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Jacksonville News

New Jax Witty

Articles, reviews, advice, and legitimate research to go along with some back-handed comments. Think of us as Jacksonville's mother-in-law.
  • Does HOA collect police reports for crimes in my neighborhood?
    Someone on Nextdoor was asking this question, and I was tempted to respond that the only thing HOAs collect is money. The real responses to the question ranged from, "It depends on your HOA" to "That's not part of what an HOA does." While I can understand that crime is separate from house paint and green lawns, since crime is the #1 factor in property values, HOAs probably need to DO something when it comes to crime.

    I read that in a town in the Southwest, an HOA was being sued because a house that had been deemed a nuisance was not foreclosed on, resulting in a child being killed in a drive-by shooting meant for the residents of the nuisance house. I agree with the people bringing the lawsuit. If the HOA's sole purpose is to maintain property values, then people who bring crime to the neighborhood should be forced out, just like someone who might never mow the grass or  pay HOA dues. 

    When one of our neighbors brought two violent incidents to our block, I wrote to my HOA and to the owner of the rented house. I mentioned the lawsuit above to the HOA, and I told both entities that other neighbors had confirmed to me that the police showed up at the house several times before we'd moved in. I myself had seen a member of the household arrested a couple months before the violence. So three incidents in about four months, and I decided it was time for the family to move on. I never really received much of a response, but the family DID move out within a couple of weeks. Maybe the family realized it was time for a fresh start, but I'd like to think that getting involved helped to push them. However, I also believe the HOA and rental company would have either not known about it or ignored the problem without my letters. 


    Crime, however, is often a result of people from outside of the neighborhood. That crime itself may not be the responsibility of the HOA, but installing a trail camera on a cell phone plan with a solar power battery pack might do the trick to capture trespassers. Any kind of camera, really. See if the police will install one. Even a fake camera might deter one crime. I'd let a wifi camera on my street use my guest wifi, as well, and I assume some of my other neighbors would, too.

    The HOA could go semi-all-out and install an automatic gate without a code, along with a powered camera that stores video. If there's no code, anyone can get into the neighborhood, but it slows people down and ensures everyone entering knows they are on camera. The good news is that the roads are still public and part of the city.  

    Maybe HOA bylaws need to include more about crime and nuisance homes, especially in an area like Jacksonville. Crime is spread out in this town. Maybe back when my HOA was formed in 2004, there was no crime in East Arlington, but that's not the case today. Homeowners need to expect more out of their HOAs, as property value is more about crime than a nice pool and paint color of the houses. 






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  • Jacksonville List of Neighborhoods
    I keep seeing all the Jacksonville neighborhoods as backdrops to maps, but I have yet to see them listed for those of us who like lists. So, after using the government websites to find the GIS maps that contain the neighborhoods, I was able to extract the lists of areas in Jax that appear on maps. It could be useful to those of you who also like lists and deal in real estate or something where you'd need the names of all the neighborhoods here.


    The lists are in alphabetical order by region. Jacksonville is big, so it's divided into six planning zones: A (Arlington and Beaches), N (North), NW (Northwest), SE (Southeast), SW (Southwest), and U (Urban Core). I wanted to make a visual grid map using a table, but it's just so big. Also, I do understand alphabetical, but it would be nice on a map if the letter-number combinations were adjacent, but that's just an opinion, and we're pretty much stuck with alpha order now. I think a couple of names were cut off because of length, but this is a fairly comprehensive neighborhood list for Jacksonville/Duval.

    It's also interesting to note that if Jacksonville ever made the move to un-consolidate, the six zones would be the most likely separate cities.


