Staff Reports
Jacksonville residents value the written word, after all.
But they aren’t entirely as sold on the importance of the library system.
That’s a takeaway from a survey conducted by the University of North Florida on behalf of the Jacksonville Public Library, released as “Literacy, Lifelong Learning and the Library: 2023 Community Survey Report.”
The report asserts: “The overwhelming majority said they think literacy is very important, with 94%. Just 4% of respondents said literacy was somewhat important and the remaining 2% were split between not very and not at all important.”
Unhappily, the broad consensus on the importance of book learnin’ doesn’t fully extend to the library system itself, with just “74% saying the library is very important.”
Meanwhile, “19% of respondents indicated the library is somewhat important, with 5% saying not very important and just 1% not at all important.”
Presumably, 6% of naysayers are the same group across the board.
Neighborhood variations also occur in the study, with people in more poorer areas valuing the library system most.
“Perceived importance of literacy was highest on the Southside/Mandarin with 98%, but this area showed the lowest perceived importance of the library in creating and maintaining a literate community (tied with out-of-county) with 61%. The greatest perceived importance of the library in literacy was in the Urban Core, only slightly edging out the West/North Side by one percentage point.”
Those who thought libraries were unimportant did so for a variety of reasons. The biggest one was “that other organizations and establishments provide services and programs around literacy,” with 29% believing that. Meanwhile, 27% of the library opponents weren’t aware of “literacy programs and services,” while 12% said the internet was better and 3% said they felt unwelcome in the library itself.
Furthermore, though 97% of respondents believe lifelong learning is very or somewhat important, respondents aren’t quite as convinced that libraries matter.
“A smaller, yet still wide majority (71%) said that the Jacksonville Public Library is very important to lifelong learning in the community, while 20% said somewhat important. Just 6% said not very (important), and 1% not at all important.”
Neighborhood differences apply here also.
“Lifelong learning importance is highest in the Urban Core, Southside/Mandarin and the West/North Side, each with 92%. The importance of the library in lifelong learning was highest in the Urban Core with 81%, and lowest on the Southside/Mandarin with 57%.”
New Chief of Staff
Mayor Donna Deegan selected Darnell Smith as her new Chief of Staff Tuesday, filling a void left by the just-departed Pat McCollough.
The Florida Blue North Region Market President will be an “executive on loan” from the company to the city, meaning the insurance concern will cover his salary and benefits.
“I’m excited and grateful that Darnell is joining the Mayor’s Office to lead our talented team,” Deegan said. “He will build upon our administration’s early successes, and with decades of experience and a deep love of Jacksonville, I believe he will maximize this transformational moment in time for our city.”
“It’s an honor to answer the call to serve Mayor Deegan and people across Jacksonville,” said Smith. “I believe in her vision of an inclusive and thriving city that works for all of us — and the shared value that our community is stronger when it’s united. I’m looking forward to working with Mayor Deegan and the team to take big steps forward for our city.”
Clarence cash
Jacksonville made its way into reporting about the long-running financial struggles of a Supreme Court justice.
ProPublica noted that after speaking at a conference in Sea Island, Georgia, Justice Clarence Thomas flew back to D.C. from the local airport in 2000 with Rep. Cliff Stearns, who memorialized the meeting with a promise to help raise SCOTUS salaries to provide the “proper incentives” to serve on the High Court.
“He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign. Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, ‘one or more justices will leave soon’ — maybe in the next year,” the report noted.
“His importance as a conservative was paramount,” Stearns told ProPublica. “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job, and he was being paid properly.”
Thomas had spoken at something called “Awakening, a ‘conservative thought weekend’ featuring golf, shooting lessons and aromatherapy along with panel discussions with business owners and elected officials,” ProPublica notes. Unfortunately, the report elides details on the aromatherapy on offer … the smell of money aside.
John gone?
Rep. John Rutherford’s 2024 Primary challenger doesn’t think the Congressman is running for re-election after all.
