it, @abv8657, @chrisreedrules

So what sort of “future city” does Stears envision? “Honestly, I would like to see a continually changing skyline for Jacksonville- I always have. I feel like a city's skyline has so much to do with the power it seemingly has. Our downtown has always been ‘small’ and ‘conservative’ when compared to other big cities; therefore we live ‘small’ and ‘conservative.’ We need to think a little bigger: renovate our old downtown buildings and make them historical, build some new towers, tall ones, and do something really special in the up-and-coming Brooklyn area!”

It wasn’t necessary to ask Stears if he would encourage others to get involved with the JAX2025 movement, as anyone who has visited @igersjax would know. Stears has posted photos from the community events, persuading his followers to make a point to attend. “It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance for everyday people of all walks of life to come together and voice their opinions and ideas on what kind of Jacksonville they would like to be a part of in the future,” Stears said. “In the year 2025, what will be the defining accomplishment of JAX2025 success? It's up to us!”

Stears also has partnered #igersjax with the JAX2025 team to create a unique photo contest, titled “Connections.” Anyone interested in participating can tag a favorite photo they have taken of Jacksonville for a chance to be shown at the JAX2025 celebratory Vision Roll-Out in May, where a Grand Prize winner will be chosen.

For more information on Connections and how to enter, click here.

“I'm interested in #igersjax's involvement with JAX2025 because I have the privilege of seeing the daily lives of thousands of citizens of all makes, models, and colors, that live in our big city unfold on an almost moment-to-moment basis. And the one thing in common with almost everyone on #igersjax is that these people fiercely love their Jacksonville!” Stears went on to state that what he looks for in selecting feature photos for @igersjax is the passion that the iGer has for the city, “and what better place to find those people than JAX2025? It's a no-brainer for me.”

Stears started #igersjax with a similar goal to that of JAX2025: while one was celebrating a love for the city and photography, the other was envisioning a shared future. Yet both movements aspire to bring together citizens from across the city and unite them with a common goal. “Before #igersjax,” Stears said, “there was no beacon for local photographers and all-around Jacksonville residents to look toward. I'm very honored to have the privilege of uniting people in such a positive way.” He went on to tell us that he’s inspired by the energy of JAX2025 and looks to transfer it into the growing #igersjax community. “I can only hope that it continues to grow and be recognized as a staple of Jacksonville during this cultural era we live in. The number of followers directly contributes to the growth and diversity of #igersjax. Just as Visioneers are to JAX2025, Stears told us, “#igersjax is its followers.”

Photos from the #igersjax hashtag gallery. iGers responsible from left to right: @ejack74, @leavemymarc, @fleetfoot 

As the JAX2025 movement continues forward, it’s important to include new forms of community communication, like Instagram. If the city is expected to grow and look toward the future, it is only appropriate that communicative and artistic forms are able to grow and interact with the change. The “instant” nature of #igersjax presents a particularly curious paradox: it not only shapes and visions a bright, bold Jacksonville, but it also sees the city exactly as it is- in this very instant. “If pictures really are worth a thousand words,” Stears said, “then #igersjax is a mini gold mine of stories, wisdom and eventual history.”

“Oh AND,” Stears interjects with a wink, just before the end of the interview, “we really need that giant Ferris Wheel at the Landing.”

Last year, Seattle added a Ferris Wheel to their skyline, offering gorgeous views of  Puget Sound.
Do you think an addition such as this to Downtown would benefit the city as Stears suggests?
Photo courtesy Joshua Trujillo of seattlepi.com 

The next JAX2025 community visioning event will take place on Saturday, April 27th from 9-11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn Center. Doors open at 8:30, with free parking and coffee. For more information and to register for the meeting, please visit www.JAX2025.org

Taking a look at how to approach preparing a city for an as-yet undetermined future.

The JAX2025 movement is described as working toward a “shared vision for the future.” Topics discussed at the community visioning events have included priority targets for the city to focus on, activation plans to reach these targets, and specific measurements to gauge and track the success in realizing those priorities. Much of the conversation, however, has been focused on fixing or changing where Jacksonville currently stands. This is, without doubt, a natural course of action for JAX2025, given that the impetus to start the movement came from a recognized need for city-wide transformation. Yet, with the current event topics in the news around the city, it seems that something is looming around the corner, lurking at Jacksonville and preparing to sneak up on us when we are least expecting it: the actual “future” itself.

What are the potential opportunities of this so-called “future?” Of course the short answer is “endless,” but the long answer allows us to discover and dissect a great deal of prospective boons to the city of Jacksonville. One of the biggest discussions in the news of the past few weeks is the potential dredging of the St. John’s River to 47 feet at JAXPORT, to allow a navigable harbor for larger ships.