    A01 Alderman Park
    A02 Arlington
    A03 Arlington Hills
    A04 Arlington Manor
    A05 Arlingtonwood
    A06 Atlantic Blvd. Estate
    A07 Atantic Highlands
    A08 Beachwood
    A09 Beacon Hills & Harbour
    A10 Charter Point
    A11 Clifton
    A12 Cobblestone
    A13 Colony Cove
    A14 East Arlington
    A15 Empire Point
    A16 Fara Ways Forrest
    A17 Fort Caroline Shores
    A18 Gilmore
    A19 Girvin
    A20 Glynea/Grove Park
    A21 Golden Glades/The Woods
    A22 Hidden Hills
    A23 Hogan
    A24 Holiday Harbors
    A25 Holiday Hill/Century
    A26 Holly Oaks
    A27 Lake Lucina
    A28 Love Grove/Riviera Ma
    A29 Mayport
    A30 Monterey
    A31 North Beach
    A32 Oak Haven
    A33 Park Ridge
    A34 Regency
    A35 St. Johns Bluff
    A36 St. Nicholas
    A37 Sandlewood
    A38 Southside Estates
    A39 Spring Glen
    A40 University Park
    A41 Woodland Acrea
    A42 Woodmere
    Atlantic Beach
    Baldwin
    Jacksonville Beach
    N01 Biscayne
    N02 Biscayne Terrace
    N03 Black Hammock Island
    N04 Blount Island
    N05 Brown Island
    N06 College Park
    N07 Copper Hill
    N08 Dinsmore
    N09 Duval
    N10 Eagle Bend
    N11 East Point
    N12 Forrest Trails
    N13 Fort George Island
    N14 Garden City
    N15 Highlands
    N16 Hollyford
    N17 Imeson Park
    N18 Jax. North Estates
    N19 Jamestown
    N20 Little Marsh Hill
    N21 New Berlin
    N22 North New Berlin
    N23 North Lake
    N24 Oceanway
    N25 Pecan
    N26 Pumpkin Hill
    N27 San Mateo
    N28 The Cape
    N29 Turtle Creek
    Neptune Beach
    NW01 Allendale
    NW02 Biltmore
    NW03 Bulls Bay
    NW04 Carver Manor
    NW05 Cisco Gardens
    NW06 College Gardens
    NW07 Commonwealth
    NW08 Crystal Springs
    NW09 Edgewood
    NW10 Edgewood Manor
    NW11 Grand Park
    NW12 Harborview
    NW13 Lackawanna
    NW14 Lake Forrest
    NW15 Lake Forrest Hills
    NW16 Lincoln Hills
    NW17 Magnolia Gardens
    NW18 Marrietta
    NW19 Mixon Town
    NW20 Murray Hill
    NW21 New Town
    NW22 Normandy
    NW23 Normandy Estates
    NW24 Normandy Village
    NW25 Osceola Forrest
    NW26 Panama Park
    NW27 Paxton
    NW28 Picketville
    NW29 Ribault
    NW30 Riverside
    NW31 Riverview
    NW32 Robinsons Addition
    NW33 Rolling Hills
    NW34 Royal Terrace
    NW35 Sherwood Forrest
    NW36 Tallulah/ North Shore
    NW37 Whitehouse
    NW38 Woodstock
    NW39 45th & Moncrief
    SE01 Arrowhead
    SE02 Avenues
    SE03 Bayard
    SE04 Baymeadows
    SE05 Baymeadows Center
    SE06 Beach Haven
    SE07 Beauclec
    SE08 Bowden
    SE09 Brackridge
    SE10 Briarwood
    SE11 Craven
    SE12 Deercreek
    SE13 Deerwood
    SE14 Deerwood Center
    SE15 Del Rio
    SE16 Englewood
    SE17 Goodbys Creek
    SE18 Greenfield Monor
    SE19 Greenland
    SE20 Isle of Palms
    SE21 Julington Creek
    SE22 Kilarney Shores
    SE23 Lakewood
    SE24 Loretto
    SE25 Mandarin
    SE26 Mandarin Station
    SE27 Miramer
    SE28 Monclair
    SE29 Pickwick Park
    SE30 Pine Forrest
    SE31 Royal Lakes
    SE32 San Jose
    SE33 San Jose Forrest
    SE34 San Marco
    SE35 Sans Pareil
    SE36 Sans Souci
    SE37 Secret Cove
    SE38 South Riverside
    SE39 South Point
    SE40 Southwood
    SE41 Spring Park
    SE42 Sunbeam
    SE43 Tiger Hole/ Secret Wo
    SE44 Windy Hill
    SW01 Argyle Forrest
    SW02 Avondale
    SW03 Cedar Hills
    SW04 Cedar Hills Estates
    SW05 Chimmey Lakes
    SW06 Confederate Point
    SW07 Duclay
    SW08 Duclay Forest
    SW09 Fairfax
    SW10 Herlong
    SW11 Hillcrest
    SW12 Hyde park
    SW13 Jacksonville Farms/Te
    SW14 Jacksonville Heights
    SW16 Jax Heights West
    SW17 Jax Naval Air Station
    SW18 Lakeshore
    SW19 Maxville
    SW20 McGirts Creek
    SW21 Normandy Manor
    SW22 Oak Hill
    SW23 Ortega
    SW24 Ortega Farms
    SW25 Ortega Forest
    SW26 Ortega Hills
    SW27 Otis
    SW28 Settlers Landing
    SW29 Sweetwater
    SW30 Venetia
    SW31 Wesconnett
    SW32 Yukon
    U01 Brentwood
    U02 Brooklyn
    U03 Downtown Jacksonville
    U04 East Jacksonville
    U05 Fairfield
    U06 Hogans Creek
    U07 LaVilla
    U08 Longbranch
    U09 Midtown
    U10 Mid Westside
    U11 Moncrief
    U12 Phoenix
    U13 Springfield
    U14 Southside
    U15 Tallyrand
    U16 29th & Chase

