Fernandina Beach sets its property tax rate on Thursday

the

Island Brief

Amelia Island • Nassau County • First Coast

Good Morning, Nassau County! Last week we told you August is the year's thinnest news stretch. That ends today. September starts tomorrow and the city has three meetings in three days, one of which sets what you pay in property taxes for the year. There is also a boil water advisory still up on the mainland, so if you are reading this west of the river, start there.

Fernandina 🌦️ 85°/76° Yulee 🌦️ 88°/74°

Callahan ⛈️ 89°/73° Hilliard ⛈️ 89°/72°

No advisories anywhere in the county this morning. The storm odds sit around 38 percent on the island and closer to 60 in Callahan and Hilliard, and that gap holds most of the week. Wednesday is the wet one everywhere, 60 percent and showers before lunch. Thursday and Friday are the two clean days if you have outdoor work to schedule.

📰	Top Stories

Commissioners hold a special meeting and public hearing Thursday at 5 p.m. at City Hall to take up an operating millage rate of 4.8530 mills for 2026-27. The city's rollback rate, the rate that would bring in roughly the same money as last year from existing property, is 4.4425, so under Florida's Truth in Millage law the proposal counts as a 9.24 percent tax increase. In plain arithmetic: $485.30 per $100,000 of taxable value instead of $444.25, a difference of $41.05, before the county, the School Board and everyone else adds theirs. Commissioners picked 4.8530 back in July precisely because City Manager Sarah Campbell said it would raise about $1.5 million, which is exactly what the city had penciled in from paid parking for the waterfront. Voters then rejected paid parking, so Thursday is where that hole gets filled or not. The rate can be lowered Thursday and again at final adoption on Sept. 15; it cannot be raised.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

JEA issued an unplanned precautionary boil water advisory for West Nassau at 5 p.m. Saturday, and as of early Monday it was still sitting under current advisories on the utility's own page. Precautionary means the water pressure may have dropped far enough for something to get into the lines, not that anything has been found. JEA's instruction is a rolling boil for one full minute before drinking, cooking or preparing food, and a three minute flush of your lines once service is back to normal. The utility says to expect at least two days on any advisory, because that is how long a second round of samples takes to come back. Check the page before you assume it has lifted; that is where the area map and the all clear will post.

Read More → JEA Water Notices

Before the regular meeting Tuesday, commissioners sit down at 5 p.m. for a workshop with exactly one item on it: city staff presenting what Amendment 3 would do to Fernandina Beach. That is the property tax measure on the Nov. 3 statewide ballot, and it would lift the non-school homestead exemption to $150,000 on Jan. 1, 2027 and $250,000 on Jan. 1, 2028, while cutting the yearly assessment growth cap on non-homestead property from 10 percent to 5. Constitutional amendments need 60 percent to pass. Florida League of Cities figures put the $250,000 version at roughly $741.4 million off the city's taxable value, about 15.6 percent of it, which at the rate on the table Thursday works out near $3.6 million a year. So Tuesday is the small number and Thursday is the immediate one, and the workshop is open to the public.

Read More → City Commission workshop agenda

Tucked into the city's weekly project update, filed by Deputy City Manager Jeremiah Glisson: the Florida Department of Transportation has set a town hall on the rehabilitation of Atlantic Avenue for Thursday, Sept. 24, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Atlantic Recreation Center. Construction is scheduled to begin Oct. 5 and run about nine months. The update stops there. No limits, no scope, no word yet on lane closures or detours, which is what the town hall is for. Atlantic is the road most of us take to get from downtown to the beach, and it fronts the rec center and Central Park, so nine months of it is worth putting Sept. 24 in the calendar now.

Read More → Nassau NewsLine

Local entrepreneur and author Joseph Lapin has launched The Human in the Loop, a new weekly letter on family, AI, and creativity. One essay lands every Sunday morning, and the archive goes back a decade.

