Daily Record Financial News &
Monday, July 25, 2016
Vol. 103, No. 181 • Two Sections
35¢ www.jaxdailyrecord.com
Summer literacy camps off track?
Gentry wants answers after site has no books for kids By David Chapman Staff Writer
program. Vendors were given extra money to buy the books for the kids. After some initial questioning, Gentry and his Journey colleague, Debbie Verges, found out the vendor they visited never did. “It’s not the experience we have designed or expected,” Gentry said Friday night. Additionally, the commission is the oversight agent for the camps but hadn’t made any site visits to the vendor, Gentry said in his letter. And it might not have been just one of the seven camps lacking.
Gentry asked the commission’s senior operations director about the situation. According to the letter, the director was under the impression that except for one center, none of the camps provided books for each child. There was more. Gentry went on to say at least one center hadn’t done the required background checks on all its employees and two other centers didn’t have the proper insurance. After telling the Journey oversight committee later that day of the situation, he wrote the letter to Literacy continued on Page A-11
Bob Dees is wrapping up 14 years as a shareholder at Milam Howard Nicandri Dees & Gillam. He starts his job as a 4th Judicial Circuit judge next month.
The next step in his career
Bob Dees was just 6 years old when his father died in a car accident. He was too young to have many memories from that time. But his mother remembers her son asking a question well beyond his years: “Are we going to be OK with money?” The baby of the family was insightful enough to realize his mom’s elementary school teacher paycheck was the only source of income for the now family of three. Dees didn’t want to be a burden or cause trouble for his mother. Neither did his sister, who is two years older than him.
Public
“So I was always sort of a goody twoshoes kid,” he said. Though he grew up without a father, Dees found a strong male influence in one of his uncles from his mother’s side of the family. The uncle was a well-respected lawyer in the family’s hometown of Lakeland. “I wanted to emulate that,” Dees said. And he did, graduating from the University of Florida Levin College of Law in 1987. Dees has worked for respected small firms and the imposing Holland & Knight. His career has included First Amendment, maritime and insurance defense cases. Dees continued on Page A-7
legal notices begin on page
B-2 B-3
Dees and his wife, Margaret, have two daughters, Vivian and Lilah.
Special to the Daily Record
Dees was ready to pursue judgeship after wrapping up pension cases
By Marilyn Young Editor
Gentry
Accident costs hurt Landstar earnings
Photo by Marilyn Young
W.C. Gentry popped in a summer literacy camp Thursday, eager to catch a glimpse of how the enhanced program was working. The Jacksonville Journey chair said he was pleased with the children’s engagement, but then noticed a glaring omission. The literacy camp had no books for the children. The supervisor was reading to the children, but the kids didn’t have the books for themselves.
It was enough to lead Gentry to write a blistering three-page letter to the Jacksonville Children’s Commission CEO detailing other issues found on the trip and demanding answers. This year, the Journey and the Children’s Commission provided a $350,000 boost for seven of the 106 summer camps in the city’s more depressed areas to add a literacy component. An hour a day of literacy instruction and enrichment is intended to be used as an assessment tool to help determine progress made to peers without the
Landstar System Inc. last week reported lower-than-expected second-quarter earnings because of costs associated with a “severe accident,” CEO Jim Gattoni said. The Jacksonville-based trucking company didn’t give any details on the accident but said it occurred at the end of the quarter and increased estimated insurance and claims costs. Landstar reported earnings of 76 cents a share, below the company’s forecast range of 80 cents to 85 cents. But even without the accident costs, Landstar’s earnings were well below the 92 cents earned in the second quarter of 2015. “Industry fundamentals during the 2016 second quarter remained similar to those experienced in the 2016 first quarter with soft demand and more readily available truck capacity.” Gattoni said in Landstar’s conference call with analysts. “Those freight conditions, along with the lower diesel fuel prices, continued to put downward pressure on revenue per load on Gattoni loads hauled via truck. Considering the softness in demand, we executed relatively well during the quarter,” he said. When asked by an analyst if Landstar could do anything more to improve safety in its trucking network, Gattoni said accidents are sometimes “unavoidable” and the company has a “rather large safety department” that works with drivers. “We do everything we can to be safe,” he said. “We are constantly working on programs to avoid the situations that we
P Published ublished for for 26,975 26,981
Basch
continued on
Page A-10
consecutive weekdays