JAXPORT unloading a cargo ship. Photo courtesy Leo King of examiner.com

Proponents of the dredging offer the idea that this depth increase will allow docking of major cargo ships from the Asian market, increasing activity to JAXPORTand subsequently the local economy. The opposition, however, notes that dredging the river to that depth will include blasting bedrock, affecting the ecological system of the river bottom in the area, and allowing a greater back-flow of saline ocean water to invade the river. The St John’s River is technically described as “lazy,” with a very slow north-ward flow that allows Atlantic waters to mix in and travel through, levels of which can affect the health of flora and fauna in and around the river.

If the proposed plan passes, Jacksonville will become one of the only deep-water ports of its kind on the eastern coast of the US, putting our city along the ranks of Norfolk, Virginia, and New York City. It would also allow the city to compete against other coastal cities like Savannah, Miami and Charlotte. Situations like these provide an interesting question: when you have two JAX2025 targets to consider, in this case a booming local economy and a green, eco-friendly city, how can we make a consensus-based decision for our city? All ten targets of the JAX2025 vision are essential and important, which is why they are held together as a group and left un-ranked. As a city, it is important that we balance these ten objectives, and recognize that more often than not, they will cross paths like a Venn diagram.

For more information on this subject, check out these two JCCI inquires: 
Recession Recovery and Beyond, which includes information about deepening the port,
and River Dance: Putting the River in River City, which includes information about protecting the St. Johns River

Also, view Carole Hawkins' article from the Jacksonville Business Journal here. 

Another one of the most hot-button topics of JAX2025 has been regional transit and transportation. Discussions have ranged on topics like light rail across Northeast Florida, expanding the Skyway, using a mass-modal system, and moving towards eco-friendly transit solutions. What’s interesting to consider is the potential of future transit and its inclusion in these discussions. The White House released a plan in 2009 outlining its commitment to putting in action a plan for high-speed rail across the country. The plan, like many governmental plans, will take much time and effort to see the light of day.

Artist and activist Alfred Twu, inspired by the idea, created a map of where potential rail lines could go, becoming a visioneer himself as he envisioned a bold future for the country. Basing the imagined routes on the past work of various governmental agencies and advocacy groups, he worked in a very similar manner to that of JAX2025; looking at past work, examining the current state-of-affairs, and looking to the future.

"There were many such maps being made by various designers," Twu told news site Mashable.com, but after creating the map and releasing it on Facebook, the map went viral. The idea of high-speed rail allowing quick connection between major US cities without air travel is hard to conceive, but the potential is there. Looking at the Twu’s map, two major high-speed rail lines would run through Jacksonville. What an incredible idea: hopping on one of these futuristic trains could land a Jacksonville resident in Atlanta in an hour, DC in four, and New York or Chicago in six. The ease of use of this type of transit system has the possibility to forever change American travel as well as business.

The thought that high-speed rail could bring new people to Jacksonville on a daily basis is exciting, but let us not forget about the people that call this city home. A city that puts “people first” has been another well-cared for topic by the JAX2025 visioneers. People attending the community events have expressed their love for our city providing a sense of southern hospitality, and a friendliness that doesn’t exist in all other communities.

The people of the city, like the city itself, are growing and changing. Another item that requires consideration while looking ahead is the idea that our population make-up as a city will not, in the very near future, be the same as it is today. The US Census bureau reported that in 2011, for the first time in American history, racial and ethnic minorities made up the majority of births in the country.  Roderick Harrison, a former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau who is now a sociologist at Howard University, told the Associated Press that "this is an important landmark."

Photo courtesy Reuters.

"This generation is growing up much more accustomed to diversity than its elders," Harrison said. The New York Times says the shift "has been long expected, but no one was certain when the moment would arrive — signaling a milestone for a nation whose government was founded by white Europeans and has wrestled mightily with issues of race, from the days of slavery, through a civil war, bitter civil rights battles and, most recently, highly charged debates over efforts to restrict immigration."

Jacksonville is on target with the rest of the nation in terms of these population percentages. Last year’s US Census Bureau data showed that Duval County’s “under age 5” population category had moved into a minority majority status, with 55.3% of our youngest coming from racial and ethnic minority families. The community as a whole is expected to catch up with this statistic by the year 2025, the same year the JAX2025 vision is set to complete, becoming a true minority majority city.

