Shannon Nickinson: Murders, gruesome clues, waterfront project, City Hall intrigue roil Pensacola’s bubble

I know that the beautiful sunsets and sugar-white sands can inspire flights of fancy in every brain.

I know that the heat and humidity can make even the most focused mind wander.

But some folks need to come in out of the sun.

The July 31 murders of 76-year-old Voncile Smith and her two sons, Richard Smith, 59, and John Smith, 47, certainly sounds like a made-for-TV moment.

Deputies found what by all accounts was a gruesome crime scene after neighbors phoned them to make a welfare check.

No signs of a break-in. But they found three people killed by a claw hammer, their throats cut and one shot in the neck. A consult with Homeland Security to ensure that Richard Smith’s death was not a national security issue, given his job connected with cybersecurity.

And then comes a link made by Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan in a news conference between the “blue moon” and a “person of interest” the sheriff says is known to practice “witchcraft.”

Crime news in Pensacola often takes a turn for the unusual. And given Morgan’s early description of the 2009 Byrd and Melanie Billings murder investigation as a “humdinger” that purportedly had ties to the “Mexican mafia,” it’s no surprise that folks have jumped all over the “witchcraft” reference.

Read the transcript of the news conference here to see the comments in context.

While that simmers, the real full boil is going on at Pensacola City Hall.

Among local political watchers, the city was once viewed as the model of professionalism compared to the good-old-boy shenanigans that consumed the halls of county government.

These days, it seems, that worm has turned.

The rejection of the leases proposed by Quint and Rishy Studer for parcels 3, 6 and 9 at the Community Maritime Park started this latest hornet’s nest. The $20 million plan, which earned the Community Maritime Park Associates board’s approval, stalled at City Hall, when Mayor Ashton Hayward III announced by news release that the city wouldn’t accept the leases as negotiated by CMPA.

Read how the leases were consumed by mistrust and miscommunication here.

The email was preceded by only a few hours by the creation of the Transparent Pensacola portion of the city’s website. The first issue that section tackled was the Studer leases.

That was the first in a slew of political miscalculations that are earning the seventh floor some unflattering headlines.

There was the return of Derek Cosson to city hall as a contractor doing the work he essentially used to do as a staff member. That was until he got in dutch one too many times for his conduct. Even if Cosson, saved every kitten in every tree he passed, bringing him back to city hall — in any capacity — after the turmoil that followed his time there was a poor decision.

And while Cosson was back in the fold, LuTimothy May was out, having been shown the door in organizational restructuring.

Then there was the ill-fated interview with WEAR-TV3 in which Hayward touted city Chief Operating Officer Tamara Fountain’s credentials from Florida State University and the University of West Florida. Academic records, as reported here, differ. InWeekly’s Rick Outzen has done work putting Fountain’s pay and resume and experience in context.

Maybe every detail of every resume isn’t committed to the mayor’s memory. That might be a fair assumption, given the turnover that city hall has seen. It’s a lot to keep track of.

It’s also starting to sound more like an Abbott and Costello routine than like a community focused on growth, wooing newcomers and attracting entrepreneurs.

I love slapstick as much as the next girl, but right now, I would rather see a cool head who can put the “Upside of Florida” right side up.

Shannon Nickinson is the editor of PensacolaToday.com, a news and commentary website in Pensacola. Follow her on Twitter @snickinson.com.