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Island Brief

Amelia Island • Nassau County • First Coast

Happy Wednesday, Nassau County. Brett's gets its second try this morning. Monday's 40 mph gusts would not let the crew hold its turbidity barrier in place, so the excavators are due back at 9. In Yulee, the county attorney told commissioners an outright data center ban is "more than just risky."

Partly sunny and 75 on the island, still windy. The flood warning now runs through Thursday night, so plan around the late-morning high tide. Halloween looks mostly dry.

📰	What You Need to Know

Monday's 9 a.m. demolition never started. Gusts near 40 mph kept blowing the turbidity barrier out of place, the floating curtain that keeps sediment and debris inside the work zone and that the city's environmental permit requires, and Deputy City Manager Glenn Akramoff said crews could not safely tear into the building in that wind: "If we start tearing into that, stuff's going to blow over." The city's rule from here is a go or no-go call at noon the day before, and the News-Leader reported Tuesday that the call went in favor of this morning at 9, so the excavators should be back at the foot of Centre Street with the same advice as Monday, watch from the park side behind the fencing. Do not expect a collapse. Akramoff says Brett's will come apart in "little bites," from the land side out over the river, over 20 to 30 days, because nobody knows exactly what is still holding it up; a video survey underneath found some steel beams missing and fallen, which is also why the contractor will work from above rather than put anyone in the water. One thing this morning's forecast does not help with: the northeast wind on the island is still running 20 to 26 mph, so if 9 comes and goes with no excavator moving, that is why.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

Commissioner John Martin asked the question half the room came to ask, and County Attorney Denise May answered it: an outright ban on data centers is "more than just risky," because data centers may already qualify as permitted uses under the county's existing code, and a prohibition without a defensible basis invites the challenge the county would lose. That is why the 66-page committee report the board walked through Monday reaches for measurable rules instead: size classes tied to zoning, setbacks, noise limits in decibels, water and power reporting, a decommissioning plan. County Manager Taco Pope explained the interest in plain terms: the county's long-range plan maps about 22,000 acres of potential employment centers, a major natural gas pipeline crosses the west side, and both overlap the least populated parts of the county. Residents pushed on the details. The draft's 100-foot setback for smaller centers drew calls for 300 to 500 feet, Chadd Charland called a $1,000-a-day reporting fine pocket change for a company spending billions and asked for $5,000 or an escalating scale, and others wanted groundwater and private-well protections and evening meetings so working people can attend. Martin said he wants bigger setbacks that survive a court challenge, and May cautioned that fines have constitutional limits too. Nothing was adopted. The second workshop is Monday, Nov. 9, at 3 p.m. in Yulee, a final version of the report and draft rules is due Nov. 25, and News4Jax reports the board could vote on the regulations Jan. 25. Written comments stay open until Jan. 8.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

The Maritime Administration announced an $11 million Port Infrastructure Development Program grant for the Port of Fernandina on Tuesday, requested by the Ocean Highway and Port Authority and backed by Sen. Ashley Moody in a June letter, with Rep. Aaron Bean's office also welcoming it. It covers the two biggest items on the list that operator Relay Terminals brought the port authority in May, $5.5 million for dock repairs and $5.5 million for flood control, out of roughly $18.5 million to $19 million in stated needs: rebuilding the top and underside of the wharf, crane rail repairs, deck patching and pile repairs, an engineered underground stormwater system with pumps for rain and storm surge, plus paving, railroad crossing work and riprap along the shoreline. The numbers behind the ask are blunt. An APTIM inspection gave the dock a C-minus for cracked pilings and deteriorating deck beams, and Relay said moderate flooding routinely puts about 20 percent of the terminal under saltwater, a problem it cannot solve by raising the site because of the rail lines; Ted McNair's line in May was that the drainage fix "wouldn't totally fix it, but it would definitely help it." Not in this grant: the replacement Customs and Border Protection building the port has been asking the state for. The money comes from the last of five annual rounds funded by the 2021 infrastructure law.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

The City Commission's election-week meeting is Wednesday, Nov. 4 (the usual Tuesday is Election Day), and the agenda posted this week finally carries the second reading of Ordinance 2026-16, the replacement for the voters' paid-parking initiative that passed first reading 4-1 on Oct. 6 and then skipped the Oct. 20 agenda without explanation. Nothing in it restarts the meters: the downtown program still ends Nov. 18, and the ordinance, which needs four votes again under the charter, takes effect the next day and requires a referendum before paid parking returns anywhere except the airport, the golf course and special events. Earlier that evening Deputy City Manager Jeremiah Glisson presents the Downtown Traffic Circulation and Parking Study, a 36-block look from Front Street to Eighth and Broome to Beech. It is dated May 2026, which is to say it was written while the meters were assumed to be permanent, and it reads that way: overall supply is "generally adequate," but Centre Street runs at or near 100 percent full at peak and the public lots hit about 97 percent at 1 p.m., so it recommends wayfinding signs at the entrances, employee parking pushed to the edges, converting Alachua to one-way westbound and Ash to one-way eastbound with angled parking that would add about 140 spaces, moving a Saturday market off the blocks near Seventh Street to the finished waterfront park, and, in the passage the commission will have to read against the calendar, using the "existing paid parking program" to manage demand through pricing and time limits. Also that night: first reading of a top-to-bottom rewrite of the special events code (Business Brief has it), and a 4:30 workshop on airport noise and the Ybor Alvarez sports complex.

