Jacksonville Consolidation

The Jacksonville Consolidation was the city-county consolidation of the governments of the City of Jacksonville and Duval County, Florida. It was effected on October 1, 1968.

Through the 1960s, Jacksonville, like most other large cities in the US, suffered from the effects of urban sprawl, including corruption scandals. A grand jury indicted 11 officials on 142 counts of bribery and larceny including:

The city tax assessor took the Fifth Amendment, refused to testify, and resigned.

Claude Yates had recently retired as Vice President and General Manager of Southern Bell in Jacksonville and been named president of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce in 1964 when all 15 public high schools lost their accreditation. On January 19, 1965 Yates called a lunch meeting of the chamber at the Robert Meyer Hotel to decide on a course of action. Those individuals who attended included Glenn Marshall Jr., Roger L. Main, W.S. Johnson, Charles W. Campbell, Gert H.W. Schmidt, Edward Ball, C.G. Whittaker, Luke Sadler, B.D. Fincannon, George B. Hills, Jacob F. Bryan III, B.N. Nimnicht, , J.T. Lane, J.H. Coppedge, Gen. Maxwell Snyder, Harold Meyerheim, , Thompson S. Baker, Richard Lewinson, Henry M. French and S. Kendrick Guernsey. The date was significant because it was the deadline for submitting requests for the upcoming legislative session. At the time, the legislature only met for sixty days every other year. The aforementioned prominent business and civic leaders signed a 45-word petition to the Duval legislative delegation of Senator John E. Mathews and Representative Fred Schultz, that would later be dubbed the "Yates Manifesto". It stated:

We, the undersigned, respectfully request the Duval County Delegation to the Florida Legislature to prepare an enabling act calling for the citizens of Duval County to vote on the consolidation of government within Duval to secure more efficient and effective government under one governmental body.

In response, the 1965 Florida Legislature created the Local Government Study Commission (LGSC). The legislature chose J. J. Daniel as chairman to design a new government and write its charter. Daniel was known, according to The Florida Times, for his "powerful personality, unquestioned integrity, strong leadership and history of civic involvement."Lex Hester was hired as the executive director of the LGSC. He was the "key architect of Jacksonville's consolidated government", transition coordinator and chief administrative officer following consolidation. Claude Yates was among the 50 business and civic leaders invited to participate; elected officials and government employees were intentionally excluded. On October 1, 1965 the commission was established and given until May 1, 1967 to complete their work. In January, 1967, after 15 months of effort and three months ahead of schedule, the LGSC submitted a consolidation proposal entitled, Blueprint for Improvement. The legislative delegation altered the plan slightly to make it more appealing and ordered it to be placed on a referendum in 1967.

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