Plenty of people look at government today and want something to change.

They complain about taxes, growth, declining services, inefficiency or institutions that no longer seem to work as they should.

The harder question is: What can one person actually do about it?

Jacksonville's history offers an interesting example.

Claude Yates wasn't an elected official. He was a businessman who looked at Jacksonville's problems in the 1960s and concluded that changing political leaders wasn't enough.

The structure of government itself needed attention.

Yates gathered other civic leaders, reduced a complicated problem to a simple proposition and started building support for an idea Jacksonville voters had rejected before.

It began with about 45 words.

Three years later, Jacksonville had fundamentally reorganized its government.

When Yates died in 1988, the Jacksonville Journal called him the “Initiator of consolidation.”

His story remains relevant because it demonstrates something easily forgotten in today's politics: meaningful change doesn't always originate inside government.

Sometimes somebody outside it has to get the process started.

A City Ready for Change

By the mid-1960s, Jacksonville faced problems that went well beyond ordinary City Hall politics.

Jacksonville and Duval County operated separate governments with overlapping responsibilities. Population and development were moving beyond the old city limits while the central city struggled with infrastructure, taxes and a weakening economic base.

In 1964, all 15 Duval County public high schools lost their accreditation.

Political favoritism, government duplication and corruption added to public frustration.

A grand jury investigation eventually resulted in 11 public officials being indicted on 142 counts involving bribery and larceny.

Jacksonville's problems increasingly looked structural.

Yates thought the government itself needed an overhaul.

From Southern Bell to Civic Leadership

Claude J. Yates was born in Trenton, Tennessee, in 1899 and joined Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph in 1920.

He spent nearly 45 years with the company, rising through management positions across the Southeast.

Southern Bell brought him to Jacksonville in 1953 to manage its Florida operations. Three years later, he became vice president and general manager for Florida.

By the time Yates retired on January 1, 1965, he had spent decades managing a large organization across geographic boundaries.

Retirement didn't last long.

Yates became president of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce and almost immediately turned his attention toward local government.

About 45 Words

On January 19, 1965, Yates invited 22 other civic and business leaders to lunch at the Robert Meyer Hotel.

They signed a short statement asking Duval County's legislative delegation to seek legislation allowing voters to decide whether city and county government should be consolidated under one governing body.

The statement contained only about 45 words.

It became known as the Yates Manifesto.

Yates wasn't proposing the details of a new government. He was asking for a process to determine whether Jacksonville should create one.

The Legislature responded by creating the 50-member Local Government Study Commission.

Businessman J.J. Daniel chaired it, and Lex Hester served as executive director.

Daniel, Hester and the commission studied city and county operations and developed the framework that ultimately became the proposed consolidated government.

Their work transformed Yates's relatively simple question into something voters could actually approve or reject.

Now They Had to Sell It

Jacksonville had considered consolidation before.

It had failed.

Yates became president of Citizens for Better Government, which organized the campaign to persuade voters that this attempt should be different.

The operation grew considerably beyond the 23 people at the Robert Meyer Hotel.

Yates later recalled more than 350 people working through more than 50 civic groups.

Supporters organized speakers, canvassed neighborhoods, advertised and promoted the proposed charter.

They became known as the “White Hats.” Opponents became the “Black Hats.”

The debate involved much more than administrative efficiency.

Consolidation would dramatically expand Jacksonville's boundaries and redistribute political power. Some Black residents feared the merger would dilute the growing political influence of Black voters within the old city.

Jacksonville was simultaneously confronting desegregation, suburbanization, corruption and economic change.

Consolidation became one proposed answer to several problems at once.

Jacksonville Votes Yes

On August 8, 1967, voters approved consolidation by roughly a 2-to-1 margin.

The new consolidated government took effect on October 1, 1968.

Hans Tanzler became its first mayor.

Consolidation combined many city and county functions, dramatically expanded Jacksonville's geographic boundaries and established the governmental framework Jacksonville still uses today.

It didn't solve every problem.

Political conflict continued. Inefficiencies remained. Some neighborhoods waited years for infrastructure and services they expected consolidation to deliver.

But Jacksonville had fundamentally changed how it governed itself.

And Yates's January 1965 luncheon had helped set that change in motion.

Then Yates Did Something Else

Consolidation could easily have become the final chapter of Yates's public life.

Instead, he kept working.

After Southern Bell, he became president of Industrial-America Corp., a holding company with businesses in Florida and North Carolina.

Then he became involved in an emerging technology that was changing American communications.

Cable television.

Yates became president of Area Communications Inc., which pursued the franchise to build Jacksonville's cable television system.

In 1978, the Federal Communications Commission approved Area's application for a citywide system.

Yates was approaching 80.

An Unexpected Connection to Ted Turner

That chapter produced one of the more surprising images in the Yates archives: Claude Yates with Ted Turner.

Turner was building the television operation that would help transform American cable television. His Atlanta station had become a nationally distributed “superstation,” using satellite technology to reach cable systems far beyond Georgia.

Yates, meanwhile, was involved in developing Jacksonville's cable system.

It's an unusual intersection of two careers.

Yates began working for a telephone company in 1920, helped initiate Jacksonville's consolidation movement in 1965, and more than half a century after entering the communications business found himself participating in the emerging cable television era.

Newspaper profiles suggest that was typical of him.

Even into his 80s, Yates continued going to an office, exercising, playing golf and remaining active in Jacksonville's civic life.

He apparently wasn't very good at retirement.

Jacksonville's “Quiet Revolution”

At the 20th anniversary of consolidation in 1988, former Mayor Hans Tanzler described the transformation as a “quiet revolution.”

The phrase also captures Yates's role in it.

His contribution wasn't writing Jacksonville's charter or running the new government.

It was recognizing a structural problem, gathering people who could help address it and turning an idea into an organized effort.

J.J. Daniel, Lex Hester, Tanzler, legislators, commission members, civic organizations and ultimately Jacksonville's voters did the rest.

That division of responsibility may be the most useful part of the story today.

Major civic change rarely begins with one person producing a complete solution.

Someone identifies the problem.

Someone proposes a direction.

Others bring expertise.

An organization builds support.

And eventually the public decides whether the idea deserves to survive.

Claude Yates started with 22 other Jacksonville leaders around a table and about 45 words on a piece of paper.

The government that followed is still operating nearly six decades later.

For anyone wondering whether people outside government can still change it, that's a piece of Jacksonville history worth remembering.