“But I will tell you this: Amongst the Duval GOP insiders, we have been hearing he’s not running, so I don’t know whether or not they’ve said that to him because, let’s be honest, they’re all kind of run by the same political network here in Florida, so I don’t know what they’re telling him,” Mara Macie said, as reported by Breitbart. “But what the Duval GOP, that’s Jacksonville, what they’re putting out there is that Rutherford is not running again.”
Macie also expects “ghost candidates” to enter the Primary regardless of Rutherford’s situation.
“My opponent isn’t John Rutherford in particular — it is the establishment uniparty machine, so it doesn’t matter who they pop in there,” Macie said. “I’ve seen what they do throughout the state in terms of getting their candidate to win. So, what they’ll do, you get ghost candidates. They’ll tell a grassroots candidate, ‘Listen, we think you’re a great candidate. Let us help you out.’ And really, they’re just throwing in that person to siphon away votes. We saw it in our own mayoral election here, and we ended up with a Democrat mayor because of it.”
DeSanty Claus
Just in time for Christmas, Northeast Florida counties are getting roughly $9 million in help from the state’s Rural Infrastructure Fund.
“We are committed to providing Florida’s rural communities with the resources they need to support long-term economic growth,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis. “These investments will improve infrastructure, attract new businesses and accelerate Florida’s unprecedented growth.”
Below are the awards and the Governor’s Office’s description of what they will do.
— Columbia County ($5,000,000) — to create traffic flow and safety improvements in the unincorporated area of Ellisville at the interchange of I-75 and U.S. 41 to create 200 jobs and provide more than $30 million in capital investments.
— Baker County ($3,005,671) — to extend the paved road, water, wastewater, and natural gas infrastructure into Enterprise East Industrial Park, where a new manufacturing facility will operate, creating up to 60 jobs and more than $19 million in capital investment.
— Hamilton County Development Authority ($400,000) — to help facilitate redeveloping an extremely blighted area at the first exit visitors and tourists experience on 1-75 as you enter Florida.
— City of Live Oak ($295,000) — to re-evaluate the city’s potable water demands and develop estimates for potable water demand to serve future development around U.S. 129/I-10 interchange the existing water distribution mains along U.S. 129 from south of 72nd Trace to north of I-10 and will result in a water and sewer master plan to ensure that water and sewer infrastructure is adequate to support anticipated private development over a 20-year forecast period.
— City of Live Oak ($285,000) — to perform engineering evaluations of the existing public infrastructure (water, sewer and stormwater) to support the proposed redevelopment of Heritage Square.
Opportunity knocks
A man from Neptune Beach is headed to the Florida Opportunity Fund Board of Directors. This group helps to “realize significant long-term capital appreciation by identifying and investing in a diversified, high-quality portfolio of seed and early-stage venture capital funds that target (in whole or in part) investment opportunities within Florida.”
Garrett Johnson, the Co-Founder of the Foundation for American Innovation Think Tank, is one of two new appointees to the board, and he brings an impressive resume with him.
“Garrett served as professional staff to the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where his oversight portfolio included Afghanistan, Pakistan and Haiti. Originally from Florida, Garrett holds a bachelor’s degree from Florida State University and was the two-time NCAA Shot Put champion. He also read for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford, England as a Rhodes scholar,” reads his write-up on the FAI homepage.
Who ya’ gonna call?
Sen. Tracie Davis’ legislation to tighten (if not close) the ghost candidate loophole got its Committee references to close last week, heading to Ethics & Elections, Judiciary, then Rules.
SB 724 would require candidates to have consistent statuses regarding political party registration for a year before the beginning of qualifying for a given Primary or General Election.
The bill, which would take effect in July 2024, would create Section 99.013 in the Florida Statutes, adding new vocabulary on election qualification that would be in effect in 2026 and subsequent elections.
