BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— When Florida’s 10 regional planning councils were first established in the 1970s, their predominant purpose was to help counties and regions manage growth through land use planning and zoning regulation.
Now, however, the missions of both the Northeast Florida Regional Council, based in Jacksonville and the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council, based in Gainesville have seen their missions expanded.
The Northeast Florida Council serves seven counties, including Clay, while the Gainesville-based organization serves 12 counties, including Bradford and Union.
Bradford Commissioners Danny Reddick and Starke Commissioner Janice Mortimer represent Bradford County jurisdictions on the North Central Florida Council, while Union Commissioner James Tallman and Lake Butler Commissioner David Stegall represent Union County governments.
County Commissioner Betsy Condon represents the Lake Region and Clay County on the Northeast Florida Regional Council.
Eric Anderson, the emergency manager for the Northeast Florida Regional Council, gave the Keystone Heights Rotary Club an orientation of the council’s operations and projects during the club’s Sept. 21 meeting.
He said that now, growth management is just one of several missions of the agency, which also include emergency preparedness, economic development and resiliency.
The manager said the Northeast Regional Council’s 2022 activities included projects in mental health and the opioid epidemic, affordable housing, agricultural economic development, strategic planning for local governments and broadband internet access.
Governance, funding, staffing
The northeast council is governed by a 35-member board of directors. Two-thirds are local, elected officials and the other one-third are gubernatorial appointees. This year’s president is Putnam County Commissioner Larry Harvey.
Twenty-three percent of the council’s $2.6 million budget is funded by its member counties, which pay 41 cents for each resident. The remaining money comes from Federal sources and from grants.
A 17-member staff includes planners, administrative personnel and specialists in economic development, emergency management, healthcare and resiliency.
Emergency management
Last year, the council’s emergency management team held 39 classes and trained over 1,000 people in preparing and responding to disasters like storms, terrorism and pandemics. The classes included the annual JEA and St. Johns County hurricane exercises, in addition to instruction on infectious diseases, supply-chain scarcity and continuity of operations.
Healthcare coalition
One aspect of the council’s emergency preparedness program is helping healthcare facilities plan for disasters.
The federal healthcare coalition program divides Florida into 12 healthcare coalitions and the northeast council manages three of the coalitions: northeast, north central and Marion County.
The three coalitions consist of 491 healthcare organizations and the council assists coalition members with preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation activities related to healthcare organization disaster operations.
Anderson said one key component of the coalition’s work is evacuation planning.
“Hurricane Irma is a perfect example of where pretty much every patient facility along the east coast had to evacuate,” he said.
Anderson also said the healthcare coalition took a leading role in responding to the Delta Surge of the COVID-19 Pandemic. He added that the federal government led the response to the initial pandemic wave but left the Delta Surge response mostly to local governments.
Hazardous materials
The council also organizes a local planning committee for hazardous materials. Twenty-five board members consisting of firefighters, managers of facilities with hazardous materials, and environmental representatives provide training, technical assistance and reporting help to first responders and HAZMAT facilities. Last year, the committee trained 99 people in handling propane and hazardous materials.
Each regional council has a full-time staff member that works on hazardous materials planning and response.
“One of the primary things that we do is we go out and visit every single facility that reports having a chemical inventory,” Anderson said. “So, for instance, there is a (facility) near Green Cove Springs. We would go in there. We would look at the chemical compositions that they have there now. Were they properly stored? We would start planning for a worst-case scenario. If that tank right there were to release its contents, what would be the impact on the community and how would we respond?”
“Most people don’t understand that kind of work is taking place in the background,” Anderson continued, “but there really is a lot of work going into documenting what chemicals are around and what the impact of (a spill) potentially would be.”
Evacuations
Anderson said one of his favorite projects is the statewide regional evacuation study program which tracks shelter inventories, updates evacuation zones, analyzes storm surge, updates population and demographic data and analyzes the behavior of people ordered or advised to evacuate.
Anderson showed the Rotarians an updated storm surge model for Nassau County which demonstrated that during a Category 4 or 5 Hurricane hitting the Atlantic coast, storm surge could reach 30 miles inland, to Callahan and Hilliard.
He said federal officials recently updated evacuation zones and he has been working with county emergency managers to communicate the new information to northeast Florida residents.
Anderson said the agency uses cell phone location data to learn how residents respond to evacuation advisories and orders.
“During the Irma evacuation, we had information on how people evacuated, when they left their houses and where they went,” he said. “So now we have actionable information from a planning standpoint on how people are responding to evacuation notifications.”
“I don’t want to scare you,” he added. “It wasn’t down to the ping level of your phone. We were able to track general populations on when they were leaving, general areas, if they were going to a shelter or some other place and the time it took to leave the county. It’s a really good planning tool for us.”
Anderson said the cell phone data is valuable in understanding how planners can change their messaging to make it more effective and how long it takes for residents to respond to messages.
Planning and policy
The council works with counties and municipalities on comprehensive plan development, updates and public engagement.
The council also acts as the official planning agency for seven counties to coordinate transportation services for the disadvantaged.
One area of planning and policy the council is now focused on is affordable housing.
It hosted affordable housing workshops in each of the region’s seven counties in March and convened a regional meeting in April for stakeholders to voice best practices and a roadmap for the future.
The council also focused on the opioid crisis during 2022, hosting an overdose summit in Clay County during March in which 19 speakers and 12 organizations shared information with over 120 attendees.
Topics covered in the summit included the neuroscience of addiction, Narcan training, Clay County’s community paramedicine program and how hospital systems, law enforcement agencies and the judicial system is responding to the crises.
Economic development
The U.S. Economic Development Administration designated the Northeast Florida Council as the economic development district in the region.
The council works with JAX USA and CareerSource to develop and update the region’s comprehensive economic development strategy. The strategy uses a five-year horizon to create jobs.
The council also works with other organizations to apply for grants, write feasibility studies, create strategic plans and administer disaster relief funds like CARES Act and ARPA money.
Resiliency
The council’s resiliency program focuses on helping local governments prepare for the effects of climate change by increasing climate change awareness, conducting vulnerability assessments and planning for coastal flooding.
One resource the council developed to help business owners and governments assess the risk of climate change is a regional resilience exposure tool.
The map tool shows where coastal flooding might occur due to storm surge and sea level rise. The resource also includes overlays for population density, critical infrastructure and environmental habitats.
The council is also integrating its resiliency efforts into its other programs to assess how climate change could impact affordable housing, healthcare facilities, transportation infrastructure, broadband and quality of life.