Read More → City Commission agenda, Nov. 4

🌟	Community Spotlight

Monday we told you the News-Leader was calling 2026 a record year for Amelia Island's sea turtles without being able to show you the numbers. The county published them Tuesday, from the Amelia Island Sea Turtle Watch's Oct. 20 report: 356 nests across the island, 298 of them monitored by the Watch's volunteers, which the county calls a near-record season for nests, and all-time records since monitoring began in 1985 for everything that came out of them. 23,440 hatchlings emerged from the monitored nests, volunteers counted 29,076 eggs, and they dug 265 excavations, the free dawn and dusk nest openings that readers followed all summer. The people behind the count are the ones who narrate those digs: president Ronda Bokram, who said back in July that a year like this one "is rare," and data manager Bill Bokram, who explains the swings by what the females found to eat a year or two before. The season also brought the usual cost of a busy beach, disorientations caused by artificial lighting and by people on the sand at night, so the ask for the last nights of a season that ends Saturday is the same as on the first: lights off on the beachfront, equipment off the sand overnight, and give a turtle room.

Read More → The County Insider (Nassau County)

💼	Business Brief

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Every festival, parade, 5K and street closure in the city is about to get a new rulebook. Ordinance 2026-17, up for first reading Nov. 4, repeals Chapter 65 of the city code and replaces it with a longer one covering special event permits, city co-sponsorship, franchise agreements, street closures, parades, banners, facility rentals, event operations, enforcement and appeals, and it "clarifies application deadlines." If you organize anything downtown that needs a permit, the full text is in the agenda packet now, and second reading is where the deadlines and fees get argued. (More)

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The same parking study has a chapter for anyone who takes deliveries downtown. It recommends a freight study, flexible loading zones on Ash and Alachua that go back to being parking spaces off-peak, a survey of merchants on delivery times and routes, "appropriately sized" delivery trucks, and keeping through-trucks on Eighth, Alachua, Broome and Beech; it notes the loading zones are bunched south of Centre Street today, and that Ash Street carries the most trucks, about 70 in the morning and evening peaks, against Centre Street's 50. (More)

➤	Food Truck Friday comes to the west side. The county brings it to Westside Regional Park, 615 Lakeside Loop in Hilliard, on Friday, Nov. 6, 5:30 to 8 p.m., with Jax Taco Truck, 904 Mister Softee, Kaleidoscope, Raphael's Italian Pizzeria and Backwood Meat Smokerz BBQ. (More)

📌	Briefly Noted

🗓️	Quick Picks This Week

Thu 29

Bryceville library's last day Bryceville branch, 7280 Motes Road • Regular hours • The hold locker and book drop carry on afterward. That evening "The Addams Family Musical" is at 7:30 at ACT, and Story & Song's book group dinner with the publishers' reps is at 5:30, $30.

Fri 30

Halloween Trick or Treat Downtown Centre Street • 10 a.m. to noon • Free, and it is Friday, not Saturday. Lobster Fest pickup runs 1 to 5 in the Atlantic Rec Center lot, the county's Halloween Festival is 5:30 to 7:30 in Yulee, and the Pirates close the regular season at Franklin County at 7.

Sat 31

Halloween, and the last day of early voting Any of the five early-voting sites • 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. • Bring a photo ID with your signature; Tuesday is assigned precinct only. The Farmers Market runs 9 to 1 on North Seventh, StoryTime is 10:30 at Story & Song, the Addams Family closing matinee is at 2, and Callahan's Halloween Bash runs all day at the fairgrounds. The forecast is 75 with about a one-in-four shower chance.

The meters go dark Nov. 18, and the city's own parking study lands Nov. 4 with ideas it wrote for a paid system: time limits, employee lots on the edges, angled parking on Ash and Alachua. What should downtown parking look like on Nov. 19? Tell us where you park now, and what would actually get you to walk two blocks. Hit reply and let us know. We read every response.

Halloween week, so a cemetery question. Bosque Bello on North 14th Street is older than the Old Town street grid next door to it. What year does the city date it from, what does the name mean, and why is it on next week's commission agenda?

Answer: 1798, when the city says the Spanish established it, thirteen years before Old Town was platted in 1811. The name is Spanish for "beautiful forest." A newer section was added in the mid 1940s, and the whole 34 acres is now before the National Park Service for a National Register listing, the public comment window having closed Oct. 23. The Nov. 4 agenda carries the budget transfers for a new columbarium there.

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