• ExpressJet Airlines’ began their new non-stop service to New Orleans, Austin, Texas and Kansas City from Jacksonville on Monday. They will also bring non-stop service to connect Jacksonville with Raleigh Durham, N.C. on May 7.
• The Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve recently joined Duval County’s unstoppable 4-H club to repair and restore damaged beach dunes at the north end of the reserve. A sand fence was installed and 50 beach blanket flowers were planted to help rebuild the dunes.
• Clara White Mission’s 13th annual “Miracle on Ashley Street Celebrity Chef and Server” luncheon is May 18. This year’s hosts are former Ch. 4 anchor Deborah Gianoulis and actor and children’s books author Tommy Ford.
• The Gator Bowl Committee is meeting Thursday at 5 p.m. at PRI Productions. The committee is also taking membership nominees. Send your nominees to Alex Langston at [email protected].
• City Council member Lynette Self has withdrawn a bill that would have sought state grant money to have derelict vehicles removed from the Trout River and the Intracoastal Waterway. She also withdrew a bill that would have funded a study of boating patterns in Duval County. Applications for both state grants are due this week, making the legislation no longer necessary.
• Rogers Towers attorney T.R. Hainline is up for reappointment to the Joint Planning Committee as both a member and chair.
• Judith Shubert, a retired teacher, has offered to help the Department of Transportation and the City with the costs associated with changing the eastbound lanes of the Mathews Bridge for the next three months. In an e-mail to Council President Michael Corrigan, Shubert said she and a few colleagues will handle the directing of traffic each day for the next three months. And, she says, they’ll do it for $1 million, saving the DOT $1 million along the way.
“Of course we will continue to work for cheaper electricity in the homes and on the farms of America; for better and cheaper transportation; for low interest rates; for sounder home financing; for better banking; for the regulation of security issues; for reciprocal trade among nations and for the wiping out of slums. And my friends, for all of these we have only begun to fight.”
— Former president Franklin D. Roosevelt