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Hi everyone! Fall is here, and with the change of the season comes my administration’s total focus on delivering on the change we promised to the voters of Jacksonville. Many of you are eager to see these changes, so here’s the latest: $25 MILLION ON TAPThis week, we are submitting a big legislative package to the City Council, asking them to approve $25 million we’ve asked for in the next budget to address a range of critical issues identified by seven wonderful and hardworking transition committees. These funds will be used for everything from reactivating the Jacksonville Journey anti-crime initiative, to preventing people from falling into homelessness, to increasing access to mental health services and primary care. Another $1.2 million would go toward making sure all our city pools are ready for use next summer. Here’s the full breakdown:
For the next several months, we’ll be working with the Council on these requests. I’ll keep you posted on our progress! CHECK OUT THE NEW JACKSONVILLE.GOV!This week, we launched a new – and rebranded – website for the City of Jacksonville, which can be found at www.jacksonville.gov. It’s a new day in our city, so I decided it was time to refresh our city’s website in order to give visitors, whether they be citizens or out-of-towners, the best user experience possible. To that end, we worked hard to modernize the site and make it more intuitive, so that you can quickly and efficiently find the information you’re searching for. I hope everyone will be as happy with the result as I am. Jacksonville.gov offers a new look and feel with an updated home page that connects citizens to critical resources, while retaining the content from the previous site, coj.net. And, to keep things as simple as possible, coj.net links will automatically redirect users to the corresponding page on Jacksonville.gov. Happy hunting! GET COVERED JAXWe had an absolutely huge response to the debut of our new Get Covered Jax campaign! Thanks so much to WJXT Channel 4 for hosting a live phone bank to get people access to affordable or even no-cost health insurance through the Florida Marketplace. As many of you know, this issue is very personal to me. So I’m excited to debut this campaign to raise awareness and make sure more people in our city get the health coverage they need. For more, visit GETCOVEREDJAX.COM. SUPPORTING OUR VETERANSFrom attending the annual Military Appreciation Luncheon, to hosting the Veteran’s Day Breakfast and Parade, I’m honored to take part in a number of events around town this month honoring and spotlighting all the amazing men and women in our community who’ve served. That includes spotlighting all the success stories from our Military Affairs and Veterans Services Department. They’ve built a great track record helping formerly homeless veterans in our area find jobs and housing, and I’m so proud of their success! AND IN CASE YOU MISSED IT…It’s always exciting when a social media post gets a lot of traction… like this one showing the progress on Phase 1 of Artist Walk. Things are really coming along with the installation of the cool new skate park that’s being built under the Fuller Warren Bridge. We can’t wait to see it completed! Finally, as we all give thanks later this month for our many blessings, I want to thank all of you for being great citizens of this city we all love. Mayor Donna Deegan
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