Jacksonville, Florida | featured news

JEA executives believe a plan they will outline Tuesday would reduce electric bills for customers beginning this year, keep bills stable and avoid rate increases in the next five years.
“Importantly, every single customer – all commercial, all residential – electric customers will have a bill decrease as a result of the combination of recommendations here,” Chief Financial Officer Melissa Dykes said. “By doing this today, we actually save our customers $100 million over the next eight years.”

Only 7 percent of people who get pancreatic cancer survive at least five years.
Bonnie Dvoravic of St. Johns County is one of the fortunate few.
Diagnosed in 2006, she had to endure months of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. But staunch support from her family, friends and a “global prayer chain” helped her emerge victorious, she said.
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A Jacksonville business executive and car collector donated $30,000 to the University of North Florida’s Osprey Racing Team, who annually design and build a race car to compete against other colleges in the annual national Formula SAE championship.
APR Energy Chairman and CEO John Campion, whose company is also a team title sponsor, presented the donation to Dean Mark Tumeo at a Wednesday ceremony with the 5-year-old team and its latest race car at the University Center Board of Trustees Room.

More detours are coming this weekend for the ongoing Overland Bridge road construction project on Interstate 95 in Jacksonville’s San Marco area.
The detours will be in place between 8 p.m. Friday through as late as 6 a.m. Monday so the contractor can perform demolition, according to the Florida Department of Transportation.
Motorists traveling east on Atlantic Boulevard will be directed to Kings Avenue southbound, then to Philips Highway/US-1, Emerson Street eastbound, then to Spring Park Road northbound.

Mary Foulks never met her husband’s father, and when she married James “Jay” Arch Foulks III four years ago she didn’t know she would end up spending her days looking for him.
Jay hasn’t seen his father, James Arch Foulks Jr., since he was 4 years old. He was lost in the Korean War.
“He was an aircraft commander in a B-29, lost on a daylight raid … Oct. 23, 1951,” Jay said Monday, seated next to his wife in the living room of their St. Johns County home.

JEA lifted a boil water advisory on Thursday that was issued earlier in the week for customers in certain communities.
JEA issued the advisory Tuesday after a water main break and water outage.
The utility conducted water quality testing, the results met water quality standards, and the water is safe to drink, according to a Thursday morning statement.
JEA recommends those customers flush water lines for three minutes after their water returns to remove any possible air or sediments from their line.

Mary Foulks never met her husband’s father, and when she married James “Jay” Arch Foulks III four years ago she didn’t know she would end up spending her days looking for him.
Jay hasn’t seen his father, James Arch Foulks Jr., since he was 4 years old. He was lost in the Korean War.
“He was an aircraft commander in a B-29, lost on a daylight raid … Oct. 23, 1951,” Jay said Monday, seated next to his wife in the living room of their St. Johns County home.

TALLAHASSEE | A new study highlights that Duval is one of three Florida counties accounting for almost a quarter of the state’s youth misdemeanor arrests, opting for arrest over a proven alternative.
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Sharon Ellis gets goose bumps when she looks out over the unfinished pathways that surround Lake Wonderwood on Mayport Naval Station.
The progress she sees on each visit to the lake gives her chills.
When she first laid eyes on the property, the vegetation was overgrown and children had to walk through the woods to get to school. It wasn’t a place anyone would want to take their family, Ellis said.
She’s trying to change that.

Andrea Kalin first got to know Stetson Kennedy while working on her 2007 documentary “Soul of the People,” which was about the Depression era Works Progress Administration (WPA).
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