Nassau

KEVIN TURNER/Staff

The county’s new building department building is to include better storage facilities for records that have to be kept in hard copy.

By KEVIN TURNER
kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

YULEE — The Nassau County Building Department soon will be issuing permits for its own new building.

Building Department officials say they’ve outgrown their current facility, which they share with Growth Management and Engineering Services. But thanks to several years of brisk building permit sales, the department has saved enough money to have its own building.

By KEVIN TURNER
kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

Although Nassau County will be able to collect more property taxes than originally expected in the coming fiscal year, that doesn’t necessarily mean good news for nonprofit agencies that receive county funds.

The Florida Legislature has mandated that county and local governments hold property tax income to 2006-07 levels, with governments that had steep year-over-year tax increases since 2001 penalized an additional 3 to 9 percent.

Nassau County initially was penalized the full 9 percent.

But since a significant part of Nassau’s budget goes to pay for emergency services, the Florida Department of Revenue has forgiven some of that penalty, lowering it to 5 percent, Interim County Administrator Ted Selby said.

KEVIN TURNER/Staff
Tez-Mia Gray, family specialist for the Northeast Florida Community Action Agency.

By KEVIN TURNER
kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

Nassau County nonprofit organizations traditionally funded by the County Commission reacted with disappointment last week as they found out they would get less or no funding in fiscal year 2007-08.

Although the budget isn’t yet final, the commission reduced funding to nonprofits June 27 by $222,000, compared to last year.

By KEVIN TURNER
kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

In the wake of state-mandated property tax cuts, the budget ax will fall on nonprofits receiving Nassau County funding.

Only two non-profit organizations — the Nassau County Council on Aging and the Barnabas Center — are now budgeted to receive the same amount of money in the coming fiscal year that they received this year.

Of 16 others funded this year, 10 will receive nothing unless individual commissioners commit money from their own discretionary funds. Funding to the remaining six has been significantly reduced.

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By KEVIN TURNER and
MARY HURST
kevin.turner@mynassausun.com
mary.hurst@mynassausun.com

While government officials throughout Nassau County say they’ll survive this year’s state-mandated tax cuts with services intact, they’re less optimistic about their prospects if the so-called “super” homestead exemption is adopted by Florida voters Jan. 29.

The proposed constitutional amendment would raise the homestead deduction offered to Florida homeowners, allowing them to shelter more of the value of their homes from property taxes.

KEVIN TURNER/Staff -- Alexis Powell, 5, takes a ride down a water slide at the sixth Northeast Florida Blueberry Festival in Callahan on Saturday, June 16.

For the sixth year, blueberries and other attractions brought thousands to the Northeast Florida Fairgrounds for two summer days in June.

Northeast Florida Blueberry Festival Booth Rental Coordinator Denise Bell said Monday that after the fair ended Sunday, many vendors put down a deposit to do it again next year.

By KEVIN TURNER
kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

BRYCEVILLE — At 3 a.m. Monday,  a new paving crew began to do something another crew didn’t do last year — resurface County Road 121 to state standards.

“They’re out there paving and milling,” Director of Engineering Services Douglas Seaman said Monday.  “The lane closure doesn’t seem to be a problem yet. That was my biggest concern.”

Road crews are replacing a notorious paving job done last year on 121 where asphalt crumbled and slid off within days in some areas, while in others the road surface was bumpy and wavy.

BUDGET HEARINGS

The Nassau County Commission will begin discussing the Fiscal Year 2007-08 budget at 9 a.m. Monday in commission chambers in the Nassau County Governmental Complex, 96135 Nassau Place, Yulee.
Subsequent budget sessions are scheduled for the same time and place Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

By KEVIN TURNER
kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

YULEE — Officials said earlier this week that Nassau County’s government might make do with $2.6 million less in property tax revenue under the measure holding property tax income to this year’s level.

KEVIN TURNER/Staff--06/12/07--Father-son duo Randy, left, and Brian Green, right, of Green's Rod Shop in Callahan with a rare 1952 Pontiac convertible they restored four years ago for its original owner.

By KEVIN TURNER
kevin.turner@mynassausun.com

A father handing the reins of a business to a son or a daughter is a tradition as old as business itself.
But what’s it like to work with dad, day in an day out, well into one’s adulthood?

For Randy and Brian Green of Callahan, it’s been a way to turn a decades-long father-son professional hobby into a new career.

KEVIN TURNER/Staff

County road crews have placed signs warning motorists where segments of a 2006 repaving of County Road 121 are most botched.

By KEVIN TURNER
kevin.turner@jacksonville.com

WEST NASSAU COUNTY — Arlee Tomlinson lives on County Road 108, but takes County Road 121 every time she drives to St. George, Ga., for gasoline.

“Are they going to fix it?” she asked Thursday. “It’s bad. My husband and I, we complain about it all the time. And those log trucks and semis keep coming down it.”