Guest Author
My Christmas wish is a humble one, from one informed citizen to whatever benevolent spirits remain at work in the universe.
I want the grownups to be in charge.
Pensacola is a community with promise, where much progress has been made, but where much remains to be done.
It needs adults at the helm.
Headlines over the recent several days give me cause for concern. In case you missed it, let’s hit the high points:
— Former Escambia County Commissioner Gene Valentino has filed a complaint against Escambia Sheriff David Morgan and Chief Deputy Eric Haines with the Florida Ethics Commission.
Valentino notes four incidents in his complaint, including one in which he says Haines refused to lower flags at the Sheriff’s Office following George Touart’s death and one in which, apparently, a voice mail from the sheriff left him “in fear for his life.”
The audio of the call is linked above, and it seems to fall far short of the “in fear for your life” benchmark.
It is indicative of the role that personalities and personal disagreements still influence much of the taxpayers’ business in Escambia County.
— Someone has filed a sunshine law complaint against Doug Underhill, who beat Valentino in the Republican primary. Underhill, it is alleged, contacted individual commissioners about a motion Valentino made to give $40,000 to the Frank Brown Songwriters Festival on Perdido Key.
— Property Appraiser Chris Jones had to remind two city officials that he is supposed to sign off on economic development ad valorem tax exemptions before they are issued. FYI, there’s even a space for his name on the EDATE form.
Now all EDATEs issued in recent memory are being reviewed by City Hall and no new ones will be on the table, including one for senior living facility in Cordova Park.
— The Community Maritime Park Associates Board, after talking at length about how much they get beat up on by the mean old media, rejected giving conceptual approval to a proposal to build something on two parcels of the park they oversee. The park, they are quick to remind you, needs money and how.
The proposal from Quint and Rishy Studer was to build a childcare facility and sports museum on parcel 3 and expanded training facilities for the Pensacola Blue Wahoos on parcel 9.
John Merting wanted his fellow board members to accept that offer in concept as a “show of good faith” as he negotiates with the team over naming rights and signage. The motion failed.
There was a lot of talk about worries over the 125 parking spaces the Studers want for these new projects, about how the board’s needs something that generates revenue and foot traffic, that daycare centers don’t pay taxes, about the way the RFP was worded may have driven off other people with proposals for the park.
In the end, it was clear that whatever the board wants for those unleased parcels, they don’t want it to be what the Studers proposed, even if it would begin paying lease fees pronto into the CMPA’s coffers.
Sigh.
And that is why my Christmas wish is that this be the time to put away childish things — things like personal dislikes, political payback and being picking on by journalists — and take up the tools and traits of adulthood.
Make sure all of the parts of a form for a tax incentive for development are filled out.
Use my tax dollars prudently, not investigating the chief deputy for failure to lower a flag.
And please try to recognize how strange it sounds to the public to insist that you need money when you turn down first a YMCA that would have generated lease fees (and now is completely property tax exempt in another location) and now offers for two other projects that would also generate lease fees.
We the taxpayers are counting on all of you to keep your eye on the prize. Don’t let all the shiny objects the season brings distract you from that.
Shannon Nickinson is the editor of PensacolaToday.com, a news and commentary site in Pensacola. Follow her on Twitter @snickinson.
