Marcie Whitaker, City of Pensacola Housing Administrator, outlined Mayor Ashton Hayward’s workforce housing program during the agenda review on Dec. 5.
Introducing Whitaker’s presentation, City Administrator Eric Olson said, “This is an expansion of existing programs. Eventually we’re gonna be coming to you, asking you to appropriate money, or to take money that we’ve found, maybe through property purchase, and appropriate that for the purposes of these programs.â€
Whitaker told the council that the program will be a local housing assistance plan for law enforcement, fire, rescue emergency services, teachers, health care professionals and other professional industry individuals. It will fit within a similar program that the housing department currently administers on a county-wide basis.
“It would be targeted toward 120-percent of area median income, which is in keeping with the current home buyer program in the local housing assistance plan,†she said. “It would be offered for the purchase of a either new or existing single family residence within the city limits, allowing for up to $50,000 to be used toward down payment or closing cost, and be secured with a zero interest deferred payment loan, which would be forgiven over equal increments over five years.â€
Olson explained that the program would be funded primarily from the sale of surplus city property.
“How much that is we don’t really know, but we think there’s a use for that and that use could be some type of incentive to develop work force housing,†he said.
“The action that you’ll see us requesting of council is number one—agreeing to surplus certain city properties, and then either using that money directly for these programs or allowing those certain infill lots to be assigned to the housing division for use for these programs.â€
Olson said the council should expect to see the specifics of the program at its January meeting.
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Inweekly will be curious to see if the Blount School property is included in the program as surplus property or infill that the housing division can handle without council approval of the development.
Why would it serve “a municipal purpose” for City of Pensacola residents – and all of the money to be used belongs in one way or another to city residents – to provide financial incentives for “fire, rescue emergency services, teachers, health care professionals and other professional industry individuals (whatever that last term means)” to buy a house in the city? How does that make the city a better place to live? As District 4 Councilman Larry Johnson pointed out during the City Council’s August 22-23 budget workshop, firefighters do not take their fire engines home with them at the end of their shift. On the other hand, Pensacola’s biggest municipal problem is out-of-control crime. From 2001 to 2015, the per capita crime rate in the City of Pensacola actually went up 1% while it went down 40% statewide and 45% in Santa Rosa County. (It went down just under 2% in the rest of Escambia County.) In the last full year of data (2015), there were more crimes reported in the City of Pensacola (2,797) than in all of Santa Rosa County (2,106) combined that covers 1,012 square miles. During the budget workshop, Pensacola Police Chief David Alexander almost sheepishly admitted that – “Not very many.” – of his officers live in the city and when pressed was more specific – “10% or less.” Twice a day we all see a wave of PPD vehicles driving into and out of the city from Perdido, Buelah, Cantonment, Pace, Milton and Navarre. I recently drover over to Fort Walton Beach and for most of the drive was behind a PPD Officer presumably going home to Navarre. No one expects the officers who already have a home outside city limits and are settled in with their families to include kids in school to uproot themselves and move to live among “us.” However, what if the City Council focused this housing program on PPD Officers just starting out who may not be married, have a family or be settled into a community outside of the city? Wouldn’t that be the best use of what is likely to be a limited pot of money? Imagine the added recruiting incentive such a program would provide for new and junior PPD Officers who could buy a home in a nice place like my Scenic Heights neighborhood. I doubt that we even have a single PPD Officer who lives in all of District 1. If so, they must keep their PPD vehicle in the garage. During the budget workshop, our District 1 Councilman P.C. Wu lectured some Council members who wanted to find a way to incentivize PPD Officers to live in the city, “Many officers do not want to live in the city.” Why is that? Perhaps it is because they are not paid a decent salary. Other than putting PPD salaries on par with salaries paid to state law enforcement officers, a housing incentive focused on PPD Officers would almost certain put more PPD Officers in our neighborhoods allowing them to have a better sense of the “pulse” (a term used by Alexander) of the community. The end result would almost certainly be a closer relationship between PPD Officers and the community they serve and lower crime rates. As for the authority of the housing “division” (a “department” in all but name so that the Mayor does not have to submit the name of its director to confirmation), neither it nor the Mayor can just give themselves municipal powers. As I recently explained to a Council members about the Pensacola Energy and plumbers issue, it is the City Council that determines which “powers of the City” are exercised by the Mayor and his subordinates and how they are exercised. If there is any lingering confusion on that point, and it seems to come up every week or two, the City Council should direct the City Attorney to seek an Advisory Legal Opinion from the Attorney General to ask if the Mayor is subject to or can dismiss ordinances and resolutions adopted by the City Council using the “state law” procedure. Because there is a state law nexus, the applicability of Section 166.041 in Florida Statutes, the Attorney General will address the issue.