Come Together: The Story of Jacksonville's Consolidation -- Part 6

 Aside from the disaccreditation of the county's high schools, there were several other pressing problems facing Jacksonville and Duval County separately:

2.  A high degree of water and air pollution.  I can testify to this.  I was in Los Angeles with a group, and we were gathered on a hill in Hollywood looking out over the L.A. Basin at the smog.  Some of the members of the group commented on how awful it was.  

"Take a sniff," I told them.  That was met with puzzled looks.  I repeated, "Take a sniff.  Smell the air."

The group could detect no foul odors.

"That's right," I said.  "Where I'm from, not only can you see the pollution in the air, you can smell it." 

Then I explained to them that we had several very smelly industries in Jacksonville: Jefferson Smurfit, makers of cardboard boxes; St. Joe Paper Company, the product in the name; a couple other odor-generating companies the names of which I don't remember . . .   There were many foul odors when the wind was coming at you from certain directions.  These were offset, again when the wind was right, by the Maxwell House Coffee plant.  But the smelly ones outnumbered Maxwell House. 

3.  A high crime rate.

4.  A high degree of property deterioration [that is to say, slums] inside the Jacksonville corporate limits.

5.  Emerging poor land use patterns, e.g. inadequate planning and zoning.

6.  High costs, compared with other cities, for providing governmental services. 

7.  Lack of public confidence in local government, based on grand jury findings of inefficiency and corruption, and other factors.

8.  Low voter registration and turnout.

9.  A slowdown in area economic growth.

10.  Traffic congestion: lack of adequate streets and highways, and lack of adequate mass transit.

11.  Comparatively low wage earner's scale; high incidence of unskilled labor.

12.  Inadequate sewer facilities countywide.

13.  Inadequate water facilities outside of municipal corporate limits.  I can testify to that.  In the late 1970s, we lived outside the city limits, in the county.  We were served, for water, by a private utility.  There were many of these little private utilities in the county, and some of them were not too particular about maintenance of their systems.  As a result, we had fairly frequent "boil water" alerts because of some sort of contamination or other.

14.  Inadequate fire protection outside of municipal corporate limits.

15.  Incomplete sanitation services for garbage collection and disposal outside of municipal corporate limits.

16.  Continued unaccounted-for variations in ad valorem tax roll assessments.  As we saw in Part 5, this problem was related to the disaccreditation of county high schools.

17.  Inadequate prison facilities and inadequate probation and parole procedures.

18.  Inadequate and wasteful governmental purchasing procedures.

19.  Lack of library services outside Jacksonville city limits.

20.  Racial unrest.

After that list of specific problems, there was a lone comment:  "ad infinitum."

Jacksonville was a mess.

In Part 7: the unmet needs of city and county.

 

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