If you’re looking for City Council member Doyle Carter today, you won’t find him in the fourth floor council office at City Hall.
Instead, he’ll be a few doors behind, past the locked French doors, sitting behind Mayor Lenny Curry’s desk, ready to lead.
“We’ve got a lot to do, and only one day to do it,” said Carter, who is taking over mayoral duties for the day.
Curry, along with council President Anna Lopez Brosche and Vice President Aaron Bowman, are out of the country attending JAX Chamber’s Leadership Trip to Toronto.
That leaves Carter, serving in his last term representing District 12, in charge.
As chair of the council Rules Committee, Carter is next in the line of succession, according to the city charter. He’s followed by Finance Chair Garrett Dennis.
Carter said he’s already dialed up a workload for Chief Administrative Officer Sam Mousa and the rest of the mayor’s staff.
“I’ll go there in the morning and meet with Mr. Mousa and see what he has on his plate,” he said.
“Of course, he’ll have to scrap his list so we can get some roads built in my district and put up a few new buildings at Cecil (Commerce Center) for businesses to move into,” he quipped.
As mayor, Carter said his top priority is expediting capital improvement projects for his West Jacksonville district and tearing down a pair of vacant city-owned buildings Downtown.
“I think we can get those buildings on Bay Street torn down before the mayor gets back,” Carter joked about the former Duval County Courthouse and City Hall buildings that are slated for demolition this fiscal year.
“Then maybe if there’s time I’ll see what we can do for the other districts,” he said.
Carter is in a familiar spot, having been called upon to fill a mayoral void during his first stint as a council member in the late 1990s. He was Rules chair then, too.
“I had to take over for Mayor Delaney back then, so they know I like to get things done,” he said.
Carter said most of the council joined the mayor on that year’s chamber leadership trip. He said he stayed behind because he’d already been to the destination.
Carter said the mayor’s staff knows “the pressure’s on” to complete his priorities by 6 p.m.
“This isn’t a vacation,” he remarked.
Curry along with the rest of the 140-member chamber delegation are scheduled to fly back this afternoon.
Carter joked that if Mousa couldn’t accomplish his lengthy to-do list by the end of the day, “I’ll have to think about his employment and probably let him go.”
“In all seriousness, I think it’s kind of a fun thing since we’ve been tied down with so much heavy lifting recently,” Carter said.
“I’m going to try to lift everyone’s spirits for the day, and I don’t think there’s any harm in that.”