LamarThames's blog

The following release is from Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson's office.

Keystone Heights- The Florida Division of Forestry, Florida Park Service, and Clay County Fire Rescue are jointly working on a project to reduce the wildfire danger for residents of Keystone Heights. A prescribed burn has been planned for approximately 30 acres of thick overgrown brush located on an island in the middle of Lake Geneva, just south of the intersection of Florida 100 and Florida 21 in Keystone Heights. This dried lake bed is covered with flammable grasses and underbrush that could fuel a wildfire, dangerously close to homes.

I am posting this for our Keystone Heights correspondent.

By ANNE SPONHOLTZ

I am posting this news item because the reporter is on another assignment.
By BETH REESE CRAVEY

beth.cravey@myclaysun.com

The Fleming Island High wrestling program has been indefinitely suspended while Clay County school district officials investigate a hazing incident that wound up on an online video site.School Superintendent David Owens said four members of the school’s wrestling team were also suspended.“It’s the fact,” Owens said Wednesday. “I don’t like it, but it’s the truth.”The hazing incident, which occured within the last few weeks in the school wrestling room, involved four wrestlers hazing a freshman member of the team. While two of the older wrestlers stood by, another “dropped his pants and put his rear end in the freshman’s face, and another one took pictures,” Owens said.Images from the incident were posted on the YouTube video site, he said.A Fleming Island High spokeswoman said school officials would not comment on the incident or the suspensions and referred questions to the school district office. A parent reported the hazing to school officials.

After further investigation, it appears that an administrative law judge's decision that St. Vincent's Hospital could build a hopsital in Middleburg is premature.
Both Michael Mayo, chief executive officer of Orange Park Medical Center, and a spokeswoman for the state agency involved in the case said the judge's decision is not final. 
Shelisha Durden of the Agency for Health Care Administration said that agency will decide who builds a hopsital in Clay County and that no decision has been made.
St. Vincent's issued a press release Tuesday based on the judge's decision of Monday, proclaiming its right to build a hospital in Clay County. 

The holidays are just around the corner and My Clay Sun is collecting information on activities from around the county.

If your group or business is planning anything special that the public would be interested in attending, please send the information and we will publish it for you. Send notices of your activity or special events to lamar.thames@myclaysun.com.

We removed the blog by RLyons because we felt that the blog by user RLyons was a personal attack.

As we have mentioned in the past, we can not allow personal attacks on MyClaySun.com.

Most of you regular readers of the blogs probably already know this, but I wanted to alert the other, more casual visitors to myclaysun.com that we are posting blogs of as many high school football games that we can physically staff on the site every week.
The reason I am telling you is I would like for you to relate that information to your sons, daughters, friends or who ever you think might be interested in high school football in Clay County. 
Yes, the Times-Union does report on most of the Clay games in its Saturday morning sports pages, but we will quite often have a more detailed story than the paper does because of space limitations. Plus, we will often have photos from at least two county games each week.

County Commissioner Rob Bradley released this press release today:

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – AUGUST 20, 2007 – Republican attorney Rob Bradley will run for the 

newly-created position of elected chairman of the Clay County Board of County 

Commissioners. 

Bradley, a fourth-generation Clay native who was recently appointed to the Commission by 

That was quick. Here is a response to the bridge issue from County Engineer Chuck Iley. Below the response is a copy of the front page of the September 2006 bridge inspection report. As you can see, the bridge received the grade "Structurally Deficient"

----------------------- 

Mr. Kinder,

Thank you for your comments. We have been aware of the situation
concerning the CR 209 Bridge for some time and have been working with
FDOT to get this bridge replaced. I am not sure where the information
came from that indicated that it had not been inspected in three years,
but I am attaching a copy of the bridge inspection report dated
September, 2006, less than one year ago. That inspection determined
that the current weight restrictions on the bridge are adequate and
offer the proper protection for the public. The box marked "This report
identifies deficiencies which require prompt corrective action" is
unchecked. The bridge inspection program is funded and administered by
the Florida Department of Transportation.

This bridge is currently on the list for replacement by FDOT utilizing
funds slated for off-system bridge replacement. The project is to be
administered by FDOT, who has completed the design, permitting and
Right-of way for the project. Construction funds ($14.5 Million) become
available for the project in June, 2008, which is less than a year away.
With the schedule for construction to begin being so close, as well as
the fact that the reports do not indicate impending failure, the costs
associated with acceleration of the project at this point would not be
justifiable.

We currently do not have a commercial vehicle enforcement program in the
County. We rely heavily upon FDOT to enforce the laws concerning load
restrictions for commercial vehicles. However, we have been taking
steps to ensure that all contractors working within the County, as well
as the garbage haulers in the County, are aware of the load restrictions
on the bridge and adhere to them. If you should see any activity that
appears to violate these restrictions, we would be interested in knowing
about it.

I absolutely share your concern that we not have a repeat of the
Minnesota tragedy in Clay County. Protecting the safety of the
traveling public is my job, and it is not a responsibility that I take
lightly. We are scheduled to begin the replacement next year, and we
are working diligently to keep the threatened raid of the Transportation
Trust Fund by Governor Crist from pushing the project back further as
previous State budget cuts have done.

If you should have any questions, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Chuck Iley, P.E.
Director of Development Services / County Engineer
Clay County Board of County Commissioners
P.O. Box 1365
Green Cove Springs, Florida 32043
(904) 284-6301 Office
(904) 278-4708 Fax

This informative letter was emailed to me today and I thought it was worth sharing with our readers. It was addressed to Chuck Iley, Fritz Behring, and Harold Rutledge.