St. Johns County closes COVID-19 testing site
The NOMI Health COVID-19 testing site at the St. Johns County Wind Mitigation Building is no longer operational due to a lack of sufficient federal funding.
Since early March, daily testing numbers at the county site have been steadily declining, averaging fewer than 100 tests a day. This is a result of widespread testing availability in the private sector, the federal program that mails free COVID-19 tests to individuals and a decrease in COVID-19 infections.
The following locations continue to offer COVID-19 testing in St. Johns County:
More than $60M awarded for emergency beach repairs
St. Johns County will receive up to $62 million in federal funding from the Jacksonville District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for emergency repairs on two beach projects.
The projects include the St. Johns County Shore Protection Project in St. Augustine Beach and the St. Johns County South Ponte Vedra Beach and Vilano Beach Coastal Storm Risk Management Project.
The Flood Control and Coastal Emergencies funding resulted from USACE evaluations of erosion impacts on the federal beach projects following the November 2021 nor’easter.
The St. Johns County Shore Protection Program will include placing about 2 million cubic yards of sand on 2.5 miles of federally authorized shoreline beginning about three miles south of the St. Augustine Inlet and extending south. The federal funding made available for this project is roughly $37 million.
The St. Johns County South Ponte Vedra Beach and Vilano Beach Coastal Storm Risk Management Project will include placing about a million cubic yards of sand on 2.6 miles of shoreline north of the St. Augustine Inlet. The federal funding available for this effort is about $25 million, including the district’s costs for design, permitting, contract acquisition and three years of post-construction monitoring.
Both projects will use sand from offshore sources.
DeSantis awards $1.7M to local projects
On Friday, April 22, Gov. Ron DeSantis awarded more than $15 million to 10 Florida communities through the Rural Infrastructure Fund and the Community Development Block Grant program. Among the recipients of the latter were St. Augustine and St. Johns County.
The City of St. Augustine was awarded $1,251,229 through the Community Development Block Grant program to rehabilitate the St. Francis House Crisis Center to meet increasing demands for service.
St. Johns County received $406,633 to construct an annex building to the county’s Emergency Operations Center to allow for interface with first responders and the public.
The grant program primarily benefits low- and moderate-income residents. Activities may benefit workforce housing, training and sustainability, as well as broadband infrastructure and planning.
For more information about the Community Development Block Grant program, go to FloridaJobs.org/CDBG-CV.
Mailing of St. Johns County voter registration cards temporarily halted
St. Johns County is currently in the process of redrawing and approving precinct lines and new voting locations following the 2020 census and the federal, state and local redistricting process. As a result, the mailing of new voter information cards has been suspended to allow for the adoption of the new precincts.
Once the redistricting process is complete, all registered voters in St. Johns County will receive new voter information cards and mailing of the cards will resume. These actions will occur prior to the Aug. 23 primary election.
Updated voter information cards will reflect the new districts, precincts and election day polling places. All voters are advised to review the new voter information cards carefully as their precincts and polling places may have changed.
The St. Johns Board of County Commissioners and School Board adopted new districts in December. As voting precinct lines are based on County Commission and School Board district lines, they are being redrawn based on the new districts and all polling places are under review.
In addition, new Florida Senate and House districts were recently adopted by the state legislature and have been approved by the Florida Supreme Court and new Federal Congressional districts are currently before the state legislature.
