GREEN COVE SPRINGS – The City of Green Cove Springs has changed a lot since its first visioning meeting in 2005, but the city council expects the next 12 years to bring much bigger changes to the city.

“Think big picture, five years out, even 10 years out,” said Mayor Mitch Timberlake. “With the beltway coming through, our city is going to change dramatically.”

This expected change brought members of the council together Tuesday before their regularly scheduled council meeting. Development Services Director Janis Fleet presented spreadsheets to the council outlining things they had accomplished since their last visioning session in 2012, and things that are budgeted or proposed for their next vision plan in 2018.

“What I hope can come out of tonight is an outline for another community meeting,” Timberlake said.

In 2012, the council hosted members of the community who presented ideas about the direction they would like to see the city move. Timberlake explained that it was an all-day event that started around 10 a.m. and wrapped up sometime before midnight. The council’s plan is to repeat this meeting next February with a special focus on preparing the city for the First Coast Expressway, whose third phase is scheduled to begin construction in the first quarter of 2019.

The biggest project completed since the 2012 meeting would be the Spring Park Pool, which brings their overhaul of Spring Park to a state of near-completion with the exception of a few things like rebuilding the pier and installing a kayak launch, both of which will be funded once pending grant applications are processed.

During discussions among council members on whether or not they would be in favor of imposing impact fees, either residential or commercial, all council members seemed to be in agreement that, for them, impact fees would have a negative effect on their community.

“There are some places that need residential impact fees, for us I don’t think we have a standing for [them], and we should hold that up as a banner,” said council member Van Royal.

Royal also explained that commercial impact fees in Clay County will only prohibit retailers from building new locations in the county to avoid the fees while the roads into the county sit mostly unused throughout the day since most residents work elsewhere.

After these comments, Royal made a motion to set aside any further discussion of impact fees by the council, receiving a unanimous vote to table the discussion until further notice.

Other things discussed included a future proposal from City Manager Danielle Judd on a Parks and Recreation department within the city, the potential for their streets to become more bike and pedestrian friendly, and revamping actions in the historic downtown either through a CRA-type program or through careful budgeting and financial planning.

Timberlake voiced support for the consideration of allowing tiny homes in parts of the city where they have looked to increase workforce housing, providing a new low-cost housing option for those moving to the city.

These types of projects fall under the city’s Decade of Progress initiative that seeks to create a more welcoming and historic feeling city that would support new restaurants and weekend shoppers.

Fleet and Judd also provided updates to the council on where they are with the current plans to overhaul the city’s electric system and the creation of a new public works headquarters. Both are still in the planning process, but would ideally be completed within the next decade.

Before wrapping things up, Timberlake made sure that there will be information available at the future meeting to be totally transparent with citizens on where the money for all of these projects will come from, specifically those things not in the capital improvements plan.

Once the outline for their current Decade of Progress plan has been ironed out and a date has been set, the city will send out invitations to every resident who lives within the city limits. Members of the community are strongly encouraged by the council to participate in the February visioning meeting to ensure that the citizens of Green Cove have a say in their city’s future.