New Parking App
Mayor D.C. Reeves announced the city would move to the ParkMobile App for its parking spaces on Jan. 1.
“The app is one of the largest in the country,” he said. “It’s used by more than 600 cities and has 8 million users in Florida, far and away exponentially the largest, most often used parking app in Florida—Jacksonville, Orlando, Boca, Tampa, Miami Beach and I know Tallahassee uses it. So you take the outcome here is a much easier user experience in terms of finding where you’re parking to do the transaction itself.”
The ParkPensacola app will still be available during the transition, and city parking staff will get track of both.
Malcolm Yonge Gym
The 60-year-old gym that was closed last spring due to public safety concerns has gotten a brief reprieve. The Community Redevelopment Agency, which consists of the seven council members, voted to put off a demolition contract recommended by the mayor. The Council asked for the mayor’s office to seek more expert analysis of what it would cost to repair the structure.
Mayor Reeves told the media that he thinks bids for structural engineers do to a more in-depth analysis would cost more than the demolition, about $49,000. His team will first get the price for the assessment to make the CRA wants to spend the money.
“We’re going to get a price tag on that, and it’s going to be significantly more expensive than the demolition itself,” Reeves said. “And we’ll take a look at it from there. Personally, I think it’s going to be quite a heavy lift.”
He later added that CRA needs to “make a decision as a 62-year-old basketball gym or a minimum of 14 affordable homes, maybe up to 30, which one of those is more valuable?”
Co-Responder Model Active
This past summer, Mayor D.C. Reeves announced that the Pensacola Police Department would adopt the co-responder policing model by hiring two social workers to accompany police officers when they deal with homeless individuals who appear to have mental health issues and other similar calls.
The mayor announced the second social worker began work on Monday. He estimated the initial social worker has been on 30-35 calls as of the end of November.
“The vast, vast majority of comments have been very positive about his contribution,” said Mayor Reeves. “And I’m glad that the city’s taken an active role in trying to be helpful in this and not just hoping other people do it, but we continue to be as collaborative as we can.”
Malcolm Yonge Gym: The front-page story in yesterday’s PNJ was titled – “City delays demolition of Malcolm Yonge Gym.” However, as of 8 a.m. today, the agenda for tonight’s Council meeting still includes two items related to the Malcolm Yonge Gym. The first item (#12) calls for the Council to approve demolition of the Malcolm Yonge Gym. The second item (#27) calls for the Council to approve selling off 0.17 acres of the Malcolm Yonge Gym’s 1.37-acre lot. Both agenda items need to be removed. The agenda only came out last week so the public didn’t get much notice of what Mayor Reeves and Councilwoman Broughton intended to do. I found an April 5, 2021 CRA memorandum describing that the Council had discussed if the CRA could fund repairs to the Malcolm Yonge Gym. The CRA would seem to have to wait until October 1, 2024 to spend its TIF revenues (DIB, City and County property tax revenues) to repair (or demolish) the gym owned by the city. Mayor Reeves’ narrative has been that the Malcolm Yonge Gym is beyond repair. I found an April 21, 2023 Limited Structural Assessment done by a Mr. McMath that tells a very different story, “We recommend proceeding with a continued comprehensive building assessment to include all structural and non-structural systems. The comprehensive assessment must include a cost analysis addressing all required repairs.” The assessment has not yet been done. I reviewed the budget history of the Malcolm Yonge Gym back to FY 2004. Lots of work has been done at the gym and there must be extensive maintenance and inspection records to include when Mayor Robinson had the Council approve a 20-year lease with Lighthouse Private Christian Academy in 2022 and then Mayor Reeves had the Council approve an updated lease in 2023. The city had for years jointly used the gym with Lighthouse and was going to keep doing so. I found that $715,000 in Local Option Sales Tax Revenues had been budgeted for major projects at the gym in FY 2020 and FY 2021. Then starting with FY 2022, all mention of the Malcolm Yonge Gym was removed from the city budget as if it no longer existed. In October a parks & recreation board member asked about the $715,000. Mayor Reeves’ staff gave a murky answer inferring that Public Works Department may have taken the $715,000 and used it for something else. Mayor Reeves has justified demolition of the Malcolm Yonge Gym saying, “We have police officers, we have firefighters, we have teachers in our community who can’t afford to live in this community. And so, we pay them a wage of which they can’t afford to live in the city that they protect or that they enrich when you have teachers teaching our children.” Give them more money not a key to a tiny home. Mayor Reeves’ father Jim Reeves’ a real estate developer has a business – AMR at Pensacola, Inc. – run out of his law office. In FY 2022, AMR built a model “tiny home” right across the street from the gym. In September, Mayor Reeves mentioned to the CRA board 14 or 16 tiny homes. In Tuesday’s press conference he mentioned – “30.” Converting parks and community centers to housing is a bad idea! Someone needs to tell District 6 residents who live in Old East Hill. There are empty commercial buildings all over this city. Let the private sector convert them to so-called “affordable housing” for the poor and homeless. There’s an empty 9,220 square foot building next to the gym.