Five years ago, 2020 

• Nearly 8,000 turn out in record numbers on the first day of early voting, with the congressional majority and the presidency at stake. County mail-in ballots, nearly 19,500 have already voted in Clay County. 

• Low interest rates, millennials who’ve grown tired of living in their parent’s spare bedroom and low inventories create a high demand for housing in the county. 

• Bob Page is selected as the vice chairman for the Florida Municipal Power Agency’s Policy Makers Liaisons Committee. 

10 years ago, 2015 

• Orange Park High hosts a “Reality Fair” to teach students to better manage their finances. 

• After an ordinance to prohibit feeding feral cats fails, the Town of Orange Park looks for new ways to control the growing population. 

• Although the town’s Nuisance Abatement Board said a mandated 24-hour police and private security presence at the Rodeway Inn in Orange Park put a stop to drug trafficking and other crime, the fire department said Rodeway’s fire alarm system is non-existent. 

20 years ago, 2005 

• Middleburg mother Sayidana McCoy pleads guilty to beating her 8-year-old daughter 84 times with an electrical cord while her 10-year-old son videotaped the torture. 

• The Justice Coalition offers a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the shooting of Christopher B. Aligada, 40, of Orange Park, who was shot in the parking lot of Builder’s First Source on Roosevelt Boulevard in Jacksonville when he interrupted a robbery in progress. 

• The Clay County School Board got its first peek at newly redrawn school boundaries that would facilitate the opening of the K-8 school in Oakleaf. 

30 years ago, 1995 

• Alfred Pietrantoni, 72, and his wife Carolyn Dunn Pietrantoni, 61, of Middleburg, are killed in a head-on collision with a truck driven by Marcial Cruz on County Road 220 in the Doctors Inlet area. 

• Clay County residents place mementos in a time capsule in front of the Middleburg Community Center during the annual Middleburg Historic Festival. The time capsule will be opened in 2045. 

• Clay County Sheriff Scott Lancaster fires four employees on charges ranging from improper searches and arrests, lying to investigators, improper sexual conduct and interrogations and drug driving. 

40 years ago, 1985 

• With contract negotiations no longer at an impasse, officials with the Florida Education Association begin a push to increase a starting teacher’s pay to $25,000. 

• More than 200 residents of the Foxridge area continue to protest the Board of County Commissioners' plan to rezone 230 acres just west of their neighborhood from agricultural to residential. 

• The Clay County Sheriff’s Office investigate the shooting death of Debra E. Dye, 38, whose body was found after church in her Maxville home.