Get the Sunday Letter →

📍	Around Nassau County

➤

South Nassau: A $120 million outdoor festival campus called The Grounds, built for crowds of 50,000, is shopping for a site, and southern Nassau County is one of three areas in the running alongside western Duval and northern St. Johns. Jacksonville's Cecil Commerce Center corridor is described as the front runner, the backers want a decision by Oct. 1, and nothing has been filed here. Worth knowing about, not worth planning around yet. (More)

➤

Fernandina Beach: Commissioners go behind closed doors at 4 p.m. Tuesday with the city's lawyers over the Pledger lawsuit, the Beech Street case arguing a neighboring lot was never legally created. Shade sessions are exempt from the Sunshine Law, but a court reporter takes down every word and the transcript becomes public once the case ends. (More)

➤	Fernandina Beach: The commission votes Tuesday night on a written Speed Hump Policy. If it passes, a street that wants traffic calming gets a defined process to ask for it instead of whoever complains loudest. (More)

➤	Fernandina Beach: Mocama Beer Company is turning its front lot into an outdoor venue on Oct. 17 for Jefferson Starship and John Waite, which owners Andrew Batey and Kim Delnegro say is the first of an ongoing run of national touring acts. Tickets went on sale Aug. 21. (More)

📌	Briefly Noted

🗓️	This Week on the Island

Tue 1

City Commission workshop and regular meeting City Hall, 204 Ash St. • Workshop 5 p.m., regular meeting 6 p.m. • The Amendment 3 presentation is the workshop; the speed hump policy, a $240,000 conservation land agreement and the third reading of the stormwater rate rewrite are on the regular agenda

Wed 2

"Come From Away" opens at Amelia Musical Playhouse 1955 Island Walkway • 7:30 p.m. • Runs Wednesday through Sunday for two weeks, closing Sept. 13; Sunday shows are 2:30 matinees

Wed 2

Brown Bag Lunch with Chip Kirkpatrick Baker Hall, Amelia Island Museum of History, 233 S. Third St. • Noon to 1 p.m. • "My Richest Site," the museum's standing first-Wednesday talk, streamed online as well as in the room

Thu 3

City budget hearing City Hall, 204 Ash St. • 5 p.m. • The TRIM statement, the proposed 4.8530 millage rate and the tentative budget, with public comment before adjournment

Fri 4

Sounds on Centre Downtown Centre Street • 6 to 8 p.m. • Free; the first-Friday concert series picks back up after the summer gap

Sat 5

Fernandina Beach Farmers Market N. Seventh Street • 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. • First Saturday, so the Wildlight Market Place runs too; the Arts Market on Centre does not, since it takes the second and fourth

Sun 6

Acoustic guitar jam at Story & Song 1430 Park Ave. • Noon to 2 p.m. • Free, out in the courtyard; bring an acoustic and a couple of songs, beginners included

Mon 7

Community Appreciation Day at the history museum 233 S. Third St. • 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. • Free admission all day for Labor Day, with games and activities for kids from 10 to 2 and the Smithsonian "Americans" exhibit still up. City offices are closed

September starts tomorrow, and around here that is less a date than a feeling. The light goes gold a little earlier. The beach access lot has spaces in it again. Somebody finally turns the air conditioning down a notch. What is your first real sign every year that the island is coming out of summer? Hit reply and let us know. We read every response.

There is a brewery on this island called Mocama, and the name is not invented. What language is it, and what does it mean?

Answer: Timucua, and it means "the sea." Mocama was the name of the coastal Timucua dialect and of the people who spoke it, along the shore from St. Simons Island down past the mouth of the St. Johns. Amelia Island sat inside Mocama province and carried one of its Spanish missions. So the word on the taproom sign is a very old name for the water you can see from the end of the street.

Enjoying The Island Brief? Forward it to a neighbor. That's how this grows.

Share With a Friend ✈️

Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe free →

f ✦