• The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office plans to bring in 25 horses and patrol officers from units throughout Florida to help with crowd control during the 2005 Super Bowl festivities.
• Why did a consulting team led by retired admiral Robert Natter beat out Tillie Fowler’s Holland & Knight team to lobby for the State’s military bases? One of the governor’s top military industry advisers said price was at least one factor. The State will pay Natter’s Piper Rudnick team $50,000 a month to represent Florida bases during the upcoming round of base closures. That’s $15,000 less than Holland & Knight was asking, said Pam Dana, the director of the the office of tourism, trade and economic development.
• If you think you’ve seen Oakland Raiders kicker Sebastian Janikowski out and about at the beach, you’re probably right. He’s playing for league-leading Sunrise Surf Shop in the men’s open division in the Beaches Soccer League.
• Gwen Griggs, who had her own law firm in the city, joined Driver McAfee as a partner on April 1.
• City Council vice president Elaine Brown has been elected to the Cathedral Arts Project board of directors.
• The big TV screen you see at the airport entrance is promoting the ladies tennis tournament at Amelia Island. Problem: it’s displaying men playing the game.
• Japan’s consul general wrote Mayor John Peyton with thanks for a recent visit and a recommendation for a Japanese partnership. Ko Kodaira said he thought that Hanamatsu, Japan, with its large port and focus on international trade, would make a suitable sister city. On his recent visit to Jacksonville, Kodaira said he was “impressed by the dynamism of the city as a great place to do business and a wonderful place to live.”
• The mayor may have hit a snag in trying to appoint retired banker Alford Sinclair to the Water and Sewer Expansion Authority. Sinclair, already a member of the Research and Development Authority, would violate a constitutional provision by holding dual offices. Another mayoral appointee, commercial real estate agent Harriet Jones, had to resign from the Health Facilities Authority before joining the WSEA. The mayor’s office is searching for someone to step in for Sinclair on the RDA so that body doesn’t lose a voting quorum.
• Jacksonville Community Council, Inc., will meet next week at Pappas Metcalf law firm to select candidates to replace Lois Chepinek as the group’s executive director. JCCI is seeking recommendations from a diverse group of people, including T-U business reporter Karen Brune Mathis, Ch. 4’s Deborah Gianoulis and the mayor’s policy chief, Steve Diebenow.