The plug finally is pulled on the mayor’s hologram box at Jacksonville International Airport.
Mayor Donna Deegan is relieved – for the airport – because people making fun of her $66,000 political pet project really hurts JIA’s feelings.
“I am sort of relieved for the airport that they no longer have to be a part of this, you know, hyper partisan fodder that we have seen over a $60,000 Proto box, that I think was a great opportunity to showcase talent in our city for technology,” Deegan said on WOKV.
The Proto box, dubbed “Holo-Donna” by Florida’s DOGE committee, was unveiled at the airport in December 2024. The box features a 7-foot “hologram” of Deegan delivering various welcome messages.
The mayor said the box was an innovative way to welcome people while featuring technology developed by a local company that’s woman-owned and tribally affiliated. The box was assigned to the airport for a trial run and then it would move to an administrative role downtown involving building inspections or something.
Anyways, once people realized the hologram wasn’t so hologrammy mockery ensued.
Councilman Rory Diamond posted videos of himself poking fun at the hologram – “She yelled at me in Japanese,” Diamond said.
In response, the mayor’s office took the high road – delegating a staffer to send out a statement to a local reporter: “We aren’t going to comment on every partisan attack the councilman attempts to recycle.”
And a few weeks later – it crashed.
Deegan defended the project to Channel 4 by saying it isn’t about the box, but what the box represents that matters.
Deegan said the Proto box “allows us an avenue to really highlight one of our small and emerging businesses, “a minority and woman owned business that came up with this wonderful technology. We’re one of the first in the country to do it.”
Jacksonville might have been the first, but Silicon Valley’s version, recently installed inside San Jose International Airport, is much cooler than ours.
Mayor Matt Mahan of San Jose posted a video online a few days ago claiming he is “the first mayor in the world to be made into a hologram.”
Uh, oh.
We’ll let that slide considering his actually looks like a holographic image. Besides, Jacksonville’s mayor is ready to move on. She is tired of all the “ridiculousness” regarding the box and her political foe’s ability to “take a picture with it” to use against her.
Now that the box is safely tucked away inside City Hall and the airport begins to heal – I’ll leave you with some poetry courtesy of Florida’s chief financial officer, Blaise Ingoglia.
The Mayor’s Purse
Donna waves the ribbon, the budget takes flight.
Millions are scattered, gone overnight.
A city still waiting for roads to be mended,
but checks keep on flowing quite unended.
The people keep asking, where did it go?
The coffers run empty, yet taxes still grow.
In the halls of the city one lesson is clear,
wasteful spending echoes year after year.
Holo-Donna may be gone, but the lesson remains: Jacksonville doesn’t need futuristic boxes to waste money — we’ve already mastered that art.