Perhaps, in our JAX2025 discussion, we need to give more consideration to these potential opportunities as we confer about our city’s future. After all, as visioneers, we are instating a legacy of action that we and the city will be carrying out for the next twelve years. Think of what has happened in this country in the short amount of time since the year 2000; major technological innovation, enormous scientific discovery, unexpected natural disasters, and the indelible effects of the paradigm-shifting events and aftermath of September 11th. We must keep in mind that, when it comes to the future, anything is possible: both the earth-shatteringly large to the easily-missed small. As a community, we must build together a city that continues to honor its past, respect and care for its present, and prepare its citizens for a future ripe with possibility.

The next JAX2025 community visioning event will take place on Saturday, April 27th from 9-11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn Center. Doors open at 8:30, with free parking and coffee. For more information and to register for the meeting, please visit www.JAX2025.org

A look at JAX2025’s partnerships and their crucial role to the movement’s success.

As the JAX2025 movement continues forward towards its goals, it is valuable to acknowledge the partnerships that have helped make the initiative a reality. JAX2025 is a community funded and community driven effort, and the JAX2025 team is incredibly grateful to its amazing group of partners who have assisted in envisioning a shared future for Jacksonville. The widely-known adage says that “It takes a village to raise a child,” but in this case, it takes a village to make a city. Each member of the JAX2025 “village” of partners has done their part to support the movement and push Jacksonville towards greatness as we progress to the year 2025.

What would a city be without a sports team to root for? Through thick and thin, the Jacksonville Jaguars have been there for Jacksonville. With the shining Everbank Field gracing the shores of the St. Johns and Jackson deVille entertaining children of all ages across the city, the Jaguars are back and better than ever with a new logo to boot. The Jaguars’ owner, Shahid Khan is a great supporter of the city and committed to making Jacksonville great, so it’s of little surprise that the Jaguar Foundation was one of the first partners of JAX2025.

The Jaguars encouraged fans to fill out the JAX2025 community survey and give them chances to win autographed merchandise as incentive. The stadium’s video boards have promoted JAX2025 at the past few home games, and Roar cheerleaders have shot JAX2025 t-shirts into the stands. The Jaguars also hosted a JAX2025 tent in the Fan Entertainment Zone to get the community involved in the movement. Jacksonville Jaguars President Mark Lamping, who moved to Jacksonville after living in St. Louis and the New York City area, told the Times-Union he views the city as having a lot of building blocks in place. He said to some extent, people outside Jacksonville don’t really know enough about the city to have an image of it.

Lamping said the Jaguars playing games in London in 2013 and 2014 offers a chance to raise the city’s profile. “We are a very well-kept secret nationally and internationally,” he said. “Before people can understand who you are, they need to have an awareness of you. We have one of the greatest golf tournaments in the world that’s played here and when you talk to people in London, they know about the TPC course and the No. 17 island green, and when you ask them where is it, they have no idea. And when you tell them it’s in the Jacksonville region, it’s, ‘Oh, really. I didn’t know that.’” Putting Jacksonville on the map is beneficial to the Jaguars, the city, and all of its citizens, making the Jaguars a perfect partner for JAX2025.

Another fantastic partnership for JAX2025 has been that of the Jacksonville Public Library. Since 1878, the JPL has been serving Jacksonville quietly and steadily while providing all of the city’s citizens access to great works and even greater programs. The new Main Library branch downtown is a shining beacon of what the city’s downtown development could and should look like.

The Jacksonville Public Library has been a strong partner for JAX2025, sending out information in their newsletters, and reaching their patrons by putting out pamphlets and displaying JAX2025 information on screens in library branches across the city. Mark Merritt, who works for the Jacksonville Public Library, told First Coast News: "I'm a member of this community and I think that all members of the community need to be involved if we're going to have any chance of success."

These great partners are not alone in helping engage constituents in the JAX2025 movement. Firehouse Subs has sent out emails, while The COJ and Mayor’s office have been active in social media to encourage participation as well. Girls Inc. has begun a Photo Voice initiative to help their youth engage in the visioning process, and the United Way Agency Directors’ Association engaged their member organizations to ensure their volunteer staff and clients have a voice in shaping Jacksonville’s future. The list goes on… click here to see all of the JAX2025 partners and find ways to get involved.

The entire group of partners, JCCI, and the JAX2025 team invite all to attend the next JAX2025 meeting and get engaged! Together, we can make Jacksonville great.

The next JAX2025 community visioning event will take place on Saturday, April 27th from 9-11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn Center. Doors open at 8:30, with free parking and refreshments. For more information and to register for the meeting, please visit www.JAX2025.org

This week, we hear from Cherrise Wilks and Mickee Brown about their experiences with JAX2025 and why our community matters to them.

