• Jacksonville Area Legal Aid is still accepting applications for the Hogan Fellowship in Children’s Advocacy and Mental Health. The fellowship provides salary, benefits and related expenses for an attorney dedicated to preserving the rights of the city’s emotionally and mentally ill.
• The Nature Conservancy might be moving its Jacksonville office out of downtown soon. Spokesperson Jill Austin said the agency’s local office has received a three-month extension to stay in its current office space at 45 W. Bay St. until March 2005. During that time, Austin said the group will look for a bigger office closer to the conservancy’s 9,000-acre Timucuan Preserve near Sister’s Creek on Hecksher Drive.
• The deposed head of the City’s International Development Commission apparently didn’t carry a grudge after the mayor eliminated his job in August. George Banks, the former director of the IDC, sent Mayor John Peyton a Christmas card featuring Banks arm-in-arm with Dominican Republic President Lionell Fernandez. Banks is now president of the Facilitators, Inc., which provides “international and domestic master consulting services.”
• It’s tough for the media to get a straight answer from City Hall sometimes. T-U reporter Mary Kelli Palka’s e-mailed request for some of the professional publications read by the mayor’s staff was met with a tongue-in-cheek response from General Counsel Rick Mullaney that he reads the Times-Union. Ever helpful Chief of Staff Steve Diebenow revealed that Mullaney also enjoys “perusing” the Florida Statutes and the Jacksonville Municipal Code.
• Blue Cross Blue Shield lobbyist Mike Hightower was elected unopposed to serve another term as chair of the Duval County Republican Party, but don’t expect Hightower to serve a full four-year term. He said he’ll likely step aside after two years and said he’d like to see some new blood circulating near the top.
• Look for Wachovia’s Florida Chief Executive Officer Bob Helms to lead a Chamber task force charged with plotting Northeast Florida’s strategy for the coming debate over water rights.
• The Police and Fire Pension Fund has been videotaping the interior of the dilapidated Laura Street Trio. Fund Administrator Dick Cohee said he hopes to show the tape to Council members in a couple months when the Fund comes looking for incentives to renovate the crumbling Marble Bank, Florida Life and Bisbee buildings. “It looks like the tombs of Tutankhamun in there,” said Cohee.