West Jax Rotary

Youth Awards

This week’s program will be our annual Youth Awards program where students from 7 Westside High Schools are recognized for their academic acheivements. $4,000 worth of scholarships will be awarded. Each school will have one $500 scholarship recipient, and the awards committee will also pick one additional student from the schools to receive a scholarship. Duval County Public Schools Superintendent and West Jax Rotary member Ed Pratt-Dannals will also address the students.

Notes
Terry Vereen announced that on April 10 we will meet a 8:30 am at the McDonalds on Blanding and the McDonalds on Ortega Blvd for the Adopt-a-highway project.

The Clay Shoot is scheduled for 4/22/10. There will be no meeting at the Holiday Inn that week. Instead we will have a BBQ lunch on that Thursday at the Clay Shoot. See Marshall Butler for raffle tickets are 1 for $10 and 3 for $20. If interested in sponsoring a stand, please contact Ike Sherlock. Contact Will Craft to register a team. They still need at least 5 more volunteers to work the event. If interested in volunteering please contact Jerry Fuller.

President John Runion announced that next week’s program is the Annual Youths Awards Banquet. We have approx. 24 students from 7 local High Schools that will be honored for their High School achievements. Please try to get to lunch 15 minutes early. We would like for everyone to be seated as close to 12:25 pm so we can start the program at 12:30 pm.

President John polled the club about the possibility of attending a Suns Baseball Game Friday May 28.

Frank Scheu is working on committee assignments for next year. If you are interested in a particular assignment please contact Fran Scheu or a board member.

John McCorvey spoke about the upcoming By-Laws changed and the upcoming vote in a couple of weeks. Please review the proposed By-Laws that will be distributed by email, and provide any feedback.

Captain Phil Voss introduced the guest speaker Steve Grossman with the JAA.

JAA as a business:

• JAA should be involved in the community and the community understand JAA.
• JIA is a domestic airport.
• Delta has JIA as the second highest business class travel in the United States.
• JAA does not receive general Tax revenues.
• JAA actually pays the the City for services such as fire protection.
• JAA is a sponsor for this year’s Jazz Festival.
• JAA takes risks and hopefully they are educated risks.
• He has spent the last 6 months asking questions to understand JAA himself.
• Proposed policy change will be going in front of the board for a “local preference program” to promote using locale vendors.
• Focusing locally.

Cecil Field

• Board priorities were a runway at Craig Airfield and Cecil Field.
• Cecil has 1.3 million square feet of leasable space. They are currently almost entirely leased out.
• The majority of tenants are government.
  • Navy
  • Army Guard
  • Coast Guard
  • Border Protection
  • Education Facilities
• Cecil already employs over 3,000 people.
• He projects that in the next 5 years that Cecil will still have a majority of government leasing.
• JAA is in Cecil to win.

Grossman  plans to be able to hit the deck running in June of this year. JAA needs to position themselves now to be ready for the economic recovery.

Questions:
What are some examples of doubles and triples? Growing 60-100 jobs at a time. He will be looking for those supporting vendors such as supplies to Boeing and the government to play an increased role at Cecil.
What are some examples of non-air side uses at Cecil? They will need housing, hotels and restaurants.
What about a spaceport? 6 weeks ago Cecil was designated the 8th commercial spaceport. Horizontally launched vehicles can reach low earth orbits. In the future they could have a Jacksonville to Asia suborbital commercial flight that takes about 1.5 hours.
How soon before a flight should we plan to be at JIA? at least 1 hour if you are checking luggage, and 45 minutes if you do not need to check luggage.
When will JIA get a machine that we do not need to take off our shoes? It is hard to say. JIA does have a full body scanner.

Visiting Rotarians
John Noseworthy — Wilmington, DE
Peter Condaxis — Riverside
Connie Green — Ponte Vedra (Stewart Green’s mom)

Rotary Guests
Chip O’Steen — Guest of Mark O’Steen (son)

Birthdays
Hugh Blanton - April 8
Jim Marlier - April 8

Next Meeting - April 22, 2010
CLAY SHOOT. NO MEETING AT HOLIDAY INN ON 4/21/2010.
Buy your raffle tickets!

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