November 10, 2011. The Florida Times-Union.
Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown for months ignored a campaign promise to meet with an interfaith group wanting the city to open a drop-in day center for homeless residents, leaders of the organization said.
ICARE members said they had called and emailed the mayor repeatedly since his inauguration in July, without any response.
But all that changed around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday.
That’s about when Brown called a leader of the Interfaith Coalition for Action, Reconciliation and Empowerment to schedule the promised meeting. He made the call about 30 minutes after the Times-Union asked his office why the mayor had yet to meet with the group.
“It shook some things up,” the Rev. David Holladay said about the newspaper’s call to the Mayor’s Office.
“He just explained that he is meeting with folks and that he didn’t understand how this snafu could have happened,” said Holladay, pastor at Riverside Baptist Church and co-chairman of ICARE’s homelessness committee.
“I explained to him that since the inauguration we’ve been emailing and calling and gotten no response. That led to us setting up that meeting next Thursday [Nov. 17].”
Brown spokesman Chris Hand said the whole thing was a misunderstanding resulting from “some sort of miscommunication.”
Hand could not explain how Holladay’s and others’ emails and phone calls got no response. Part of the problem initially may have been the difficult budget process that consumed most of Brown’s time and energy in the early days of his administration, Hand said.
Hand said the mayor had not intentionally ignored the group, which consists of about 30 congregations from different denominations and faiths that share a passion for social justice issues.
“Mayor Brown is strongly committed to working with the faith community and with ICARE specifically,” Hand said, adding the mayor has visited many churches, including some that participate in ICARE, since his election.
Brown called Holladay as soon as he learned of the group’s complaint from the Times-Union, Hand said.
Until then, the frustration was mounting for Holladay and other members of the organization.
Public officials attend ICARE’s annual Nehemiah Assembly, where they are pressed to state their willingness to take actions on issues ranging from education and crime to health care.
It was during that meeting in April that then-candidate Brown promised more than 1,800 ICARE members to meet with the group within 60 days of his election.
ICARE backed off pressing for the meeting the first couple months of Brown’s administration because of the budget process, Holladay said. They waited 90 days to begin renewing requests but still did not hear back.
Brown’s inaction had disturbed hundreds of members of the organization, said Nancy Ricker, a member of Arlington Congregational Church.
She and about 500 ICARE members met Tuesday night for their annual Community Problems Assembly, where “people demonstrated concern” that Brown had yet to respond.
But the Rev. Hugh Chapman, rector of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church downtown, said he’s harboring no resentment about the delay.
“I’m relieved because we were all a little disappointed that we had not heard from him,” said Chapman, co-chair of the homelessness committee. “I’ve moved beyond all that now, and I’m just glad we’re having this meeting.”
