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Island Brief

Amelia Island • Nassau County • First Coast

Happy Wednesday, Nassau County. The library cuts now have dates. The Fernandina Beach branch stops opening Saturdays on Oct. 1, Bryceville closes for good on Oct. 29, and Monday night's county hearing is the last vote that can still change either. Below that, a list of demands and a second video in the volleyball story.

Today is the wet one. A north wind clears it out tomorrow, and by Saturday it is sunny and 79, with the surf still too rough to swim.

📰	What You Need to Know

The Nassau County Public Library System put the schedule out Monday, a week before the county commission takes its final budget vote. The Fernandina Beach branch on North Fourth Street stops opening Saturdays on Oct. 1, with weekday hours unchanged: Monday and Thursday 10 to 8, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 10 to 6. The Bryceville branch keeps its regular schedule until it closes for good on Oct. 29; after that, staff will stock an outdoor locker with items readers put on hold online, and the book drop stays open. The library's own statement calls it part of a broader review of facility usage, staffing, operating costs, service hours and geographic coverage. Both dates flow from the tentative budget the county adopted Sept. 14, and the final hearing is Monday at 5:01 p.m. in Yulee, the last point at which the board can put the money back; the county has tied any restoration to the Nov. 3 Amendment 3 vote.

Read More → News4Jax

Community leaders told Action News Jax on Tuesday that the apology Superintendent Kathy Burns delivered at First Missionary Baptist Church on Sept. 15 is not enough, and issued an eight-point list of demands, among them an independent assessment of the Sept. 10 match against Andrew Jackson, a review of how school and athletic staff responded, and a law enforcement review based on a police report they say they are filing. The Rev. R. Le’Roy Gundy of SCLC Florida submitted a video he says shows Fernandina Beach students holding up and chanting with another Black baby doll at a match against Baldwin days before the Sept. 10 game, said it appears to be the same student, and called on the superintendent to remove the principal and the athletic director. The Rev. Darien Bolden, who hosted the Sept. 15 meeting, asked how the district could close its investigation without speaking to the victims or to any of the students. The district's findings stand as we reported them last week: the doll display was unacceptable, and racial slurs were not substantiated. The station was still waiting on a district response Tuesday evening, and we have not seen the second video ourselves.

Read More → Action News Jax

The Waterfront Advisory Board's agenda for Monday, Sept. 28, at 6 p.m. lists the draft Harbor Master Plan “presented for approval,” the first time the document has surfaced since February, when the Observer reported Moffatt & Nichol's proposal: a $50,000 first phase covering nine privately owned parcels north of the marina, and a second phase, needing separate commission approval, that would take in the whole harbor from the port to South Front Street. What the draft actually says is not readable from here; the agenda packet came back empty to us, as the city's packets have all month, so Monday is where the concepts get shown. The same meeting at City Hall gets Marina Manager Chris Ferguson's report and a city project update from Jacob Platt, with the marina rebuild pending next door and the city taking over marina management on Oct. 1. Whatever the board recommends, the plan itself goes to the City Commission for approval.

Read More → City agenda (CivicClerk)

🌟	Community Spotlight

Amelia Island Opera's Bosland Young Artist Vocal Competition runs Friday through Sunday, and it is this size because Paul Bosland, after last year's competition, made the largest single donation in the company's history so that the singers would be paid real prizes and taught by someone working at the top of the profession. Friday at 5 p.m. at Story & Song, soprano Amy Shoremount-Obra, who made her Metropolitan Opera debut as the First Lady in Mozart's “The Magic Flute,” gives a lecture recital with pianist Felix Jarrar ($40, cash bar). Saturday at noon, nine singers ages 18 to 22 from around the country compete for more than $2,500 in prizes, with Shoremount-Obra on the judging panel. Sunday at 11 a.m. she leads a donation-based public master class with pianist Dr. Dasom Kwon, back at Story & Song, which is the part where you get to watch a voice get fixed in real time. The company is six seasons old; the full “Page to Stage” season opens Nov. 6 with Menotti's “The Old Maid and the Thief.” Tickets and the Saturday venue are at ameliaislandopera.org.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

💼	Business Brief

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Jefferson Starship and John Waite at Mocama now has a start time. The show is Saturday, Oct. 17, doors at 5:30 and music at 8, outdoors in front of the brewery at 629 S. Eighth St., rain or shine. Standing room, low-profile lawn chairs welcome, nothing high-backed or reclining. First Port City Bank presents, and Mocama calls it the first of a series of national touring acts. Tickets are through Etix; that page would not load for us this morning, so check the price there. (More)

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The Tourist Development Council meeting we previewed Monday is off. The county posted the cancellation Tuesday with no reason given, and the same day noticed the next meeting for Wednesday, Oct. 7, at 3 p.m. in Yulee. That pushes the first public look at the summer's hotel numbers, the ones June's report had pacing more than 20 percent behind for August and September, back two weeks. (More)

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Sue's Market has moved from Sadler Road to 1986 Citrona Drive, and the chamber cuts the ribbon at the new address on Thursday, Oct. 8, at 4 p.m. Same formula as before: gourmet foods and ready-to-go casseroles, curated wine and beer, gifts, the Mahjong Lounge and Thursday wine tastings. Listed hours are Monday through Friday 10 to 5:30 and Saturday 10 to 4, closed Sunday. (More)

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Out west, Conner's A-Maize-Ing Acres opens its fall season on Saturday, Oct. 3, at 19856 County Road 121 in Hilliard: the corn maze, wagon rides and the rest of a working farm's fall festival. Hours and admission live on the farm's own site, which would not load for us; Action News Jax has the schedule. (More)

📌	Briefly Noted

🗓️	Quick Picks This Week

Thu 24

FDOT Atlantic Avenue construction open house Atlantic Recreation Center auditorium, 2500 Atlantic Ave. • 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., drop in • the $5 million resurfacing that trades on-street parking for bike lanes from 15th Street to Jean Lafitte; design is done, so ask which blocks and when your street gets its detour; online session at nflroads.com/virtualmeetings

Sat 26

Oktoberfest on Second Street 2nd Street downtown, hosted by PJD's Beer and Wine Garden, 12 S. Second St. • 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. • free, all ages; last year brought German food vendors, live music, stein-holding and hammerschlagen contests and costume prizes; the same morning, Cars & Cannons puts pre-2001 cars inside Fort Clinch, 9 to 2, free with park entry

Mon 28

County Commission final budget hearing James S. Page Governmental Complex, 96135 Nassau Place, Yulee • 5:01 p.m. • the last vote on the budget that closes Bryceville, trims Fernandina to five days and ends county nonprofit funding; public comment is how the library lines get argued; the city's Waterfront Advisory Board meets the same evening at 6 at City Hall

Saturday's car show fills Fort Clinch with cars built before 2001, and everybody who has lived here a while has one they should never have sold. What was yours, what did you do in it around here, and where did it end up? Hit reply and let us know. We read every response.

Saturday's car show sets up inside Fort Clinch, which most people file under “Civil War fort” and leave there. Two questions: who was Clinch, and was the fort ever actually finished?

Answer: Duncan Lamont Clinch, an Army general of the Seminole Wars who led the 1816 attack on the Negro Fort, the first battle of those wars, commanded in the Second Seminole War, and later served Georgia in Congress. Construction on the fort named for him began in 1847; Clinch died in December 1849, and the fort was never completed. It was garrisoned anyway, by Confederates and then Union troops in the Civil War, again in the Spanish-American War, and once more in World War II, before Florida bought the sand-buried ruin in 1935 and made it one of the state's first parks.

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