Rotary Club Asked to Come Back to South Jacksonville Board With More Info on Annual Bass Tournament Grant Request

By Benjamin Cox on January 29, 2025 at 8:01am

The Rotary Club of Jacksonville sent a representative to the Village of South Jacksonville Board of Trustees meeting last Thursday asking for an increase to their annual tourism grant.

The annual Rotary Bass Tournament at Lake Jacksonville requested and receive $5,000 last year from the village’s tourism funds for publicity to court outside visitors. This year the annual fishing tournament will be celebrating its 25th anniversary. The tournament traditionally benefit’s the Rotary’s community service initiatives, local non-profit organizations, and its scholarship program.

The Rotary’s Pete Carteaux told the trustees that they are seeking double of last year’s request, because they would like to double the size of the event this year: “This year, one of the reasons you are seeing an increase for the request in funding is because we are raising the prize money. First prize this year is going to be $2,000 instead of $1,000 and overall we are going to do about $4,000 of prizes. We’re going to have some fancy gifts and bags for everybody, and a hat. What we do with the money that we have left over is we distribute it back out to non-profits. We do 3 scholarships for local students with that money. Overall, it’s about $30,000 we put back out into the community.”

Carteaux says that last year’s event brought approximately 35 boats to the competition, with many of them coming from out of town for the day-long event. Carteaux says that the Village of South Jacksonville’s hotels were predominantly featured in last year’s promotional materials and on the event’s website. Carteaux apologized because he did not have the materials on hand to show the board, but would be happy to produce them.

Trustee J.W. Coleman suggested that Carteaux return to the board’s February 6th meeting with the information before a vote would be taken on granting the new request: “I would like for you to come back in February with the flyer. We are missing a trustee tonight. We would like to see how you are going to promote this because we’ve scrutinized tourism – these tourism grants. It really has to be a tourism-based promotion. Obviously it is, but with doubling the money, I want justification. I believe your organization is phenomenal – please don’t misconstrue what I’m trying to say. It’s just that we have really been scrutinizing grants because we’ve felt that alot of people were coming in and seeking funds for things that were not necessarily tourism related.”

Coleman was referencing an absence of trustee Paula Belobradjic-Stewart in the statement. Carteaux says the suggestions from the trustees had given him some further ideas, and he said along with those ideas, he would return in February with last year’s promotional material for this year’s grant opportunity.