{"id":446254,"date":"2026-11-03T16:58:36","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T16:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/446254\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T16:58:36","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T16:58:36","slug":"three-jacksonville-city-council-members-oppose-tourism-grant-for-donna-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/446254\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Jacksonville City Council members oppose tourism grant for Donna Marathon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Duval County Tourist Development Council narrowly awarded a tourism grant supporting the upcoming 20th running of the Donna Marathon<\/a> \u2014 named after Mayor Donna Deegan \u2014 despite opposition by three Jacksonville City Council members.<\/p>\n

The four votes that put the $54,400 grant across the finish line came from representatives of the hotel and tourism industry who said the funding is about maximizing the economic impact of filling hotel rooms and restaurants with thousands of marathon participants \u2014 not any connection Deegan has to the race<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We don’t need political grandstanding,” said Tourist Development Council member Shawn LeNoble, who represents the hotel industry on the council.<\/p>\n

City Council President Nick Howland, who is chair of the Tourist Development Council, said his opposition to the Donna Foundation’s request was based on the timing of the marathon coming shortly before early voting starts for the March mayoral election. He said he has supported funding for the race in the past and would do so again in the future but it shouldn’t get city support in the heat of campaign season.<\/p>\n

“I just think it’s wrong optically and for all sorts of purposes to provide city funding for the event,” Howland said.<\/p>\n

Deegan, a three-time breast cancer survivor, started the Donna Foundation in 2003 to raise money for breast cancer research and support for people with breast cancer. The Donna Marathon is the foundation’s signature event.<\/p>\n

Deegan stepped away from the Donna Foundation in 2019 when she ran for Congress. The city’s Ethics, Compliance and Oversight Office determined that under state law, there is no conflict of interest for the foundation to apply for and receive a tourism grant because Deegan is not a board member, officer, employee or member of the foundation and receives no compensation from it.<\/p>\n

City Council member Kevin Carrico said notwithstanding the opinion of the ethics office, the city shouldn’t fund an event named after the mayor.<\/p>\n

“I know she doesn’t work there anymore, but I don’t feel comfortable giving tax dollars to an event which is basically in honor of the person who runs the city,” he said. “I just don’t believe in that.”<\/p>\n

City Council member Joe Carlucci also opposed the Donna Foundation’s request at the Oct. 22 meeting when the Tourist Development Council voted on applications by 18 organizations. Carlucci said he opposed all the applications from organization who said they still would be able to stage their events even if they did not get a Tourist Development Council grant.<\/p>\n

Supporters of the grant said the marathon is second only to The Players Championship for putting heads in beds in the early months of the year. Visit Jacksonville projects the Donna Marathon weekend from Feb. 5-7 will result in 5,511 hotel room nights and $5.58 million in total business sales.<\/p>\n

The surge of business for hotels enables them to charge higher room rates which in turns generates more hotel bed taxes for the city.<\/p>\n

“And so I just think we need to eliminate the political agenda here and just focus on room nights,” LeNoble said.<\/p>\n

Howland, who is a Republican, said his opposition isn’t political.<\/p>\n

“Whether it was Republican or Democrat, I would feel the same way. I would not vote for city money to run ‘The Wyman,'” he said in reference to Wyman Duggan, the Republican who is challenging the re-election of Deegan, a Democrat.<\/p>\n

The Donna Foundation’s application for the grant said the 20th running of the marathon offers a “unique opportunity” to expand the draw of the event for people living outside Duval County. The non-profit expects the upcoming race on the weekend of Feb. 7 will have nearly 12,000 participants, a 38% increase from the 2026.<\/p>\n

The grant application says the funding will help the foundation scale up the event to handle the bigger field of runners and attract new visitors to Jacksonville.<\/p>\n

“So it’s an opportunity to show them what Jacksonville has to offer so that they’ll come back in future years,” Donna Foundation Executive Director Amanda Napolitano told the Tourist Development Council.<\/p>\n

The foundation previously received a $50,000 tourism grant for the 2024 race, a $70,000 grant for the 2025 race and a $70,000 grant for the 2026 race. Napolitano said that coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic<\/a>, the funding helped the foundation grow the marathon’s field of runners and increase the share of participants who are coming to the race from outside Duval County.<\/p>\n

She said for the February marathon, the share of participants from outside Duval County could be in the range of 70%.<\/p>\n

“So we know that we drive tourism into Duval County,” she told the Tourist Development Council. “Your support has helped this event grow, particularly after the COVID interruption.<\/p>\n

Based on the large number of hotel room nights that will be filled by marathon participants, the foundation could have received a maximum $80,000 grant award.<\/p>\n

The Tourist Development Council did not fund applicants at the maximum amounts because of the high number of requests the council received for a limited amount of money.<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: This story was first published by our news partners, The Florida Times-Union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Duval County Tourist Development Council narrowly awarded a tourism grant supporting the upcoming 20th running of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-446254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446254","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=446254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}