{"id":24367,"date":"2025-10-28T22:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T22:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/24367\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T22:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T22:34:08","slug":"history-maker-karen-bowling-honored-by-jacksonville-city-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/24367\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;History maker&#8217; Karen Bowling honored by Jacksonville City Council"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Gone but not forgotten. That\u2019s the attitude of <a href=\"https:\/\/jacksonville.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">Jacksonville\u2019s<\/a> City Council, as members honored former <a href=\"https:\/\/jaxcityc.legistar.com\/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=7698997&amp;GUID=E32BE859-3B0C-4B50-8F0F-BEA5D5989DF6\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Chief Administrative Officer<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacksonville.gov\/mayor\/mayor-s-staff\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">Karen Bowling<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Bowling\u2019s departure from the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/floridapolitics.com\/archives\/758954-bowling-out\/\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Donna Deegan<\/a> administration was announced earlier this month, and mystery still shrouds why she left.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">However, the City Council unanimously voted for and sponsored a resolution to \u201ccommend and honor\u201d Bowling\u2019s \u201csteadfast commitment to this community, demonstrating vision, service, leadership, and innovation across sectors,\u201d with members of both parties offering testimonials.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cKaren Bowling was our chief administrative officer, did an incredible job, and all of a sudden was gone,\u201d remarked Republican\u00a0Rory Diamond, a frequent critic of the Democratic Mayor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cKaren Bowling is a history maker. She was the first woman to do this job in the history of the city of Jacksonville,\u201d added Democrat\u00a0Rahman Johnson.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jaytrumbull.com\/\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-723469\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/jay-trumbull-florida-politics-banner-ads-728x90-b-scaled-e1740688220698.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"728\" height=\"90\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cI got a chance to know Karen as a colleague in media, who, as a reporter, when she started her career in this city and continued to change the game and everything she does. So I was honored to do this. I think it\u2019s important when young people, like the ones we see as pages today, can see people like Karen Bowling rise to the highest heights of our city. It shows that anything, in any way is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Bowling moved from television media to become the former CEO of Solantic Urgent Care, a company she co-founded with current U.S. Sen.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/rickscott.senate.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">Rick Scott<\/a> in 2001. She had numerous other governmental roles before joining the Deegan administration, including serving as former Mayor\u00a0Alvin Brown\u2019s CAO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gone but not forgotten. That\u2019s the attitude of Jacksonville\u2019s City Council, as members honored former Chief Administrative Officer&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,8541,18570,18571],"class_list":{"0":"post-24367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-jacksonville","9":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","10":"tag-jacksonville-news","11":"tag-karen-bowling","12":"tag-rahman-johnson","13":"tag-rory-diamond"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}