The current St. Johns County Commission are, from left, Christian Whitehurst, Sarah Arnold, Krista Joseph, Clay Murphy and Ann Murphy. | St. Johns County
Published on December 18, 2024 at 2:24 pm
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Changes in St. Johns County government have led to the Board of County Commissioners’ one-time outcast now serving as the board’s chair.
Her main goals? Slow the growth and push back against the county’s status quo, because the last thing she wants is for once-rural St. Johns County to start looking like Jacksonville.
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“Everyone doesn’t want to see the community and St Johns County become a parking lot, become all houses, no trees,” Krista Joseph tells Jacksonville Today. “All the quality of life things we moved here for — we moved here to be able to kayak, be able to go on a hike — to still have kind of a slow kind of a life, not be a big city.”
Joseph was selected as the Board of County Commissioners’ chair last month by her two new allies on the board, Clay Murphy and Ann Taylor — and against the wishes of County Commissioners Sarah Arnold and Christian Whitehurst.
Now, with the help of what appears to be a like-minded majority on the board, Joseph thinks she can really get to work on efforts she says have been stonewalled since she was elected in 2022.
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St. Johns election
In November, St. Johns County voters elected two newcomers to the Board of County Commissioners, replacing two well-established local Republicans with two Republicans who promised to slow the pace of the county’s rapid growth.
When Clay Murphy and Ann Taylor formally joined the County Commission last month, they changed the status quo in a big way — by selecting Joseph as the board’s chair.
The chair of the County Commission doesn’t have any more voting power than others on the five-member board, but Joseph does have the ability to set the agenda and drive the course of the board’s discussion.
She began making changes quickly.
Shortly after her selection as the board’s chair, Joseph rearranged the board’s biweekly meetings to put public comments from local people front and center. She also allowed veterans other than the chair of the county’s Veteran’s Council to kick off meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance.
Joseph’s move was misconstrued as eliminating the Veteran’s Council from performing the pledge entirely. But Joseph believes the entire debacle was an attempt by other commissioners to distract from her policy goals.
She says she doesn’t want to be at odds with her peers on the board, but she doesn’t expect accomplishing her goals will be smooth sailing either.
She’s no stranger to opposition: The County Commission censured Joseph after she waved an American flag at a meeting and, while expressing frustration with some of her colleagues, reminded her constituents that an election was coming up.
Joseph wound up suing the county over the censure, and a federal judge ruled that Joseph’s comments were protected by her First Amendment rights.
More recently, Whitehurst and Arnold opposed Joseph’s selection as chair of the County Commission.
“You know, if you have two people voting against you to be chair, they’re not going to be nice to you in the press,” Joseph says, “and they’re not going to be cooperative at times.”
Pushing ahead
What Joseph really wants is to not let drama get in the way of her policy goals, like tree preservation.
Last year, Joseph pushed for the county to change how developers have to preserve existing trees when they build. She got the support of then-County Commissioner Henry Dean, but it takes at least three votes to enact changes in St. Johns County, and the three other commissioners — Arnold, Whitehurst and Roy Alaimo — weren’t interested.
Tuesday, Joseph brought the trees back, and she successfully passed a measure by a 4-1 vote to kick-start a discussion about the county’s tree preservation rules. Murphy, Taylor and Arnold supported Joseph’s move; Whitehurst voted against it.
Looking ahead, with so much anti-growth sentiment in the county, Joseph hopes there will be fewer 4-1 votes and more 3-2 votes against developments and other measures she believes worsen the quality of life in St. Johns.
“So many of my decisions and votes in the past have turned out to be correct,” Joseph says.
She cites her opposition to embattled trash company FCC Environmental Services as well as her support for the county’s IMAX Theater, the status of which was thrown into question last week.
There may be pushback from wealthy developers who supported her allies’ opponents, but Joseph wants change in St. Johns County one way or another.
