The Allstate Holiday Teen Driving Hotspots study found that the 10 deadliest hotspots among the nation’s 50 largest metro areas from New Year’s Eve through New Year’s Day includes cities from coast to coast. What each area has in common is that over the past eight years they have among the highest fatal crash rates for teen drivers over the New Year’s holiday.

According to the study, among the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas (a central city and its surrounding counties), the deadliest hotspots for fatal teen crashes those two days are:

Columbus, Ohio
Richmond, Va.
Jacksonville, Fla.
Birmingham, Ala.
Orlando
Phoenix
Las Vegas
Philadelphia
Sacramento, Calif.
St. Louis

Car crashes are the No. 1 killer of American teens. More than 5,000 teens die on American roads every year, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The Holiday Teen Driving Hotspots study examines recent federal crash statistics, Allstate claims data on teen collisions, and U.S. Census Bureau statistics to score metro areas across the nation on rates of fatal crashes involving teen drivers during the holidays. The study was conducted by Allstate in conjunction with Sperling’s BestPlaces, a research firm specializing in demographic studies and analysis.

Allstate’s national Home for the Holidays public awareness and policy campaign focuses on encouraging parents to have the safe driving talk with their teens this holiday season.

The Gainesville Sun reports…

The department is taking over at a time when the inmate population is growing significantly while the legislature is cutting expenditures. The 2008 state legislature cut the department’s 2008-2009 food appropriation by $9.25 million to $76.5 million. When the legislature met in the spring, the inmate population was estimated at nearly 89,000, but earlier this month topped 100,000 for the first time in state history.

Prison contracts show Trinity pulled out of the prisons it was serving in November and Aramark will be out of all the prisons it has been serving by January 12. Since beginning to assume control of the prison kitchens, the department has contracted with US. Food Services to provide food.

“Thus far, US Food Services deliveries have been on time, and the consensus from our wardens is that the food being served is of higher quality, seasoned better, and better prepared than under former food service contracts,” said department spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff.

Department officials said there are multiple advantages to taking over food services, including that the department can now take advantage of any good deals it finds in the food supply chain. Also, the department is participating or planning to participate in programs like;

the National Child Nutrition Program that can reimburse the department for complying with program requirements an save the department about $425,000 annually.

the Edible Crops Program which involves inmates growing and harvesting fresh vegetables that will be served in prisons for an estimated $143,750 in annual savings.

the Farm Share Program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture allows prison to receive excess fruits and vegetables at no cost to the prisons and will generate an undetermined amount of annual savings because the crops and amounts that will be available for prisons are unknown until each growing season.

State prison officials are also talking with PRIDE officials, the non-profit agency that develops job skills training work sites inside prisons, on ways to expand its culinary arts programs and cooperative ventures to use PRIDE land to grow more crops.

From the Florida Times-Union…

Weinstein was elected Nov. 4 to represent House District 19, which includes Mandarin. He aspires to become House speaker.

Corey said Weinstein will be in charge of her office’s administrative and budgetary functions, the same position he held under former State Attorney Ed Austin before Austin was elected mayor in 1991.

Weinstein, who is volunteering with Corey’s incoming administration, will begin work after the 2009 legislative session, she said.

Weinstein said he will be paid about $100,000 annually, but he and Corey are still working out the details. He’ll also be paid about $30,000 a year as a state legislator.

“It’s a great pick,” former Mayor John Delaney said. “He’s a wonderful manager.”

Delaney, who worked side-by-side with Weinstein in the Mayor’s Office and State Attorney’s Office, said Weinstein is uniquely qualified because he understands both budgets and case flow.

Weinstein, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2003, said the job is a return to his first love of public safety. He said he and Corey spent several hours Friday touring the State Attorney’s Office.

“Angela’s going to really try to beef up the prosecution, and we’re going to try to help her do that, particularly during these difficult economic times,” Weinstein said.

