Issue 31, July 31st
Last week I was honored to address one of our members serving in elected office as “Madame President.” Lori Boyer gave a fantastic presentation on the state of the city from her perspective, details on the proposed sales tax referendum, and potential opportunities once “the albatross” has been handled. Thinking back, I can’t recall the last time an elected official brought a PowerPoint presentation to coincide with their speech to our club. For the 2016-2017 fiscal year, City Council is in great hands and I couldn’t be more honored to once again have one of our members at the helm…
We’re headed into the home stretch of this election season, well at least as far as most local and state races are concerned for Duval. This week we’ll hold our final debate of the season; all candidates running for Florida House District 12 have confirmed they’ll attend. In case you were unaware, as a special treat we’ll have current Representative Lake Ray III moderating the event. What better way for our club to interview the candidates, one of whom will be representing the Southside for the next 2 years, than to have the current office holder plan the event?!?! No doubt Lake wants to ensure he is succeeded by the best candidate capable of finishing what he started, particularly when considering his strong support of our port. This will no doubt be a fantastic event, and maybe we’ll get luck and find ourselves in the news once again shortly thereafter.
With fellow members Lake Ray, John Rutherford, & Steve Kauffman running for Congressman Crenshaw’s seat I know we have somewhat of a split amongst the membership as far as supporters are concerned. In the interests of fairness I would like to disclose we asked Lake to moderate this event back in February on the Tallahassee legislative delegation. This was long before the Congressman declared his intention not to run for re-election. We had hoped to try and hold a forum for that race, unfortunately the dates available were limited and we were unable to coordinate favorably with all the campaigns. The club and SBMC PAC are remaining neutral, no doubt either John, Lake, or Steve would do a fantastic job representing our district…I just hope the victor is an SBMC member once again!
For the month of August the calendar is loaded with great speakers. For the first time since taking office Mayor Lenny Curry will address our club on August 17th. We have some special treats lined up for that week, plus we’ll have a former member return the week following for a break from politics to give us some solid advice and motivation in our business lives. Donn Carr, who used to manage the Avenues Mall, (and ensured the Holiday Party always had a plethora of adult refreshments), is making a special trip to Jax to speak to us on August 24th. I think there may be a group hitting happy hour with him the evening prior, send me an email so I can pass that along. It won’t be an “Official SBMC Event,” but I’d want to try and prevent any exclusions.
