Citizen Planning Advisory Committees in Jacksonville, Florida

A CPAC is a Citizens Planning Advisory Committee, and Jacksonville has six of them. According to the Neighborhood Services Office, Jacksonville's more than 200 neighborhoods are divided into six planning districts each with a Citizens Planning Advisory Committee. The city frames the job as keeping a standing line open between residents, businesses, neighborhood groups, schools and City Hall, which matters in a consolidated city where one council governs everything from Baldwin to Mayport.

CPACs do not vote on zoning or spend money. The city's Boards and Commissions listing says they provide a forum for neighborhood priorities and planning questions within each district and may make recommendations on concerns in their district or across Jacksonville. The practical hook is notice: the city says CPACs are informed of applications for land-use plan amendments, rezonings, and other activities affecting their planning district, so a rezoning request often gets its first public airing at a CPAC table before it reaches the Planning Commission or the City Council's Land Use and Zoning Committee.

Anyone can sit in. The city states that CPAC meetings are open to public and any interested person is welcome to attend any CPAC meeting. Voting is a different matter: voting members must be appointed through a nomination process, described below.

The six CPAC districts line up with the six planning districts set in Jacksonville's 2010 Comprehensive Plan. District 1 is the Urban Core, District 2 Greater Arlington/Beaches, District 3 the Southeast, District 4 the Southwest, District 5 the Northwest and District 6 the North. The boundaries follow rivers, rail lines and highways rather than council districts, so one CPAC can include parts of several council seats.

The Greater Arlington/Beaches district runs from the St. Johns River south to Beach Boulevard, and east to the Intracoastal Waterway, Church Road and the Atlantic Beach line. Below Beach Boulevard, the Southeast district takes in Mandarin and the Southside down to the St. Johns County line. Across the river, the Southwest district reaches west to the Baker County line and south to the Clay County line, so the Westside's rural edge falls under one committee.

The Urban Core is drawn tight around downtown and the older neighborhoods on both sides of I-95, with its southern edge running along I-95 to Bee Street to the St. Johns River and its northern line along Moncrief Creek and Golfair Boulevard. The Northwest district picks up from there, west to Otis Road and Old Plank Road and north to the Trout River. The North district covers everything above the Trout River and I-295 to the Nassau County line and the ocean, which brings in Oceanway, the Nassau River marshes and the Fort George area.

Each CPAC meets monthly at a public building in its own district, and the 2026 meetings run hybrid, with a Zoom link in each public notice. Most skip July and December. The 2026 schedules posted by the city show the spread of venues across Duval County.

The Urban Core CPAC meets on the 1st Monday of each month at 5:30 p.m. in the multipurpose room on the conference level of the Main Public Library on North Laura Street, with its Land Use and Zoning subcommittee at 5:00 p.m. It also keeps separate homelessness and blight subcommittees for downtown issues. In 2026 the September meeting moved to Tuesday, September 8.

Greater Arlington/Beaches meets on the second Monday of the month at 6:30 p.m. in the Police Athletic League building at Ed Austin Regional Park on Monument Road. The Southeast CPAC meets on the fourth Monday at 6:30 p.m. at the Mandarin Senior Center on Hartley Road, with its 2026 May and December dates moved to May 18 and December 14. The Southwest CPAC uses the Lane Wiley Senior Center on Wiley Road on the second Monday, with its zoning subcommittee an hour earlier at 5:30.

On the north side, the full Northwest CPAC meeting is held on the second Thursday of each month at 6 p.m. at The Legends Center on Soutel Drive, after a 5 p.m. Land Use and Zoning subcommittee. The North CPAC meets on the second Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Oceanway Community Center on Sago Avenue, with a Governmental Affairs subcommittee at 4:30 p.m.

Membership runs through organizations, not individual sign-ups. The Neighborhood Services Office says CPAC members are appointed by the Mayor, after nomination by community, civic or government groups in the district, and eligibility is decided by the Director of the Neighborhoods Department and the Planning and Development Department. Each organization gets one voting representative and one alternate.

Nominations can come from neighborhood, civic and homeowner associations listed in the City of Jacksonville's Directory of Neighborhood Organizations; businesses and professional groups active in the district; PTA or school advisory council groups; other community organizations approved by the two departments; City Council members, including at-large members, for any CPAC in their territory; and Sheriff's Watch neighborhood groups. Non-voting seats go to a city department head, a Duval County School Board representative and a Jacksonville Sheriff's Office representative.

The first step is registration. The city says the first requirement for becoming a member of a district's CPAC is to register the neighborhood or organization with the City. That same Neighborhood Services Office directory also signs a group up for notices about rezonings and land use amendments nearby. The office, on the 7th floor at 214 North Hogan Street, the Edward Ball Building, hands out the nomination and new member forms.

The program is a mayoral creation, renewed by each administration. The city's history of it is short and specific: Citizens Planning Advisory Committees were first established in October 1993 by Mayor Ed Austin as an ongoing, grassroots public participation program. Mayor John Delaney issued a new executive order in September 2001, Mayor John Peyton continued it in 2007, and Mayor Alvin Brown issued another executive order in 2014.

The planning districts themselves trace to the same period. The City Council's TRUE Commission page refers to the six Planning Districts established pursuant to Executive Order 93-170, the 1993 order that set up the district map the CPACs still use. The Neighborhood Services Office got a permanent footing later, when Ordinance 2016-140-E, Section 34.801, was signed into law on March 22, 2016, establishing the office and requiring it to keep an inventory of recognized neighborhood organizations across Jacksonville.

Neighborhood-level planning is older than the CPACs. The city's Neighborhood Action Plans page says that since 1977, a total of 19 NAPs have been completed and adopted by City Council, starting with the 1977 Springfield and Mayport plans and the 1978 Mandarin Area Development Plan and running to the Old Arlington plan of 2007 and the Baymeadows plan of 2012. CPACs are the standing forum where those older plans still get cited when development comes to a covered area.

CPACs hold seats on at least two other Jacksonville bodies. Each of the six CPACs appoints one member of the 18-member TRUE Commission, the Council's fiscal advisory panel, so the Urban Core, Greater Arlington/Beaches, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest and North districts each have a voice on budget and tax policy. As of October 2026, the TRUE Commission roster shows the Urban Core and Greater Arlington/Beaches CPAC seats vacant.

The Planning Commission roster mirrors the same map, with a seat for each of Planning District 01 through 06 alongside its at-large members. The overlap means a rezoning in Arlington can be discussed at the Arlington/Beaches CPAC, heard by a planning commissioner whose seat is tied to that district, and then decided by the City Council, all using the same six-district geography that dates to 1993. Last verified: October 9, 2026, on the City of Jacksonville website.