• State Rep. Don Davis may have hit on an innovative source of income for a tight State budget. His voice mail at Gate Petroleum — he’s a vice president — asks callers for their name, number and American Express number.
• The Jacksonville Association of Defense Counsels are scheduled to meet May 24 at The Haskell Building. Mike Fouty is the speaker and he’ll discuss forensic mapping and crash data retrieval systems. Social hour begins at 5:30 p.m. followed by dinner at 6 p.m. and the program at 7 p.m. RSVP to Jeri O’Hara at 346-3166 or [email protected] no later than noon Thursday.
• FCCJ president Steve Wallace is the speaker at today’s Rotary Club of Jacksonville meeting. It begins at noon at the Omni.
• The Jacksonville & the Beaches Convention and Visitor’s Bureau’s interactive maps are now live on its website, visitjacksonville.com. Visitors to the site may zoom in and out to specific parts of town. There are also maps and information for St. Augustine and Amelia Island. Searches may also be customized for those who only want information on certain categories, such as hotels, restaurants, attractions, shopping centers and service providers.
• The law firm of Spohrer, Wilner, Matthews & Maxwell is hosting the Letters for Literacy Scrabble Soiree June 3 at St. John’s Cathedral. Cost is $500 per team or $50 for an individual. For details, call Heather Corey at 399-8894, Ext. 12.
• The First Coast Tiger Bay Club welcomes the School Board Dist. 7 candidates — Christine Buckley, Tommy Hazouri, Mike Lomurro and incumbent Cindy Rounds — to its meeting Friday, which begins at 11:30 a.m. at San Jose Country Club.
• spiller vincenty gallery on the Southbank is holding an art sale Wednesday through Friday, with many of the pieces marked down by as much as 75 percent. Furniture and office supples are also being sold. The gallery is closing at the end of the month.
• U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan is the speaker at the May 27 meeting of the Jacksonville Bankruptcy Bar Association. It’s scheduled for noon at Sterlings. RSVP to Eileen Dolaghan at 389-5880 before May 23.
• Council member Mia Jones has been a regular recently at the JEDC general meetings, and she offered the board some help in spurring development in Northwest Jacksonville. She suggested the JEDC create a board similar to the Downtown Development Agency but devoted to planning economic development in the Northwest. “It could really allow us to do some creative things,” she said. DDA chair Bob Rhodes said he liked the idea.
• State Senate president Jim King told Mayor Peyton in a letter that “Duval County fared well” in the latest legislative session. King told Peyton that “your office got pretty much everything you asked for at dinner . . . and then some!”