What in the world is a Visioneer? According to the JAX2025.org website, the definition is as follows: Visioneer – vizh-un-neer – noun

1. Anyone and everyone who cares about the future of Jacksonville.
2. An active participant in JAX2025, connecting with others in imagining Jacksonville in 2025.
3. An attendee at a community-visioning event for JAX2025.

This week, we talked with Cherrise Wilks, a JAX2025 Volunteer Tri-Captain, and Mickee Brown, a JAX2025 Facilitator who have each been engaged in  JAX2025 meetings for an on-the-floor perspective of community visioning at work.

Both of these extraordinary women are very involved in the Jacksonville community. Mickee Brown served as a community planner for years with JCCI, and Cherrise Wilks lists Empowerment Resources Inc., United Way, Volunteer Jacksonville, ImpactJax, JCCI, and the Boys and Girls Club as organizations that she has been involved with. Both women are also business owners in the community, working as professional consultants. Combined, they represent forty-four years of living in Jacksonville: Brown has been in town for thirty-six years, and Wilks for eight.

Cherrise Wilks, pictured at the first JAX2025 community meeting in January.

For Brown, getting involved is in her blood. “I initially got involved with JCCI as a volunteer for the Race Relations inquiry,” she told us, “and consequently found out that my father served on the board of directors when I was in my teen years.” Her family has seen a lot of transformation take place in Jacksonville. “I am in awe at how much the city has changed in the past 40 years,” Brown said, “but when I drive through the city, take walks downtown, find a great new restaurant, or learn something new about the history of this community I realize that we live in a really special place that has abundant potential.”

Wilks was ushered into JCCI in a similar fashion. “I was invited to participate in the 2011 Quality of Life and Race Relations review committee,” she said. “A participant nominated me to become a JCCI Forward Executive Committee member and the rest is history!” JCCIForward is a sector of JCCI geared to young professionals, committed to getting them civically involved and access to skills training. “I came to Jacksonville in 2004,” Wilks told us, “and back then I fell in love with the burgeoning potential of this city as its leaders prepared the city for its shining moment as the host city of Super bowl XXXIX.” Where did that moment lead us to, eight years later? “I feel that most of the peers in my age group (Gen X and Y) have moved away from the city unless they have roots here,” Wilks said.

Mickee Brown, pictured center holding microphone, at the first JAX2025 meeting in January.

She went on to say: “I have been privileged to work in City government and be privy to inside knowledge about the plans, thoughts, and funding that makes up the fabric of this city. Somehow I always felt that the voice of the people who live in the Jacksonville community was missing from the table. Perhaps if my peers had a seat at the table or could voice their thoughts and ideas, they would have stayed. Due to my career I felt that my voice was heard, but I am well aware that many individuals are not afforded the opportunities that fell in my lap.”

Wilks viewed JAX2025 as an opportunity for those voices to be heard. “I saw the JAX2025 process as a method that was led by the people, for the people. One of my fundamental beliefs is that you cannot effectuate change unless you become involved and advocate for change. This process starts at the individual level. Everyone should ask themselves ‘What can I do to serve someone else or my community?’”

So what have these two ladies observed at the two meetings so far?” I think every participant is hopeful about our community’s future even those who are a bit jaded,” Brown said. “Folks want our city to be great. The energy that comes from working together toward a common purpose is incredibly inspiring.” Wilks observed the same "elite" crowd of community activist that she had seen always attending these types of community events. “However,” she said, “by the second meeting I observed more individuals venturing out to take part in the process.” She added that in her opinion, the vision statement meeting had the most impact. “People came together to clearly state that in Jacksonville all people and the quality of life should matter irrespective of finances, religion affiliation, race, creed, or sexual orientation. I heard the overwhelming majority state that leadership should change, they were willing to pay for services to achieve a better quality of life, and that Jacksonville is a beautiful city with lots of untapped potential.”

That potential has been there for 20 years or more, and it is time for transformation. “Jacksonville must make the shift away from a ‘what is wrong’ culture toward a culture of opportunity,” Brown declared. “I want to be a part of that change. Communities cannot afford to lament the problems of the past or the present. To thrive we must recognize our problems, learn from the mistakes, look to the future, determine what success looks like, and invest in solutions – that’s the basis of an opportunity focused community.” The community, unfortunately, is losing Wilks, at least for the time being. “Surprisingly, I have received a great job opportunity in Tampa, FL,” she told us. “However, I have made a promise to come back and participate in the JAX2025 process because I wholeheartedly believe that this city could become a destination city and surpass over 1.5 million people living in the metro area. Growth and change should not be shunned. The opinions of community members should not be silenced. I have a personal desire to see this process through, and hopefully to the end as a lifelong resident!”

