Changelog

The ramp board opened by saying "the county's own FAQ says the Doug Crane ramp floods in ordinary heavy rain", and pointed at the county's boat-ramp page as its source. That page says nothing of the kind. The claim is real, but it belongs to someone else. It comes from SASIA's FAQ, where a resident raised it at the general meeting on 17 January 2024 and county parks staff answered that the Doug Crane ramp project had not been closed out and that retention-pond work was still to come. That is better evidence than a page reference, not worse — it is county staff acknowledging the problem — but it should say who said it, to whom, and when. It now does, and the source line splits between the county page for the ramps themselves and the SASIA FAQ for the flooding. Whether that retention-pond work has since been done is still not published anywhere we can read, which remains the reason the board exists. Two facts the page had wrongly said were unpublished: the county's boat-ramp page opens by describing all fifteen of its ramps as free, and SASIA says both of these are open during daylight hours. Both are now on the page. The county also gives a separate number for boat-ramp questions, 904-209-0328. And the Moultrie Creek side has a boardwalk down to the shore with accessible parking, which was worth naming.

Two links on this town's pages went to the wrong place, and both were the kind you'd tap when something had gone wrong. "St. Johns County Emergency Management", on both the storm page and the contacts page, went to sjcfl.us/emergency-management/ — which the county's site answers with a press release about a deputy director rather than the department. During a storm that is a bad page to land on. It now points at the department itself, and carries the county's emergency operations number, 904-824-5550, which the contacts page had been missing entirely. "St. Johns County Solid Waste" went to a page about a solid-waste exemption. Fixed to the department. The utility and parks links were pointing at older addresses that still redirect; those are now the current ones. Every number on the contacts page was read off its own county page again today and none had changed. The Supervisor of Elections, 904-823-2238, has been added to the county group.

Type an address and it tells you which of St. Johns County's A-F hurricane evacuation zones it is in, read live from the county's own map. This matters street by street: along Shore Drive the answer is Zone A, the first zone asked to leave, while streets a little further back are Zone C. It also shows whether the county currently has an evacuation order in effect. The county's alert sign-up and its own locator are on the page, and if the two ever disagree the county's answer is the one to use.

Neighbours can now say whether a ramp is usable, has water over the low end, or is under water — and read what others have said in the last twelve hours. It exists because nothing else can answer the question: the county's own FAQ says the Doug Crane ramp floods in ordinary heavy rain, and the nearest gauge that measured water here was taken out in 2008. The tide table on this site predicts the astronomical tide and cannot tell you about rain. Reading is free; reporting needs an account.

A colored-pencil drawing of the Matanzas riverfront along Shore Drive — modest houses under moss-draped live oaks, a boat ramp and dock on the Intracoastal, and the SR 312 bridge low in the distance.

First tools for the neighborhood: Matanzas River tides for the boat ramps, a live Atlantic storm-season tracker with a riverfront prep list, a FEMA flood-zone address check, when the county commission and SASIA meet, and who to call for trash, water and storms.