• ”I’m running for mayor,” Fraternal Order of Police President Nelson Cuba jokingly announced at last week’s Republican Women’s Club of Duval Federated monthly luncheon. Cuba followed the statement with a quick dismissive wave of the idea, adding that “I wouldn’t try to fill his (John Peyton) shoes.”
• Jacksonville Area Legal Aid may get $175,000 from the Downtown Enhancement Fund for a new roof on its West Adams building. The funding is part of an ordinance working its way through City Council.
• On Ideas, formerly known as Husk Jennings Galloway & Partners, has add two to its staff. Darcy DeWitt is the new traffic manager and Terri Campbell was hired as a media assistant.
• Speaking of Council, the funding for the big projects at the Jacksonville Port Authority will be read into the record at tonight’s Council meeting. There are three bonds: one for $75 million for work at existing terminals, one for $100 million for the new terminal that Mitsui O.S.K. Lines is leasing from the Port and one for another $75 million Mitsui terminal.
• Mary Anne Christensen is the new supervisor of External Communications and Media for the Duval County Public Schools. She is responsible for managing the district’s media relations efforts. Christensen is a former reporter and news anchor at TV-4 and was an aide to Sheriffs Nat Glover and John Rutherford, press secretary to former Mayor Tommy Hazouri and head of the Community Affairs department at TV-12/25. Christensen replaces Brenda English, who left the post in June.
• District V School Board Member Betty Burney has been invited to New York City to serve as keynote speaker for a peace rally being held by the city’s Positive Seeds of Change organization. She was invited to participate in the Nov. 18 event based on a book she published in 2005, “If These Chains Could Talk,” a compilation of letters and discussions with juvenile inmates incarcerated in the Duval County jail.
• Ribault Middle School is one of 241 public schools in America with single-sex classrooms. The U.S. Department of Education recently issued final regulations that definitively state that it is legal (not mandatory) to educate boys and girls separately under certain conditions. The new rules take effect Nov. 24.
• The Jaguars and Winn-Dixie will present “Big Cat Carnival” during halftime of Monday’s game against the New York Giants. PRI Productions will produce the show that will feature 200 volunteer performers, dancers, human floats, gymnasts, jugglers, stilt walkers and a fireworks display. A previous PRI Jaguars halftime show won Event Solutions magazine’s “Best Achievement in Logistics” award.
• It’s almost daily that someone ends up going the wrong way on one of Downtown’s one-way streets, but parked? Monday, a car was parked at a meter in the 200 block of North Laura. The problem is, it was parked headed north and in that block, Laura is one-way south.