It’s obvious that these women will continue to be strong visioneers for our community. When asked if they would encourage others to participate, they gave a resounding “Yes!”  “Each person has a choice as it relates to determining their future,” Wilks said. “It is imperative that citizens lend their voice to this community lead process. Nothing will change unless input is provided to chart the course for a new direction.” To that effect, Brown added: “Don’t talk about it, be about it. Change requires participation. Processes are only as good as the people involved. We all have skin in this game and everybody, every person has something of great value to offer. Always take the opportunity to be heard, share your opinion, cast your vote – that’s democracy.”

Cherrise Wilks (right), a Tri-Captain Volunteer, pictured with Ju'Coby Pittman-Peele, a Tri-Chair for JAX2025.

Are these women hopeful for the future of Jacksonville? “I want my friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues to envision their role in building a GREAT Jacksonville full of thriving people and places,” Brown told us. “Then I want everyone of us to devote our time, talent, and treasure to the effort.  When everyone is working toward excellence the possibility for greatness is endless.” Wilks then added a story from her time volunteering: “I once mentored a young girl who lived in the projects here in Jacksonville. She was about 10 at the time. Her whole family was born and raised in the city, but they were poor. In ten years this young girl never set her eyes on the Jacksonville Beach. That broke my heart!  My biggest hope for Jacksonville is that most community members will take the reins and become more involved on an individual, political and leadership level to create the change needed to bring JAX2025 into fruition. All children and adults in this community deserve to have a wonderful quality of life that affords them the opportunity to take advantage of a simple thing such as the beach!”

The next JAX2025 community visioning event will take place on Saturday, April 27th from 9-11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn Center. Doors open at 8:30, with free parking and refreshments. For more information and to register for the meeting, please visit www.JAX2025.org

Critics of the JAX2025 process site past visioning efforts such as Jacksonville Insight as examples of why a “vision” won’t help. Taking a look at how JAX2025 has learned from past efforts, and why it’s more than just a vision.

JAX2025: a community-owned and -driven initiative to help the community decide where it wants to be by the year 2025. The past two JAX2025 meetings at Downtown’s Prime Osborn Center have hosted hundreds of citizens and worked with them on becoming Visioneers; creating vision statements centered on ten targets for the future of the city.

Sound familiar? If you lived in the city twenty years ago, it probably should. Jacksonville Insight was a visioning process for the city headed by our former mayor, Ed Austin. Looking at the big picture of how Jacksonville Insight worked, you could draw many similarities between the two: community visioning, drafting vision statements, similar focus issues, and so on. Even the event venue was the same, at the Prime Osborn Convention Center. Although JCCI was not facilitating Jacksonville Insight as they are with JAX2025, the organization was involved. The JCCI Executive Director at the time, Marian Chambers, was brought on to the steering committee for the project, and advised Mayor Austin on his options. After considering whether to develop a spirit of partnership, or develop a community consensus around a particular issue, Mayor Austin decided the best direction to take was to develop consensus on a shared vision for Jacksonville’s future.

Time to take a look at those JAX2025 pamphlets: “Imagine how great Jacksonville can be. It’s the first step to creating a shared vision of where we want to go and how we’re going to get there.” Are we confused yet? If Jacksonville Insight was developed twenty years ago to pull the community together and create a shared vision for the city, why does JAX2025 need to go through the same process twenty years later? What happened?

First, let’s take a look at the history and results of Jacksonville Insight. The concept was developed by Mayor Austin and Chairman-elect Tom Petway of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce in the summer of 1991. The two men, along with then-City Council President Warren Jones, organized the steering committee and put a full-page ad out in the Times Union, asking for Jacksonville residents to register to be a part of Insight. After they received around 1,400 responses, a meeting was held at the Prime Osborn in early 1992 with approximately 800 residents in attendance. Together, they developed the priority areas for the city to focus on, and elected delegates for the remainder of the process.

These 101 delegates drafted vision statements for each priority area, and Mayor Austin’s office published a report after the meetings completed in June of 1992. The report’s title was “A Vision For Jacksonville,” and contained an opening letter from the Mayor. “From the beginning,” Austin wrote, “it was determined that Jacksonville Insight would not just be another planning process that would end up a report to collect dust on someone’s shelf. This vision will become a road map or what I have characterized as the “North Star” for our future.” The report was full of good ideas, some of which came to fruition, such as “Continue and complete the Automated Skyway Express, along with Highway 9-A.”As we all know, 9A was completed, now forming the 295 belt around the city, but the Skyway, however, was only built two-and-a-half miles long, and Skyway construction came to a halt in 2000. Other ideas were left a bit vague, and worded in such a way that it would be very difficult to measure exact change or growth in the area, such as “Promote professional sports in the region” or “Prevent crime, including substance abuse, through community education with emphasis on comprehensive youth services.”

