The Escambia Board of County Commissioners may need to clarify where District 2 Commissioner Doug Underhill resides before it discusses the proposed county budget at today’s workshop that’s scheduled to begin at 9 a.m.
According to a general warranty deed filed with the Clerk of Courts on July 1, the Underhills sold their River Road homestead for $800,000 to Dearmancorp on June 27. Dearmancorp is the Mississippi developer that created Mallory Square North in Perdido Key. The commissioner’s signature is witnessed by the wife of his aide.
According to the clerk’s website, the Underhills were able to use the proceeds to satisfy a mortgage with United Bank.
Underhill was given a residency exemption for his River Road residence after the board redrew the district boundaries so he could complete his term in November, but that exemption goes away if he no longer lives there.
According to Florida law, the residency requirement for an office is a continuous one. Failure to maintain the residency throughout the term results in vacancy of the office.
During his ethics hearing, Underhill participated online – with roosters crowing in the background – from a Cassidy Road residence he owns in District 5. Is there where he’s living now?
The commissioner can maintain his residency if he rents a home, apartment or condo inside the new District 2, which he may have done. District 2 residents need to know whether he has left their district. The commissioner should be able to provide some proof – a rental agreement or utility bill maybe.
The Escambia County Board of County Commissioners will hold budget workshops Tuesday, July 12 and Wednesday, July 13. Both meetings begin at 9 a.m. and will take place in the board chambers of the Ernie Lee Magaha Government Building, located on the first floor of 221 Palafox Place. Click here to view the July 12 agenda. Click here to view the July 13 agenda.
Escambia County uses CivicClerk for its agenda, backup documentation, meeting minutes management, board and citizen portal, and electronic voting. The video from a past meeting and a link to the minutes are also available to view when clicking on a prior agenda in CivicClerk. This meeting will be streamed live and archived online for virtual viewing.
All commission meetings can also be viewed live on MyEscambia.com/ectv, YouTube, channel 4/1004 on Cox, channel 98 for Spectrum and Mediacom (Pensacola Beach) subscribers and channel 99 for AT&T U-verse subscribers.
Would not them publicly posting they have goats, chickens, and livestock dogs at D5 indicate they reside in D5.
Huh. Is it this Hattiesburg David Dearman?
https://www.wdam.com/story/35849731/trash-causing-problems-for-residents-at-hattiesburg-apartment/
Rick, since the budget meetings are just workshops, Doug can (and did) blather away without the complication of pressing the question of whether he can vote. Of course the hypocrisy is just as ludicrous as ever, watching him sit Vice Chair at budget discussions, lecturing his peers about how to ethically log travel miles, when he has already pled guilty on breaking state financial statutes with his possible guilt on other violations pending.
But won’t the real question come with the regular meeting on Thursday, when there will be votes on the financials? If Doug no longer resides in D2, is it a liability for the Board if he is making votes, particularly on monies?
Per a potential rental or purchase in D2, it’s also possible one of his forever delusional groupies, or one of his developer puppet masters, provides him with an address so he can pretend he’s living there while he’s really living in his Cassidy Road barn. That way he gets to continue cashing the paycheck for his 90kish a year salary, and Jonathan Owens and Connor Mann continue to make bank, while Doug and Jonathan try to stall things out so they are fully vested in their FRS pensions they say it isn’t ethical to collect at the end of 8 years.
Per the Cassidy Road property, why did he fail to pay his first round of taxes? Of course we have no idea what the terms of the Warranty Deed are, but we do know a NJ company now holds the tax certificate. I believe they paid their 2021 tax bill for $3334 on River Road–why not pay the $852 of taxes on the Cassidy property? Is he already lining things up for a second bankruptcy in Escambia County? (Too bad it doesn’t look like he is getting ready to bolt for Mississippi again.)
It’s a nice property up there, but it’s still surprising they paid $417K, which was such a high amount over the appraisal. Does that have anything to do with only having one plat with dark roads between him and the state line, with a state road nearby that leads to the casino? His real estate dealings around Indian properties are rabbit holes in and of themselves. Which is one reason he never quits about the proposed Bingo parlor down in Perdido…smokescreen for his own real estate dealings out on Perdido. Somebody should really look into both that and his fraudulent contractor’s license.