We’re less than three weeks away from an important election, and three months from an even more important election, and usually the most you hear about it on the local stations is during the advertisements, where the candidates pay to pound on each other with sound bites.

This is tonight’s “local news” according to Channel 4’s website…

A visitor to Jacksonville would think he had stepped into the “Old Detroit” setting of the Robocop films, not a vibrant, rapidly growing, and relatively prosperous city.

I don’t discount the importance of covering our crime problem. Particularly, covering the proposals to combat it. But delighting in the gorey details of every single carjacking or home invasion just seems crude to me.

At what point do people start looking for more out of their local newscast? More actual news and fewer segments like “Crime Where You Live” — which seems to be a recurring Fox 30 feature aimed at convincing viewers to weld their doors shut at night.

Is that asking for too much?

Maybe it is. After all, I don’t seriously think most reporters enjoy covering car accidents and shootings. They would much rather dedicate their energies to more worthy pursuits… but ratings are what decide the content of the program.

Maybe it’s the viewers who are to blame. After all, we keep tuning in night after night.

From Jacksonville.com…

Police arrested him downtown Friday after Davis called and said Tarrer followed him and his parents from City Hall and cornered the councilman in a restaurant next to the Main Library, muttering obscenities at him. Davis, past president of the council, told police he feared for their safety.

He declined comment Saturday to the Times-Union on the incident.

Tarrer denied threatening Davis and told police he thinks the councilman and people at Trinity Rescue Mission were conspiring to harm him.

Police began investigating Wednesday after two employees in the City Council office said Tarrer came in and threatened to kill Davis.

The employees said Tarrer then removed the councilman’s picture and waved it around, saying, “You are a dead man.”

They said he then walked into the City Hall atrium and yelled that he hated Mayor John Peyton and would kill him, too.

The negative press and attention comes as the Port sees record growth and expansion.

“I understand that recent news stories have become a distraction for the many things we have sought to do at the port,” Baker wrote. “My actions are based on what I consider to be in the best interest of the port.”

What is the “gun show loophole” in practice? Here is how M.A.I.G. describes it…

Currently, licensed gun dealers are required to run criminal background checks on all buyers, but a loophole in the law enables criminals to avoid these checks if they buy from gun-sellers who don’t have licenses. Often operating at gun shows, these unlicensed sellers give criminals the opportunity to sidestep the background check system and easily purchase guns.

Jacksonville officials announced plans Monday to hire 40 new police officers, the first expansion of the force in nearly a decade.

The city is using unspent jail funds to pay for new additions through the end of the city’s fiscal year, Sept. 30. But with the city facing a 10 percent drop in anticipated property tax revenue and warning of potentially dire budget cuts, no one is certain where the funding will come from after that.

Operation Safe Streets and the other recent attempts to increase police presence have relied on either overtime hours for existing officers, or have involved reassignment of officers to street duty.  It seems that no new officer positions were actually created during this time. 

But here’s a question I’ve heard many people ask today.  If the Sheriff’s office hasn’t hired new officers in 9 years, why has the department’s budget exploded by millions upon millions of dollars over that same period?

I truthfully don’t know what the answer is. 

Fitzgerald is an extremely controversial figure, and the reaction to her reinstallation is likely to be quite negative.  She was removed amid a variety of charges of corruption and theft back in 2006… but she’s systematically beaten each of the accusations in court.

Critics of Fitzgerald can take some comfort from the fact that she’s returning at the end of her second term and will not be able to run for re-election in November.

It’s a full-time child care center with an emphasis on early literacy. The majority of the students live in the low-income area surrounding the center, which sits at the corner of A. Philip Randolph Boulevard and First Street on the outskirts of downtown.

The cited money as the reason for closing the center. The city’s cost to run the center, which is staffed with city employees, is $900,000.

Tough times calls for tough decisions to be made, but it’s hard to imagine how the Jacksonville Journey will get anywhere if we don’t even have enough money to maintain services for these communities at their current levels.