Read Karen Brune Mathis' article from the Times-Union about the history of Jacksonville Insight here.

Jacksonville Insight was a terrific undertaking. Its size and scope was ahead of its time, and Mayor Austin and his Steering Committee did a terrific job of zeroing in on Jacksonville’s problem areas and bringing them to light. As Mayor Austin’s tenure continued, his office became the key leader of Jacksonville Insight; but that in itself was the issue. A project the size of Insight cannot come to fruition with only the Mayoral Office leading the banner. It takes a significant amount of community involvement for cross-community change. One of the Mayor’s goals was to ensure that Jacksonville Insight would be carried on after his tenure, no matter the new Mayor or his partisan affiliations. This, unfortunately, would not come to pass, and Jacksonville Insight became exactly what it intended never to be: a dust-collecting report.

Mayor Ed Austin's letter at the opening of the 1992 Jacksonville Insight Report.

So what has JAX2025 learned from this event? Jacksonville Insight ironically gave JCCI the “insight” it needed to understand how a visioning process can work, and what steps needed to be taken in order to ensure its success. It’s true, there are many similarities between the two processes, but what stands out further are the differences. JAX2025 is more of an open process than JI was, with all meetings being open to the public without registration, and no election of delegates. Each citizen has a chance to sit at a round table discussion and voice their opinion rather than elect someone to do it for them. More importantly, perhaps, JAX2025 is separated into two over-encompassing phases: first, a visioning phase, and second, the all-important implementation phase. This second phase is where the true distinction between JAX2025 and Jacksonville Insight will be shown; a lack of strategic plans for implementation was the main reason Insight’s ideas remained ideas.

The other paradigm shift between Insight and JAX2025 occurs in who is behind the process, and why. Mayor Austin’s goal was never to have Jacksonville Insight be associated with politics, but by the very nature of his office being behind the entire process it was impossible to separate the two. In order for success, a visioning process for the future of a city has to outlast a Mayoral office and survive political and civic turnover. The process must be removed of partisanship in order to insure its continual growth and achievement. For this reason, it is perfectly suited that JCCI is the organization behind JAX2025. As a nonprofit with no political ties, JCCI has the ability to continue to nurture the movement regardless of civic turnover. Additionally, JCCI’s main business is a number business: releasing vital reports to the community such as the yearly Quality of Life Progress Report and Race Relations Progress Report. JCCI, as an organization, is well-known for measuring indicators and monitoring growth. Jacksonville Insight never made any plans to track indicators, and without measuring change, real growth can’t happen. In fact, JCCI ensured that indicators would be at the forefront of the JAX2025 discussion by focusing its entire third community meeting around the topic, in order to ask the community which indicators they think are most important to track to guarantee success of the process.

What’s most important to note is that after all the good work of Jacksonville Insight, the fact that the community didn’t change significantly left many residents jaded about this style of process. Some great developments came out of Jacksonville Insight, such as the River City Renaissance and other downtown improvements. Yet downtown is still a major point of contention in city talks, and its vibrancy isn’t yet spiking in numbers. The missed opportunities of Jacksonville Insight left many of the city’s rope ends untied, and its citizens skeptical. What those residents can be assured of, however, is that while Jacksonville Insight was a vision plan, JAX2025 is an action plan. It begins with a vision to be sure that everyone is still on the same page, but then it will move into action, and it will not go away. JAX2025 will serve on the front lines of change for the next twelve years, and invites everyone in the city to join the cause.

The next JAX2025 meeting will take place on Saturday, April 27th from 9-11 a.m. at the Prime Osborn, focusing on strategies for implementation. Doors open at 8:30, and the event is free and open to the public, with free parking and refreshments. For more information, visit www.JAX2025.org

Name: Sheree Washington

Role with JCCI: JAX2025 Facilitator and Mystery Guest Lunch Facilitator

JCCI:  What do you do from 9-5?

SW:  At Shands, I am a performance improvement specialist. I work within the quality management department of an academic medical center to improve system processes to strive for the best patient experiences and minimize patient safety issues.

JCCI:  What do you do outside of work?

