Councilmember Amiro hosted the District One town hall meeting on August 25, 2026, starting at 2:00 PM. Presentations were made by School Board Member Tony Ricardo, Parks and Recreation Director Darrell Joseph, Public Works Director Nina Sicler, and JSO District Two Commander Ring Valentine. Community members participated in Q&A sessions after each presentation. Key topics included school facility issues, park upgrades, road safety projects, crime statistics, and a proposed one-mill renewal referendum.
It's about it on time. First of all, welcome to the uh district one town hall meetings 24 2026. Thank you for coming out and uh devoteing your time to have a conversation about this community that you and I call a lot of exciting things that are taking place. I don't think we've had the opportunity to drive around some courts. Uh some transformational work is already taking place. But it wouldn't be a community without your involvement, without your participation without your voice. So tonight I'm here to be here from you to have you here to get me as well as some of the city departments that serve our community and what they're doing to improve the quality of life and make life better for each and every one of us in their comment and quality. I'd like this to begin with some invocation and a pledge of legions. My buddy will do the pledge, and I will say it for every letter. Almighty God, we thank you for yet a new day. We thank you for this opportunity to assemble it as a community, unity. Um voice for this community we call and thank you for gracing us with life and strength in our body. Thank you for this opportunity to assemble as one. Um guard our speech, give us wisdom and the things that we say, give us a receptive ear, hear what has been said, and give us the wisdom to move forward. The objective here is to make our community better, not just for us, but for children and our grandchildren. God, we thank you for hearing up for the sun and the whole east there. Well, we're not thank you, sir. Uh we have a number of presenters this evening, and we will try to um if there aren't uh if it's not an overwhelming number of questions, we'll try to answer some questions after each presenter. But uh our goal is to try and get you as much information as possible to get you out of here by secondary as the objective. And since we have started a new school year, I thought it would be appropriate to have our school board member that uh covers district one to come and share with us tonight. Um those of us may not have kids in the school system, but we do have neighbors and maybe grandchildren who are enrolled in the school system this year, district one. So please receive uh Tony Ricardo, who all county school board, district number one representative for the beginning of our meeting. Come on. Well, I can echo uh councilman the maritime senator. I appreciate y'all attending uh and taking an interest in community. Um I figured I'd start out first with one of the hot topics of the last two weeks is the air conditioners in the school. We apparently have been in the quite a bit. Um as you know, any person building usually has to run uh a piece of machinery in order to keep it running. So yes, we do run those during the summer. Um that's the question that's been asked quite a bit. Um there are some just three things that happen, wires being rubbed abroad up against cabinets and shortened things out, lightning strikes and those kind of things. Uh this year has been unusually uh high number of incidents on air conditioning units, so yes, there's there's been quite a few, and they are all being taken care of. As far as I know, we're on top of all of them uh as I speak right now, but it's more for the new day. Um, as far as uh attendance, we're doing very well, but as you know, or maybe don't know, uh the birth rate is going down. So our attendance rates in most of the schools are declining slightly. This is not due to just charter schools or choices. Yes, those choices are out there, but our attendance is declining very, very slightly. Um most of the schools are just losing maybe 20 students or so, and uh that's been consistent over the last few years. We're working to rectify that again. My position when I campaign was to make uh public schools very competitive, and I'm I'm a further leader in competition, so we need to offer the best products of kids will come to us. Um we have a few projects. I'm not gonna spend any time on it yet because I know it's coming up later, but we do have an arts in the public uh arts coming up, and we're working on uh I'm trying to engage the students at Fort Carolina School of the Arts, the uh middle school to uh participate in that. I have a background in commercial art and uh done several murals in the past, and I just want to have the students get the opportunity to experience something like that. So that's what we're trying to do is use the students at Fort Caroline to do that project as much as possible. Last item uh the one mill. It's coming up on November, and there's a lot of misinformation out there. I thought I'd just like to make sure that everyone understands what it is and where it came from, why it's there, and what the results have been over the last four years. The one mill, I'll take you back to 2022. We had a very severe teaching shortage at that time. Um some of you remember that.