“I have zero tolerance for non-inclusion,” said Councilman Reggie Brown, who is concluding a year as chairman of the Land Use and Zoning Committee.

Brown and the council’s other black members asked Bishop, who will formally become council president starting July 1, to reconsider his committee assignments and find a way to increase black involvement in leadership roles during an afternoon meeting Tuesday at City Hall.

Bishop said he would “take it under advisement” and would say later what he decided.

“We need an answer today, before July 1,” Councilwoman Denise Lee said.

Bishop answered, “If you’re going to ask me what you’re going to do today, I don’t have an answer.”

Brown then told Bishop he would resign all committee posts.

Lee and two other black members, Warren Jones and Kimberly Daniels, also decided to resign. The fifth black member, Johnny Gaffney, said he was keeping his seats, which include vice chairmanship on the committee on recreation and community development.

The resignations will create seven vacancies on the council’s five standing committees, and two openings on panels about council personnel and oversight of courthouse construction issues.

Several of the black members said they plan to still attend committee meetings, but not as committee members.

Jones, a former council president, opened the afternoon meeting by telling Bishop he was “really disappointed and embarrassed we even have to have this discussion in 2012.”

He noted the council hadn’t had a black president for 20 years and only three over the past 44 years. Five of the council’s 19 members are black.

Jones said he considered black involvement in the council’s most influential committees — Finance and Rules — to have a “token” status. Bishop assigned one of the seven seats on each of those committees to black members: Jones to Rules, Gaffney to Finance.

Black members told Bishop they considered two seats on each committee more appropriate.

They also urged him to consider expanding memberships in some committees, saying Councilman Richard Clark had taken a similar step when he was the council’s president.

Bishop said he didn’t think about race when he was assigning committee members.

“I appointed people I felt were appropriate to this,” he said.

When black members quoted a newspaper article where Bishop said he didn’t operate a “quota system,” Bishop apologized for what he said was poor wording and that he would think about what the black members were saying.

“I appreciate the information, and I’ll take it under advisement,” he said.

Bishop said he had another appointment in a matter of minutes — the meeting had started about an hour earlier — and left with black members remaining in disagreement.

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-06-26/story/4-jacksonville-...