SW:  I am partially a socialite, I like to get out and meet new people and experience new things. I moonlite as an event planner at times. The other part is a homebody, I love watching movies.

JCCI:  How did you get involved with JCCI, JAX2025 or JCCI Forward?

SW:  I became involved with JAX2025 as soon as I heard about it (via email) sometime in December 2012.

JCCI:  What is your favorite hidden gem in Jacksonville?

SW:  Huguenot Park! I love that you can drive right up to the water and grill outside of your car, no toting of heavy beach items necessary!

JCCI:  What community issue is on your radar that doesn’t get enough attention right now?

SW:  Nightlife/shopping downtown. It's getting its fair amount of attention in recent times, but I think this area needs a whole lot of work. A city's success can be very dependent on the traffic its downtown generates, not just during the weekdays but at night and on weekends too.

JCCI:  Why is JCCI important to you and Jacksonville?

SW:  It seems as though JCCI and I have a lot in common when it comes to improving the city (educationally and aesthetically). I don't know too much about the organization besides what I've experienced while volunteering for JAX2025, but I'm interested in learning more.

Halfway through the visioning phase of JAX2025, Visioneers are called on to decide which measurements of change to track and follow in order to document and ensure success of the project. Taking a look at why these indicators are so important.

JCCI, the facilitating organization behind the JAX2025 movement, is quite familiar with “indicators.” After all, indicators, or measurements and data, comprise a large portion of the work their non-profit performs. Ben Warner, President & CEO of JCCI, has been with the organization for fifteen years. “In my time here,’ Warner says, ‘I’ve worked with people not only in the Jacksonville area, but talked with people in over a hundred other communities both nationally and internationally. What I’ve come to realize is that without some accountability, without a good measurement of data, nothing ever changes.”

What the JAX2025 initiative is working towards is, inarguably, change. The work is in the assembling and execution of a shared community vision for the future; obviously that vision that will differ from the way the city is today, otherwise the exercise would be in vain. So far, the community visioning event meetings have proved successful, and vision statements for the future of Jacksonville have been crafted. As the project rolls towards the implementation phase, the question remains: How will we know that our efforts are truly working?

Ben Warner, President & CEO of JCCI. Photo courtesy of JCCI.

To stress why the selection and tracking of indicators are so vital, Warner uses an example from his work with NAPC, the National Association of Planning Councils, an organization that supports community-based planning for human services. “Our goal was to recognize exemplary work in different communities,’ he stated, ‘and this one gentlemen was nominated for his work on lowering violent juvenile crime in his area. When I took a look at the measurements from his community, what everyone neglected to realize was the rate of violent juvenile crime in the area was actually on the rise. So even though his practices were innovative, I couldn’t move to nominate him based on the actual data.”

Measuring data, in an accurate way, is critical for this type of community work in order to receive a comprehensive understanding of the situation. Also necessary to these processes is the assurance that the data is collected in a fair, un-biased manner. “We have to watch for frog dumping,” Warner says. He goes on to describe how one of the best indicators that a pond eco-system is healthy is the size of the population and wellbeing of green frogs in the pond. “When a pond system lacks these frogs, for example, it means something is wrong. The right thing to do is to assess the problem and work to fix it so the pond can then support a frog population. Sometimes what happens, however, is someone will dump a bucket of frogs in the pond, then turn around and say ‘All fixed.’” This, Warner says, is the problem when only one indicator is chosen to track the progress and success of a project. “When only one measurement is chosen,’ he says, ‘It doesn’t display back an accurate picture. It could very well be a frog-dumping situation. It’s similar to the debate people have about ‘teaching’ towards a standardized test.”

Warner leading a discussion about indicators and their impact at a GlobalJax meeting at JCCI headquarters. Photo courtesy JCCI.

It is clear from his examples that measurements for this type of civic change are important: not only in their mere existence, but in how they are selected, collected, and presented. “Indicators are a necessary part of the system of change,” Warner states. For the JAX2025 movement, many indicators will need to be chosen and tracked. For a project of this size and scope, the measurements chosen must be as numerous and diverse as the population itself. “There is a power in indicators,’ Warner declares, ‘and data matters.” He goes on to explain how the newspapers we read each day are mostly aggregates of data measures: the money section, sports section, weather section, arts and entertainment box office reports, even best-seller lists. “There is so much access to data today. All one has to do is whip out a smart phone and they can have access to more data than they know what to do with.” The key, Warner says, is “how do we sift through the data and find out the information that’s really meaningful in regards to our goal?”