For candidates pursuing nominations of established political parties — Republicans and Democrats primarily — the language codifies that those candidates would have to have been in those parties for at least 365 days. Similarly, candidates with no-party affiliation (NPAs) must have been unaligned with any party for a year before qualifying.
The bill offers legal standing for anyone — including political parties — to challenge a candidate’s qualifications for the ballot “based on a claim that a person seeking to qualify for nomination as a candidate of such political party or as a candidate with no-party affiliation did not comply with this section.” A circuit court ultimately would be compelled to disqualify a noncompliant candidate from the ballot.
Davis acknowledges that her bill still allows no-party candidates to run for office, but they “just have to be a registered NPA one year before qualifying, same as Democrats and Republicans so it evens the playing field making same for all — which is already in state law.”
However, after “a few folks (were) challenged with no real outcome,” the Jacksonville Democrat believes her “bill attempts to give a person or a political party cause of action to … remove the person from the ballot.”
“Even though there’s a law already in effect for NPAs to be an NPA a year prior to qualifying, there’s apparently no teeth behind it, so people are still doing it,” Davis said.
Davis is poised to lead Senate Democrats beginning in 2027, a sign of her importance in the caucus. This bill will require her to work with Republicans who have benefited from ghost candidates in recent Senate elections, including the ones that swept Jason Brodeur and Ileana Garcia into office in 2020.
Election selection
Two Sen. Clay Yarborough bills that would affect the administration of elections will be on the same track in committees next year.
SB 780 and SB 782 are now headed to Ethics & Elections, Community Affairs and Rules.
SB 780 would give supervisors of elections latitude to set up new early voting sites, with the precondition that they are not within 5 miles of the currently extant locations. The legislation would cure the current statute that limits them from setting early voting sites if there are none in the county and does not cap how many such locations they can establish; the current statute restricts them to one early voting center.
SB 782 would ensure bipartisan representation on county election boards in most cases, except for closed primaries — the ones typically in gerrymandered districts that don’t have a path for the minority party to win an election.
Insurance reassurance
Going into 2024, more than 26,000 Duval County residents will have health insurance that they didn’t have in 2023, potentially saving them serious financial consequences should they undergo a health catastrophe and enabling preventive care that could prevent such a tragedy.
This is thanks to an unprecedented effort from the Deegan administration called “Get Covered Jax,” which was mounted to connect those overwhelmed by or unable to navigate the daunting health insurance marketplace with resources.
“A local public education campaign like this has never been implemented before, and I am excited to see the fantastic results it is having,” Deegan said. “I often say that a confused mind says no. Get Covered Jax (provides) important information so that citizens can say yes to enrolling in health insurance. I want Jacksonville to be a healthier city because health, both physical and mental, is key to our economic prosperity. This is a big step in the right direction.”
The deadline was Dec. 15 for coverage starting Jan. 1, but those who missed it still have some time to get coverage — they can sign up by Jan. 15 for a term beginning Feb. 1. To find out more, visit getcoveredjax.com or www.jacksonville.gov/getcoveredjax.
Terminus
Some good news to close out the year from JAXPORT: SSA Marine’s $72 million, eight-phase terminal project is halfway done and poised to be completed by 2025, improving the terminal’s throughput by 150%.
New lighting, a modernized gate system, and asphalt resurfacing are already complete, keeping the overall project on track since its beginning last year.
By February, expect six new outbound truck lanes, with improvements to the inbound lanes slated to be completed by Fall 2024.
“SSA Marine is proud to have been a JAXPORT partner for more than 40 years,” said Lauren Offenbecher, president of SSA Marine’s conventional division. “This partnership has created tremendous opportunities for us to not only invest in the future of JAXPORT but also to service the growing needs of our customers in the region. We’re looking forward to continuing to support JAXPORT’s growth trajectory for years to come.”
