Mayor D.C. Reeves is taking a unique approach in dealing with CRA dollars that Escambia Children’s Trust has in its coffers owed to the City’s Community Redevelopment Agencies.
- As of its last financial report, dated July 31, the Trust has $24.65 million cash in the bank.
Unlike the Trust that picks a program and then lobbies local nonprofits to figure out how to implement it, the Pensacola mayor has listened to school principals and teachers in the schools inside the city limits to hear what they need.
- The Trust is in its second year of funding Help Me Grow, which is run by Arc Gateway – budget $1.38 million, first-year budget $1.36 million.
- The Trust has been recruiting nonprofits for a new initiative: Healthy Schools Escambia, the deadline for proposals has been moved to Sept. 20. The board will vote on Oct. 8.
CITY FUNDS FOR CITY SCHOOLS
At his weekly press conference yesterday, Mayor Reeves said, “I’ve met with two of the principals and two of the teachers at our Title I schools several weeks back. I’m meeting with all four principals of the Title I schools, Holm Elementary, Workman, O.J. Semmes and Global, again on Friday afternoon to listen.
He wants to create a Memorandum of Understanding with the Trust and the Escambia County School District to ensure the City’s CRA funds fund programs to help schools inside the city limits.
“I got a lot of great ideas from them before, but my philosophy on the funding right now, which this is not finalized,” he said. “We have to work through it, and there’s three partners here. There’s the Trust, there’s the City, and there’s the School District because anything that we are going to prescribe is going to have to be administered by the school district.”
He supports the Escambia County Commission’s decision to request the Trust refund the CRA dollars so the commissioners can improve public safety in the neighborhoods where children live and attend school. Still, he sees the needs of children living in the City differently.
“My goal is to say, ‘Here are these tax dollars that were generated by our voters to help education,” Mayor Reeves explained. “And I don’t blame or argue. The county’s position, I think, is a fair one to say that we can help educational outcomes by building infrastructure.
Mayor Reeves shared that he constantly hears about fixing public education but has had little opportunity to have an impact until now. “I can’t go to a town hall. I can’t go to a State of the City address without being asked about what we’re doing in education. And you guys have heard me say this so many times, I’m tired of saying that’s not our job. And so, here’s an opportunity in front of us now, really found dollars in the sense that these were not dollars that have been allocated in the budget.”
However, limiting the CRA dollars to the City’s CRA districts won’t help the public schools in the City. “If we take the dollars, they’re limited to our CRA districts. They are CRA dollars. That’s why they’re generated. And so, if we take those dollars, yes, we can improve some things in the CRA, but O.J. Semmes isn’t in a CRA. Workman Middle is not in a CRA. Holm is not in a CRA.”
Mayor Reeves said, “I think there’s a better partnership here for us to say, ‘Here are these dollars.’ And that we go to the Trust and the School District and say, ‘This is exactly, surgically, what we want done with these millions of dollars—help educational outcomes within your schools.’
He continued, “And when you learn things like this, one of the biggest challenges isn’t getting notepads, pencils, and paper. There are lots of those types of drives, and those are great, but when you talk to the teachers and the principals, they’re saying, ‘We don’t need more notepads. We don’t need more pencils. We need the kids to show up at school.’ And so, what can we do? What can we incentivize? How can we create positive outcomes within our city limits? So, that is what I’m looking into.”
Mayor Reeves expects it will take time to iron out the details. “If we’re going to do this, I want to do it right, and I want to make sure that here’s our opportunity as a City, not to say it’s not our job but say here’s how we can invest and create positive outcomes for the youth of our city.”
He concluded the discussion, “So, I’m very excited to continue that conversation and take us a little time to get that all built up into the Trust, but that is our general path forward at this point.”
Mayor Reeves has unsuccessfully tried to work with Trust before. In June 2023, he unveiled his vision of creating a children’s resource center in the City’s urban core.
“We have been looking for opportunities on how we can make this a better community for our children,” Reeves said, flanked by leaders from LifeView Group and Community Health Northwest Florida.
- “We started to figure out this project—a children’s resource center—would take an all-hands effort from the City of Pensacola, LifeView and Community Health and support from Escambia County to create this first-of-its-kind center in our community. It would not be unprecedented within the state, but certainly is unprecedented within the region.”
Mayor Reeves asked the Escambia Children’s Trust for $3.495 million to acquire and renovate the Morris L. Eaddy Activity Center, 1110 W. Lakeview Ave.
Rather than figuring out how to do it, Trust staff killed the idea. Instead, the Trust allocated the money for three years of Help Me Grow.
The Escambia Children’s Trust Board meets at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 11 in the County Commission chambers. Here is the agenda packet.