Jacksonville’s lesson learned: It’s tough to process serve a Councilwoman
Katrina Brown resists an interview attempt from a Jacksonville TV station. [Photo: Action News Jax]

BOLD 5.26.17 7
Serving process to Katrina Brown was tougher than it seemed.

In a filing for summary judgment in a case designed to clawback misused economic incentives, the City of Jacksonville recounts difficulties serving process to a sitting Councilwoman.

Councilwoman Katrina Brown, who was in federal court Wednesday in a hearing related to fraud charges (August trial expected), is approaching the endpoint of legal action from the city of Jacksonville.

Brown hasn’t contested what the city is trying to collect ($407,524 of a total of $600,000 of loans and grants ceded to CoWealth Inc., money intended to help her family grow its barbecue sauce business).

The company was to create 56 permanent jobs, but said job creation never happened.

However, per the city, serving process to Brown (now suspended from Council pending resolution of the federal charges) has been difficult.

Jacksonville spent much of 2018 trying to serve her. After months of thwarted attempts, reads the most recent filing in the case, the city gave a summons to Brown’s mother at the family residence.

The city claimed to have “staked out” Brown’s home address for “25 hours” before giving Brown’s mother the summons. Similarly, city process servers were thwarted in visits to the restaurant, where the Councilwoman never showed, and to a city meeting, where waiting in a parking garage for Brown proved fruitless as she took a different way home.

The Councilwoman then claimed she was not served.

Despite being suspended from Council, Brown is currently running for re-election. She will appear on Jacksonville’s March ballot.

She clearly is betting that federal and local legal actions against her will not resonate with voters.

A.G. Gancarski

A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. He writes for the New York Post and National Review also, with previous work in the American Conservative and Washington Times and a 15+ year run as a columnist in Folio Weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski


3 comments

  • Alan Abel

    January 31, 2019 at 12:02 pm

    Shame on author for not identifying her as the DEMOCRAT she is.
    BTW: She will be on the Democrap March Ballot. She will not be on my March Ballot.

    • Phil Morton

      February 1, 2019 at 5:33 am

      If you live in District 8 she will be on your ballot, if you don’t she will not. It has nothing to do with party affiliation.

  • James Spell

    February 1, 2019 at 7:16 am

    Wonder if they attempted private process instead of uniformed. Jacksonville is not allowing any more applications for private process. Private process would have likely had faster and better results.

Comments are closed.


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