Archive : Tom Patton

  Well, that was fun. Back about six months or so ago, I announced that I had chosen so seek a seat on the Jacksonville City Council.  And I chose an enormous mountain to climb in the process… challenging a well-known incumbent in a county-wide race. We now...

It was just two years ago that the punditocracy was writing obituaries for the Republican party. And indeed, the GOP was in disarray. Democrats held solid majorities in the House and Senate, and had just won the White House. Tuesday night, the pendulum...

For years, driving across the Matthews Bridge, I’d look down at the old Ford assembly plant and think about what a great location it has on the river, and wondered how it appeared inside. The photographer in me had always wanted to have an opportunity...

I recently met someone who had a very compelling story to tell, and in some ways could be considered a metaphor for today’s economy. Let’s call him Joe. Joe had been a manager at a fast food restaurant, it doesn’t really matter which one. Long before...

I have decided, after a great deal of thought and reflection, to enter the race for a seat on the Jacksonville City Council, running in the At-Large, Group 2 race. And the question I’ve most often been asked as I’ve gone through this process is “why...

I was reminded again on Saturday just how lucky we are to have the river that runs through our city. I spent a couple of hours, as I am lucky enough to do from time to time, just cruising from the mouth of the river up to Clapboard Creek, and in just...

Mayor Peyton has proposed a budget that uses a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to close an estimated $60 million gap between revenue and spending. The budget calls for the elimination of 40 vacant positions, reduces part-time and overtime funding,...

The forecasts are all out, and every indication points to an “above normal” hurricane season in 2010. NOAA has a whole host of charts and graphs with circles and arrows and a paragraph at the bottom of each one describing what each one is to be used...

All around town, as new traffic lights are installed at major and not-so-major intersections, infrastructure is being put in place for cameras which will snap a picture of the license plate of a car that runs a red light. The devices are causing a great...

It has been almost a month since the explosion of Deepwater Horizon, a drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana. Estimates vary wildly about the amount of oil that has poured into the Gulf of Mexico. There is also a difference of opinion about whether...