• The City Council has scheduled a meeting of its Personnel Committee for July 26 at 3:00 p.m. at City Hall. The committee, which meets rarely, is expected to discuss cell phones and communication allowances. You’ll recall the Council just recently passed legislation to allow them more flexibility in purchasing equipment and individual rate plans.
• Speaking of Council, its storage/copy room is a little more organized and neater these days. New cabinets now hold all the paper and supplies that used to be stacked on shelves.
• Correction to a City Note from Monday. George Banks’ wife Carole is indeed in the Alhambra’s current production of “Cinderella” but she plays the queen, not the title character.
• According to a Downtown Vision, Inc. progress report given to the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission, the downtown advocacy group’s Ambassadors picked up 21 tons of trash last year, identified 127 graffiti tags — most of which were removed — and identified more than 700 code violations, more than half of which were resolved.
• Despite covering more than 10,000 seats inside Alltel Stadium, the Jacksonville Jaguars still expect four to six games to be blacked out from local television broadcast this year.
• According to employees, the new World Gym on Forsyth Street will open some time in late August.
• NADEP Jacksonville cleared its last hurdle to staying in business with a Tuesday meeting of the Base Relocation and Closure committee. City officials had been keeping an eye on that meeting as the last possible source of trouble for NADEP, which once had been the mayor’s greatest concern heading into the base closure process. The meeting passed without mention of NADEP, however the commission voted 8-1 to add NAS Brunswick to the list of base closures.
• City Chief of Staff Steve Diebenow had a little fun with attorney Lynn Pappas at the Florida Times-Union’s expense. The paper recently ran a photo of Pappas misidentifying her as Council member Lynette Self. Diebenow sent belated congratulations to Pappas for being recognized as one of Florida’s Elite Lawyers. The message was late, he said, because he sent it to Self first.
The new issue of Downtown This Week is out and it’s available all over Downtown. This week’s issue features the reopening of The Carling, the former Downtown hotel that the Vestcor Companies has converted into 99 residential apartments.