The Mayor was at the ‘most important’ events before continuing her foreign travels.
Jacksonville’s Mayor managed to find some pleasure even on a trip billed as strictly business.
Florida Politics can report that Mayor Donna Deegan stayed in Europe earlier this month after leaving London, where the city was on its vital yearly trade mission to London as the Jaguars played a couple of games in the city.
The first-term Democrat elected in 2023 had what spokesperson Philip Perry called a “pre-planned vacation to Italy” that occasioned a reshuffling of the schedule to shift priority events to facilitate the Roman Holiday.
JAXUSA, the offshoot of former mayoral candidate Daniel Davis’ Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce that handled a lot of logistics for the trip, was “aware of this and arranged the most important meetings and events on the days she was always scheduled to be in London, Oct. 12 to Oct. 15.”
Deegan found time in London to make news for other reasons, including a controversial interview with the London Times Radio where she told a foreign audience that she thought Donald Trump would set up concentration camps for illegal immigrants.
JAX USA President Aundra Wallace said his organization “knew” Deegan’s schedule when “planning the agenda” and frontloaded the meetings out of respect. He described the “London mission” as “critical as we collectively sell Jacksonville.”
How much did the trip cost taxpayers? And which city staffers made the annual journey to “sell” the city to a place the same group of people has gone to every October for more than a decade?
That’s a question yet to be answered.
The Mayor’s Office, per Perry, is “tracking down some final costs from JAXUSA” and promises to deliver some answers “early next week.”
Perry also addressed Sheriff TK Waters’ claim that Deegan didn’t “make time” for a cop’s funeral last week, saying the administration isn’t “commenting further out of respect for the family and to keep this from becoming a political football.”
Post Views: 0