• After carrying on a long, and sometimes testy, public debate with the mayor’s office over the need for City incentives at the Landing, Toney Sleiman could be seeking improved relations at City Hall. Sleiman sent Mayor John Peyton a letter thanking him for his staff’s hard work in putting together the Sail Jacksonville event, which Sleiman called “a tremendous success,” for downtown. Sleiman sent along a poster of crowds from the event gathered at the Landing.
• The first signs of the Bay Street Town Center project were visible Friday morning. The Postal Service moved several mailboxes from the north side of Bay and Newnan streets to the south side of the street to make way for planned road construction.
• A handful of projects already approved by the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission will be heard before the City Council later this month. Those projects, which include Bay Street Fine Arts Marketing and the Jacksonville Urban League, are not affected by a recently enacted moratorium on financial incentives and the JEDC wants to be sure the Council understands that. An appeal was made to Council president Lad Daniels last week to “. . . Please consider the . . . projects . . . as you would any other JEDC project.”
• As he was preparing to speak at last week’s Flag Day ceremony, the City’s military liaison, Dan McCarthy, started tallying in his head all the patriotic events held over the last couple weeks by Jacksonville for its military community. He came up with 14 spread over about a month starting with Armed Forces Day at the Landing on May 15 and ending with Flag Day.
• JU marine science professor Quinton White voiced his disapproval of the FDOT’s plans to dump rubble from the old Fuller Warren Bridge into the St. Johns River. In a letter to the St. Johns River Water Management District’s governing board, White was particularly unimpressed with the rationale that the debris would form an artificial reef. He said that only works offshore with a sandy bottom. Here, he said it would only “fill up the river and provide the contractor with a cheap method of disposal.”
• Though the City Council has debated Small and Disadvantaged Business legislation for nearly 40 hours in two weeks, a resolution has yet to be reached. “But I think there’s two very important things to look at outside of the legislation itself,” said Council president Lad Daniels. “On one hand, the level of debate and discussion on this Council has been at an all-time high. If people would come and watch, I’d know they’d be proud. Another thing to look at is how the community has come together on this and spoken out on what they’d like to see come out of it. I think that shows how much it’s moved forward.”