Jacksonville City Council Districts

Jacksonville elects 19 council members for one consolidated government that covers nearly all of Duval County. According to the City of Jacksonville, the 19 serve four-year terms as part-time legislators. Fourteen of them come from single-member districts drawn to hold nearly equal numbers of people, and each district elects one member. The remaining five hold at-large seats, called Groups 1 through 5, and answer to every voter from Baldwin to the Beaches.

That split is older than most of the people now living in Jacksonville. The city keeps a roster of the first consolidated council, 1967 to 1971, and it already shows Districts 1 through 14 and at-large Groups 1 through 5. Sallye B. Mathis held District 8 on that first council, Mary L. Singleton held District 11, and Jake M. Godbold, later mayor, sat in at-large Group 1. What has changed since consolidation is where the district lines run, and the most recent redraw was settled in federal court rather than in the Council Chamber at City Hall on Duval Street.

The city does not publish a plain list of neighborhoods by district; it points residents to its Council District Search and the My Neighborhood tool on JaxGIS. Reporting from the 2023 elections, the first held on the current map, fills in much of the picture. Jacksonville Today described District 2 as the Northeast Jacksonville district that borders Nassau County and stretches down to Hidden Hills and East Arlington. District 8, on the Northside, includes the airport, Oceanway, Biscayne and Highlands. District 9 takes in Normandy, Paxon, Lackawanna and Cedar Hills on the Westside.

South of the St. Johns River the districts get larger and more suburban. District 11 borders St. Johns County and includes Deerwood and Deercreek, on the Southside. District 14 includes Argyle Forest, Duclay and NAS Jacksonville, which puts the Navy base and the Westside subdivisions around it in the same seat. District 13 runs to the ocean: its council member's city biography says it includes the Beaches communities of Atlantic Beach, Intercoastal West, Jacksonville Beach, Mayport and Neptune Beach.

District 7 is the one that changed most. The Florida Times-Union reported in January 2023 that District 7, previously downtown, Springfield and parts of northern Jacksonville, now extends from Springfield to Ortega and includes almost the entire Urban Core. The Tributary listed its neighborhoods as Downtown, Eastside, College Gardens, New Town, Brooklyn, Mixon Town, Riverside, Avondale, Murray Hill, Ortega, Venetia, Fairfax, the Mid-Westside, Sugar Hill, Phoenix and Fairfield. In practical terms one council member now answers for both the Northbank skyline and the old river suburbs on the Ortega peninsula.

An at-large member must live in a residence area but is elected countywide, which is why the city's council FAQ reminds residents that the five at-large members represent all the residents of Jacksonville. In practice a voter in Arlington or Mandarin has six council members: one district member and the five at-large Groups. The Duval County School Board borrows the council map: Jacksonville Today explains that each of its seven seats is two council district seats merged together, so a council redraw also moves school board lines.

The at-large seats have their own history in the districting fight. The Associated Press, reporting through WLRN in February 2023, wrote that at the 1968 consolidation a mix of predominantly Black districts and at-large seats was expected to boost Black representation, yet in the more than half century since, just six Black residents had served at large, according to research by Marcella Washington, a retired Florida State College at Jacksonville political science professor and a plaintiff in the redistricting case. After the May 2023 runoffs, Jacksonville Today reported that all five citywide seats on the council remained Republican.

Redistricting follows each census, and the council approved a new map in March 2022. Jacksonville Today reported that in past cycles, including 2011, council members had mistakenly believed they needed to draw certain districts to be at least 60 percent Black, a belief that began in the 1980s and 1990s and still shaped the 2022 debate. Under the council's map, four districts held 54.5 percent of the county's Black residents. Four civil rights organizations, the Jacksonville Branch of the NAACP, the Northside Coalition, the ACLU of Florida Northeast Chapter and Florida Rising, joined 10 Jacksonville voters and filed suit in early May 2022, asking the court to strike seven of the 14 council districts and three School Board seats.

In October 2022, U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard struck the council and School Board maps as racial gerrymanders, finding the council had segregated voters on the basis of race. The city got the first chance to fix it. Its redistricting committee voted 7 to 0 on November 3, 2022 for a version of the so-called maroon map, and, after residents of the historic district pressed the point, that version put all of Riverside and Avondale in a single district, according to the Florida Times-Union. Any final map needed a two-thirds council vote. The plaintiffs answered that 89 percent of the residents of the four Black-majority districts stayed where they were. The court sided with them, ordered one of the plaintiff-drawn maps, and an appeals court declined to halt that order in early January 2023.

The map the court chose is known as P3. The Florida Times-Union reported that P3 differs from the city's proposal in Districts 7, 8, 9, 10 and 14, and that the Duval County map will stay in place for the remainder of the decade, until lines are redrawn after the next census. Under P3, the four districts that had held 54.5 percent of Duval's Black residents hold 50.6 percent, with Black populations ranging from 41 to 85 percent, according to Jacksonville Today.

Incumbents were reshuffled. The District 7 council member at the time lived in the new District 8 and ran there, and the District 8 member was drawn into District 10. District 7 became the most expensive council race of 2023. In the May 16, 2023 runoffs, Jimmy Peluso won District 7, Reggie Gaffney Jr. won District 8, Tyrona Clark-Murray kept District 9 and Rahman Johnson won District 14, the seat that includes Argyle Forest. In April 2023 the Office of General Counsel filed a bill to settle the case that would have the city accept the court-ordered map and pay $100,000 in attorneys fees to the plaintiffs; the bill was scheduled for the council's Finance Committee on May 2, 2023.

The City Council office lists three routes. A resident can call the main council number, (904) 255-5200, and give a home address, or use My Neighborhood on JaxGIS, or the council's Council District Search application. Precincts are a separate question handled by the Duval County Supervisor of Elections. All 19 members keep offices in Suite 425 of City Hall at St. James, 117 West Duval Street.

As listed on the city council members page in October 2026, the district members are Ken Amaro (1), Mike Gay (2), Will Lahnen (3), Kevin Carrico (4), Joe Carlucci (5), Michael Boylan (6), Jimmy Peluso (7), Reggie Gaffney Jr. (8), Tyrona Clark-Murray (9), Ju'Coby Pittman (10), Raul Arias (11), Randy White (12), Rory Diamond (13) and Rahman Johnson (14). The at-large members are Moné Holder (Group 1), Ronald B. Salem (Group 2), Nick Howland (Group 3), Matt Carlucci (Group 4) and Chris Miller (Group 5). Nick Howland, At-Large Group 3, is Council President, and Joe Carlucci of District 5 is Vice President; the council elects both officers each May for one-year terms that begin July 1. Last verified: October 9, 2026, on the City of Jacksonville website.