Eye on Jacksonville

Month: August 2019

  • While Jacksonville burns, city leaders fiddle around

    Last night the City Council met to discuss a bill that would put a tax referendum requested by the School Board on a ballot. What happened next was a joke. A joke on us. Some members of the audience booed when they didn’t like what they heard. Instead of throwing out those who were causing a…

  • Taking a close look at police work at night in the city

    While Jacksonville residents are watching TV and retiring for the night there is a lot going on in the streets. The police are out there taking care of business. But what exactly do cops do while patrolling at night? You might imagine they run from a murder to a robbery to a burglary. Or, if…

  • Costly consequences will happen without The Landing

    Now that The Landing has fencing around it and her future is heading to the dump, we can all agree she will be missed. Missed for so many reasons and the biggest one for me is the fact she served a purpose no other facility in Jacksonville served. We could use the facility WITHOUT THE…

  • New biography on former mayor Jake Godbold is a worthwhile summer read

    Jacksonville residents with an interest in history and politics would find it worth their time to read a new biography of a former mayor: Jake! The number of important events that took place in the city during Jake Godbold’s eight years as mayor of Jacksonville – 1979-1987 – is stunning. They include acquiring an NFL…

  • Jacksonville has racial injustice, too

    You hear a lot in the fake news industry about “white supremacy” and injustice but Jacksonville is where one of the great injustices is being done, and it was based on the notion of black supremacy. In 1974, an 18-year-old boy’s car broke down and he had to walk home. A car pulled up and…

  • Is Mayor Curry leading or others pulling his strings?

    I have worked with CEOs for more than 35 years as an Executive Coach. It’s a wonderful profession and I find great joy in being around decisive leaders who fire up their staff and gather support for their vision. There is nothing more exciting than seeing a team led by a wise leader who cares…

  • Breaking Development: Mayor Curry’s office silences dissent and shouldn’t they be suspended too?

    Yesterday we wrote an article about cronyism and corruption in Lenny Curry’s Administration. See that article here: https://eyeonjacksonville.com/eye-requests-an-investigation-of-the-mayors-administration/ Tonight we were shocked by a tweet sent out by Melissa Ross regarding Joe Peppers who we wrote about in our article above. Melissa Ross is with WJCT. See Tweet here: So Joe Peppers’ has been called…

  • Preparing to defend Jacksonville from higher property values

    I could hardly believe what I was seeing in a recent media report on the sea level rise task force in Jacksonville, formally known as the Adaptation Action Area Working Group. This temporary committee is supposed to disband later this month — and that may be a good thing based on what I read. The…

  • Eye requests an investigation of the Mayor’s Administration

    Eye on Jacksonville has been watching political cronyism in our city government for the last year and while we didn’t like what we saw, we knew it was the game of politics.  We shed light on issues and wrote opinion pieces about our dislike of this behavior.  That’s all we could do and hoped it…

  • JEA: Local utility’s privatization plan is worldwide news

    Plans to privatize the JEA obviously are of interest to residents of Jacksonville but why are they news in a publication written for socialists around the world? A story about JEA appeared in the World Socialist Web site this week. The site is published by the International Committee of the Fourth International, which in turn…

  • High school students have taken a greater interest in politics than ever before

    As the school year quickly approaches for middle and high school students, hundreds of thousands of American men and women are learning how to solve complex problems, initiate change in a small community, and work proactively with other individuals. These skills, coupled with additional knowledge in the areas of math, English, reading, science, and history,…

  • Appointing School Board members – an old idea is revived

    State Rep. Jason Fischer is getting a lot of heat for his bill to consider changes in how the School Board is constituted but it is not an idea he invented or necessarily even supports. As I read it, Fischer simply is frustrated at how the board operates and thinks some change could improve the…

  • Does the City need a Snake Charmer?

    This Thursday, August 8, at 10:00 a.m. in the Ed Ball Building on the 8th Floor in Conference Room 851 you can hear about a new Consultant hire for the Mayor. While there — watch for snakes in the grass. A recent “retirement” on June 28th by the Chief Administration Officer, Sam Mousa, has evidently…

  • Duval County Schools: Why not sell your tax increase & let the people decide?

    People who want higher taxes are pushing hard to get the school tax on the ballot immediately. A little too hard. It is a little too much when they let a problem grow over many years and then demand a tax as the only solution and insist upon it being passed immediately. There isn’t much…

  • Curry makes a pitch for selling JEA, but it isn’t quite convincing

    Attempts to make the sale of JEA seem like a bonanza may run aground on the hard rocks of reality. After two years of denying that he sought the sale of the city-owned utility – an idea that is wildly unpopular – Mayor Lenny Curry now seems to be advocate No. 1. With the billions…