Fernandina's $226 million budget lands, and September gets the fight

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Island Brief

Amelia Island • Nassau County • First Coast

Happy Wednesday, Nassau County. Eighty-seven and partly sunny today, with about a 30 percent chance of a storm after two o'clock, which for the first week of August counts as an easy day. No advisories are up. The bigger news is that next year's city budget landed on the table last night, and the four evenings of workshops that were on your calendar for this week and next may have just evaporated. Here is what is worth knowing at midweek.

📰	What You Need to Know

City Manager Sarah Campbell put a proposed $226 million budget in front of commissioners Tuesday night, and by the end of the evening they had agreed they do not need any more workshops before the public hearings on September 3 and September 15. That would clear the four budget sessions scheduled for tonight, tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday. The proposal raises the operating tax rate from 4.6849 to 4.8530 mills, roughly $24.7 million in property taxes, which is the ceiling commissioners set on July 28 and can still come down from in September. Campbell also said where the extra money went. About $1.5 million is sitting in the marina fund, which is the city's hedge if the August 18 referendum eventually costs it paid parking revenue. One caution before you change your plans: the city's meeting portal still listed all four workshops as of Wednesday morning, so check it before you drive over.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

With the workshops off, the real fight over what stays in the budget moves to the September hearings, and Tuesday night gave a preview of it. Commissioner Joyce Tuten asked her colleagues to set aside money for land conservation when they choose the final rate, putting it the way her grandmother would have: "I'd like to put this bee in your bonnet." Commissioner Genece Minshew said she would consider it only after the city produces a list of specific properties and what they are worth, because setting money aside without a plan does not make sense to her. Vice Mayor Darron Ayscue floated a third route, following the county's CLAM model and asking voters to approve a dedicated conservation referendum instead. "The citizens are more than likely going to do it for us if you come to them with a plan," he said.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

The Observer closed out a three-part series on coastal water quality this week, and the short version is worth knowing even if you never get in the water. The E. coli and enterococcus turning up in Egans Creek have led the state to designate it an impaired waterway. The EPA's How's My Waterway database lists the Amelia River as impaired for mercury, which is reason to go easy on how much you eat of what you pull out of it. The conclusion columnist Angela Ray lands on is that most of what fouls the water comes from ordinary things happening on private property: pet waste washing into storm drains, lawn fertilizer feeding algae blooms out in the marsh, weed killer taking the same route, and septic systems that quietly stopped working years ago.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

🌟	Community Spotlight

The Fernandina Beach High School Foundation turned up at the school's back-to-school staff meeting on August 3 and handed a $100 check to each of the 67 teachers and a $50 check to each of the 20 staff members who work outside a classroom. That is $7,700 out the door in one morning, aimed at the supplies teachers otherwise end up buying themselves in the last week before students arrive, and most of them had no idea it was coming. The Foundation has been doing this kind of thing since 1987, runs entirely on volunteers, and is partway through a $1 million ten-year commitment that puts up to $100,000 a year into classroom, facility and program grants under the banner it calls the Pirate Advantage. If you want to help fund the next round, its annual Trivia Night is Friday, September 11 at the Woman's Club on Jean Lafitte Boulevard, doors at 5:30 and questions at 6. Students are back at FBHS on Monday.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

💼	Business Brief

➤	The proposed budget brings the marina under city management, with a new marina department of three full-time and eight part-time employees. For the first time both the marina and the golf course would cover their own costs next year without a subsidy from the general fund. (More)

➤	The city commission adopted a rewritten Historic District Design Guide on July 21, the first update since 2013. If you are planning work on a building in the downtown historic district, that document is now the rulebook. (More)

➤	A new McDonald's is opening on the west side, at 551731 U.S. 1 in Hilliard, and the Nassau County Chamber cuts the ribbon there at 11 a.m. on August 25. (More)

📌	Briefly Noted

🗓️	Quick Picks This Week

Wed 5

Brown Bag Lunch: "The Siege of Pensacola" Baker Hall, Amelia Island Museum of History • Noon to 1 p.m. • Free, with Dr. James Cusick; in person or streamed, and yes, bring your own lunch

Fri 7

Sounds on Centre Centre Street, downtown • 6 to 8 p.m. • Free outdoor concert; the series took July off and runs first Fridays through October

Sat 8

Fernandina Beach Farmers Market N. 7th Street, downtown • 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. • Produce, seafood and flowers, rain or shine; the Arts Market sets up alongside at 506 Centre on second Saturdays

Sat 8

AI Dance Festival Preview: A Celebration of Dance Story & Song, 1430 Park Ave. • 5 to 6:30 p.m. • $35; a first look at the artists coming to September's Amelia Island Dance Festival, with performances by festival dancers and guests

Commissioners spent Tuesday night going through next year's spending, and one of them asked the others to set money aside to buy land before somebody else builds on it. If the city handed you one line in that budget to spend however you wanted, where would it go? A park, a road, a ballfield, a stretch of marsh nobody has touched yet. Hit reply and let us know. We read every response.

American Beach, on the island's south end, was founded in 1935 so Black families would have an Atlantic shorefront of their own during segregation. The man who bought the land ran a Jacksonville insurance company and is remembered as Florida's first Black millionaire. Who was he?

Answer: Abraham Lincoln Lewis, known to most people as A.L. Lewis, president of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company. His great-granddaughter MaVynee Betsch, the Beach Lady, spent decades keeping the neighborhood intact, and NaNa, the towering dune behind it, is now part of the National Park Service.

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