5 years ago in Clay Today:

• Voters will decide whether [they] want a half-cent sales tax increase to pay for school maintenance and other projects after the school board approved the adding it to the November ballot.
• The year 2020 has been marked globally by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shattered normality all over the world. Now that hurricane season is here, the angst of severe weather is only compounded by the impacts of the pandemic.
• The Rotary Club of Orange Park with its mission to provide ser vice to others, delivered more than 700 pounds of food to the Food Pantry or Green Cove Springs. In partnership with Orange Park Medical Center, the drive-through food drive collected food donations
• The Scout Oath pledges that a scout will do their best, and for Clay County Cub Scouts, they did just that this past spring, despite the COVID-19 pandemic doing its worst to disrupt every aspect of life.

10 years ago:

• For the third time in two years, Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler is being sued because his deputies arrested the wrong person. The third case includes video surveillance that the in nocent man’s attorney doesn’t believe the sheriff’s office checked and a thumb print of the man who was guilty and not investigated by the Clay County Sheriff’s Office.
• A special called com bination workshop and board meeting of the Clay County School Board began with a tense discussion June 8 that ended with two board members walking out on grounds the meeting was illegal and not properly advertised under Florida’s open meetings laws.
• A Fourth Judicial Circuit Court judge has sentenced a Middleburg teen to five years of probation in connection with the Feb. 6, 2012, shooting death of Clay County Sheriff’s Office Det. David White.
• Students wade through the water as they receive a lesson from the lifeguards of the Barco-Newton YMCA, laughing as jokes ripple around the pool while they learn essential techniques of survival. YMCA officials are stressing safety heading into the peak months of summer swim fun in the wake of the release of recent drowning statistics.