“The investments SSA Marine is making in Jacksonville allow us to build on the momentum we are experiencing and maximize the efficiencies created by our 47-foot channel,” said JAXPORT CEO Eric Green. “As cargo volumes in the Southeast U.S. continue to grow, the SSA Jacksonville Container Terminal provides a modern and efficient facility that will benefit our customers and community well into the future.”
House party
The Northeast Florida housing market cooled in November. Yet, the value of homes saw an upward bump, according to a report released this week by the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors (NEFAR).
The number of closed home sales in North Florida fell by 14.5% last month, bringing down the total house sales to 1,384. While the total number of home sales dropped, the value of those houses jumped to a median price of $390,280, just off the record-high median price of $395,000 set in July.
NEFAR officials also broke down some figures for individual Northeast Florida counties, which include:
— St. Johns County claimed the highest Northeast Florida median home sale price at $510,000, a 5.6% hike from the October figure.
— Nassau County wasn’t that far off St. Johns County’s price range as Nassau registered a median home price of $458,475, a whopping 13.9% jump over the October median price, the most significant percentage increase in Northeast Florida.
— Duval County saw a 5.1% median housing price jump to $334,075 in November compared to October.
— Clay County experienced a dip in the median house price, dropping by 0.7% from October to $355,243.
— Baker County saw a median home price tag of $294,990 in November.
— Putnam County came in with the lowest median home price at $230,000, a 1.7% drop in median price from October.
Jaguars’ murky playoff hopes
After a third straight loss, the Jacksonville Jaguars are assured of one thing in their quest for the playoffs: if they win their final three games, Doug Pederson’s team will win the division for the second straight year, and they will be in the postseason.
If they don’t win out, the scenarios get murkier.
After 14 games, the Jaguars, Indianapolis Colts, and Houston Texans all stand at 8-6 on the season. The Jaguars have the advantage over the Colts and Texans because of tiebreakers. The Jaguars swept the Colts this year (head-to-head competition is the first tiebreaker), and Jacksonville holds a better division record than the Texans (the second tiebreaker for teams in the same division).
Here’s what each team has remaining on the schedule:
— Jaguars: at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (7-7), versus Carolina Panthers (2-12), at Tennessee Titans (5-9). Combined opponents’ record: 14-28
— Colts: at Atlanta Falcons (6-8), versus Las Vegas Raiders (6-8), versus Texans (8-6). Combined opponents’ record: 20-22
— Texans: versus Cleveland Browns (9-5), versus Titans (5-9), at Colts (8-6). Combined opponents’ record: 22-20
As you can see, the Jaguars’ path seems easier, especially with the struggling Panthers coming to EverBank Stadium on New Year’s Eve. The other game to note is the Colts and Texans facing one another in the regular season finale. That means one of those two teams will not finish the season with a win.
Aside from sweeping the final three games of the season, here is the best-case scenario for the Jaguars:
Jacksonville beats Tampa Bay and Carolina over the next two Sundays, while the Colts and Texans both lose a game. That would make the Jaguars Week 18 matchup with Tennessee meaningless for the AFC South race. They would have already clinched.
Another way the Jaguars can clinch without winning out is by either the Colts or Texans losing a game in the next two weeks, followed by the team that loses winning the season finale. In that case, the Jaguars would be in.
The AFC South champion will likely be the lowest-seeded divisional champ, the four-seed in the AFC. All division champions host a wild-card round playoff game, as the Jaguars did last season against the Los Angeles Chargers.
The Jaguars cannot earn the AFC’s top seed and a first-round bye. After losing to the Baltimore Ravens Sunday night, the best the Jaguars can do is the second seed. For that to happen, every AFC contender would have to lose their final games, except for games involving multiple playoff contenders, like the Dolphins-Ravens or Bengals-Chiefs games in Week 17.
ESPN has a playoff scenario calculator where you can input the results of future games to determine which teams are in and which are out. There are some scenarios where the Jaguars win the division, and the Colts and Texans earn wild-card spots, which would be a first for the division.
