The Pensacola City Council may have broken its own rules and procedures when it tried to reconsider the amendment to the Pate Cold Storage lease. Remember the amendment failed to get approval of the Enterprise Operations Committee. The vote was a tie 2-2 – Jack Nobles and Marty Donovan voted “yes.” Mike Wiggins and P.C. Wu voted “no.”
Three days later Nobles, who chairs the EOC, brought the amendment before the entire council where it failed after Sam Hall ducked out of the meeting. Nobles and Donovan voted against the amendment so that they could later bring back for reconsideration.
However, the council’s own rules don’t allow Nobles to bring the amendment to the entire council unless his committee gives approves it.
According Section 9 (c): “All motions adopted to hold in committee or lay on the table, and all motions not reported out of committee with a majority vote of Committee members present, shall remain in Committee. A two-thirds vote of the City Council (7 votes) shall be required to remove an item from Committee.”
The Pate Amendment is dead unless seven members of the City Council vote to remove it from the Enterprise Operations Committee.
Here are the Rules & Procedures