Warner offers one of his favorite quotes from Lincoln on the subject: “If we could just know where we are, and wither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it.” For JAX2025 in particular, it will be up the community to decide which indicators to track. What is known at this point, however, is that in order for true success, our city has to know where it’s headed and we have to know how to evaluate where we are.  Warner offers this as a caveat: “Indicators, as I like to say, are descriptive and not prescriptive. They can be used to galvanize the community, but not automatically. It is in the work of the citizens of the community that true action takes place, and we need those citizens to make JAX2025 a reality.”

The next JAX2025 meeting will focus on indicators: What measures are important to track the initiative’s success? Visioneers will be asked to take a look at which indicators have been utilized in the past, and help decide which are most important to track for the future. The program’s attendance is free and open to the public, taking place Tuesday March 19^th, from 6-8 p.m. Doors open at 5:30. For more information and to register for the meeting, visit www.JAX2025.org

This week, we hear from Brian Grant about his experience with JAX2025 and why community matters to him.

What in the world is a Visioneer? According to the JAX2025.org website, the definition is as follows:

Visioneer – vizh-un-neer – noun

1. Anyone and everyone who cares about the future of Jacksonville.
2. An active participant in JAX2025, connecting with others in imagining Jacksonville in 2025.
3. An attendee at a community-visioning event for JAX2025.

This week, we talked with Brian Grant, Production Manager at Players by the Sea Theater, and a Visioneer who has engaged in both JAX2025 meetings held so far for an on-the-floor perspective of community visioning at work.

Grant (pictured center with grey cap) at the February JAX2025 meeting listens to his table discuss the future of Arts & Entertainment in Jacksonville.
Photo courtesy JCCI.

Grant is a citizen who certainly knows Jacksonville: a native born and raised here, he has lived in the city for a total of thirty years. It was his interest in arts management that took Grant out of Jacksonville: “I moved to New York City to gain experience in production, and then returned to my hometown to continue a career in the arts.”  Now Grant is the Production Manager at Players by the Sea Theatre, a thriving community arts establishment at the Beaches whose recent partnership with the symphony for “Amadeus” and upcoming production of “In the Next Room” has generated quite a buzz. Grant’s love for the arts extends beyond his professional life; he is a newlywed to local star Staci Grant (formerly Cobb), a beloved stage actress in the Jacksonville scene, and board member and co-founder of the city’s newest theatrical group, The 5 & Dime, A Theater Company.

Check out Grant’s passion on the local arts scene by visiting www.playersbythesea.org and www.the5anddime.org for information on fantastic local productions and events.

Grant’s involvement with the JAX2025 movement grew out of his love for the area, and the arts. “I got into it because I care about our future,’ he says, ‘particularly urban core development, the arts, and equality issues.” At the February JAX2025 meeting, Visioneers were given their choice of ten areas to sit in for a round-table discussion based on a key focus topic. Grant chose as one of his options, naturally, the “Arts and Entertainment” discussion area.  So what is he hoping the outcome of his visioning efforts will be? “My biggest hope for Jacksonville is for the city to offer a rich, cultural environment,’ says Grant, ‘that offers young artists all of the same opportunities that a larger city like New York, or Chicago would offer.”

As the February meeting went on, each focus-area table began to draft vision statements based on their topic: What they envisioned for Jacksonville in twelve years in accordance to their particular discussion subject. Grant found great encouragement in the efforts and comments from his fellow citizens. “I’m rapidly approaching forty years old,’ he offered. ‘I realize that our city's development is in the hands of people just like me.” The tables hummed with lively conversation as each and every participant voiced his or her own opinion.  Grant told us that he plans to attend all subsequent meetings and continue to be a visioneer because he feels like his voice is “being heard.”

An example of a draft vision statement from the February meeting. Photo courtesy JCCI.

“I've attended the last two JAX2025 events and I cannot express how wonderful the experience has been for me.’ Grant said, ‘I feel like my opinions matter. Most importantly, I've found many, many others who share my praises, hopes, and concerns. There's been an overwhelming sense of consensus.” That consensus is in the process of being consolidated into ten bold finalized vision statements by the JAX2025 team, which will be revealed at the March 19^th meeting. “The reason I would encourage people to attend the JAX2025 meetings is because our future matters and it is rare to get an opportunity to shape it,’ Grant told us. ‘JAX2025 provides an opportunity for each and every member of our growing community to have an impact on our shared future. If you love Jacksonville, and are hopeful for our future, you should be involved.”

The next JAX2025 community visioning event will take place on Tuesday, March 19^th from 6-8 p.m. at the Prime Osborn Center. Doors open at 5:30, with free parking and refreshments. For more information and to register for the meeting, please visit www.JAX2025.org