Daily Outtakes: QOL mostly positive

The Pensacola Young Professionals represented the 2023 Quality of Life Survey at last night’s CivicCon.

On my radio show, Quint Studer, who has sponsored the survey for the past 17 years, said, “When we did it in 2008, moving in the right direction was like 20-something percent, and moving in the wrong direction was 60-something percent. Today we’re over 50% moving in the right direction, and that’ll ebb and flow. But if you look at the trend line, that’s extremely, extremely positive.”

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New College Crazy

Escambia County has four middle schools with more than 900 students.

BELLVIEW MIDDLE SCHOOL	992
BEULAH MIDDLE SCHOOL	958
FERRY PASS MIDDLE	1,014
JIM C. BAILEY MIDDLE	1,159
RANSOM MIDDLE SCHOOL	1,224

New College of Florida has 698 students. Its former president who was forced out to make room for Gov. DeSantis’ education commissioner, Richard Corcoran, was paid $305,000.

Corcoran was hired as interim with a salary of $699,000. His board wants to increase his compensation package to $1.5 million.

It pays to be DeSantis’ friend.

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Downtown Post Office Update

The Downtown Post Office is being evicted by the building’s new owners to possibly make room for a hotel. I asked Mayor D.C. Reeves about the loss.

“I’m trying to set up a phone call on Thursday with the postmaster around here,” he said. “Obviously, we have no dog in this fight. This isn’t something that’s our decision. But certainly, I agree with you. I think there’s a lot of value in having one downtown, so I don’t want to just sit idly by. So I’m attempting to have a phone call with them this week and see if there’s something I can do to be helpful.”