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  • Top 4 Spots in Jacksonville's Arlington Neighborhood
    I was on the News4Jax website when I saw an "article" about local restaurants. The article said it was about Arlington restaurants, and I figured it wasn't that big of a deal that my location was being used to show me stories relevant to where I was. However, after reading the short blurbs about the top 4 restaurants in my area, I saw the disclaimer on the bottom of the article:
    This story was created automatically using local business data, then reviewed and augmented by an editor.
    So, I was not only reading an article that accessed my location in order to serve the right content, but the content itself was provided by the businesses being reviewed. Sure, the star-ratings were from Yelp, which is semi-reliable, but there is no real indication that these four restaurants were the top-rated restaurants on Yelp. I assume that they were the four Arlington restaurants that paid to be part of an advertising article promoting them.

    You can see from the address bar that the article title was "Check Out The Top 4 Spots in Jacksonville's Arlington Neighborhood." While I'm sure the four listed restaurants are just fine, it's disturbing that this content was served to me on a NEWS website as NEWS. It's clearly blatant advertising, paid placement, and not a real review or opinion by a human being. 

    What's next? Top four crimes this week articles that pull information from JSO's Crime Map? I know, there's no ad money in that, so probably not. The point is that if pretend articles are being pulled from content on paid-service websites and placed on news websites, then we're in trouble. As readers and as writers. Even the images are from Yelp, which means user-submitted. No one did any work on the article in question, and more than likely, the "editor" is in India, curating and augmenting hundreds of pretend articles every day, never having eaten barbeque ribs in her life. 

    With so much data out there, it's nice to get a quick guide to some decent local restaurants to try, so there's a value to articles like the one that I thought I was reading. I might even like the listed places. It might even be accurate. But it's also wrong. 


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  • My Messy Office
    My messy classroom, home office, and garage all indicate the same thing to people: I must be careless, cranky, and uncaring. That's according to a study that showed two different work spaces to participants. A messy workspace left people with a negative perception of the unknown worker who occupied the space.


    That's kind of sad, since my mess is part of my creativity. Actually, I have to have a mess somewhere in order to function properly. I used to have a junk drawer when I first got married because my wife is pretty much the opposite of a messy person. She allowed me one junk drawer on the main level, and about half of the three basements we had. And most of the garage. And the tool shed. Those were my messy places.

    In Florida, we don't have the built-ins with drawers or a basement, so I have to be better at hiding my messes. It's frustrating, to say the least. The whole point of having a mess is that what I need is right there for me when I need it. I don't want to venture into the garage attic to find what I need. I don't want to have to page through file folders for tax documents when they are all stuffed on my desk where I need them. There should be a pen sitting out and within reach from any location in any room.

    The most frustrating, however, is the fact that I can't always find my writing notes. I'll take notes while out at a bar or while at church. Observations for later. And those notes need to be out in the open to remind me of what I need to be writing, like Christmas tree ornaments in my office space, or else I won't ever write those ideas. Then they just get stuffed in a box, which is suffocating for ideas.

    I also have to wonder if my bosses over the years have assumed something negative about me because my school desk was always messy. I tried to keep it way in the corner, but it was very, very messy. But that was because I was usually working on planning new lessons, revising old lessons, grading papers, writing, thinking, researching, and contacting people. Sometimes, I'd be testing out video production equipment, hooking various electronic devices into my computer to see what they could do, and generally figuring out if I could improve as a teacher. But it looked like I was somehow careless to outsiders.

    All in all, I'm lucky to have a wife who forces me to clean once in a while. If we were both like me, the house would be a disaster all the time, and people would be afraid to come over. And they'd probably think that both of us are careless, cranky, and uncaring.



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