• Mayor John Peyton is in Scandinavia this week with Jacksonville Port Authority officials hoping to secure more business.
• Kenneth Pinnix has resigned as chief of the City’s Community Development Division, Housing and Neighborhoods Department. Pinnix has been with the City since 2003 and didn’t cite a reason for his resignation, which was effective Thursday.
• According to Police and Fire Pension Fund Executive Director and Administrator John Keane, the Sept. 29 stock market plunge cost the Pension Fund $1.2 billion. Or, as Keane put it, over $3 million a minute.
• Wachovia Corporation Vice President of Human Resources Pamela Davis has informed the City that Wachovia will lay off 59 employees from its Baymeadows Way office. The layoffs started last Tuesday and will run through the end of the year.
• Mike McCormick has returned to Jacksonville to take over the News Director post at Ch. 30 and Ch. 47. From 1999-2006 he was News Director at Ch. 12 and Ch. 25 and since he left this market McCormick held the News Director postion at WPMI and WJTC in the Mobile, Ala. market.
• A couple of longtime area insurance executives have merged. John Fletcher and Rick Stein have formed Fletcher Stein and they have three offices: one in Jacksonville Beach, one Downtown and one in Pensacola.
• A couple of honors for two officials at the University of North Florida: Dr. Pam Chally, dean of the Brooks College of Health, was awarded the school’s 2008 Distinguished Professor award, the school’s 31st such award given for excellence. It’s the highest honor given to UNF faculty. Dr. Li Loriz, director of the UNF School of Nursing, was selected as Director of the Year by the Florida Nursing Students Association, chosen from more than 50 nursing program directors and deans in Florida.
• The YMCA Metropolitan Board of Directors has two new faces for the 2009–11 term: Edward Waters College President Dr. Claudette Williams and Ron Coleman of Baronco Management Consulting.
• Gill Kerr, senior vice president of broadcasting, programming and productions for the PGA Tour, has asked Mayor John Peyton not to consider him for reappointment to the Mayor’s Advisory Commission on Television, Motion Picture & Commercial Production. Kerr cited scheduling conflicts due to his travel schedule with the PGA Tour.
• Baptist Medical Center Beaches is donating $100,000 to the Beaches Community Healthcare Initiative, a community group established in 2005 by members of the congregation at Christ Episcopal Church in Ponte Vedra Beach. The funds will support the development and operation of a Sulzbacher Center Clinic that is set to open in January to provide medical services to qualified uninsured and at-risk patients. The clinic will be sustained by a three-year, $1.9 million federal grant to the Sulzbacher Center.