When I returned to Pensacola last weekend, I was delighted to see the Pensacola City Council had terminated the City’s lease with Divine Word Communications for a radio tower at the northern end of the Long Hollow stormwater basin. The North Hill Preservation Board and Inweekly had fought to have the non-conforming tower removed in 2015 but failed to get Mayor Ashton Hayward to listen.
- How the tower ever got erected demonstrates the dark side of the strong-mayor form of government.
It’s a tale of a city administrator who covered up the legal issues with the radio tower built in a vital conservation district, city staff who knew the code violation but were shut down from telling the council and public, and the administrator’s replacement threatening a citizen who tried to find out the facts about the tower’s mysteriously sudden erection.
THE COVERUP: In 2012, Divine Word requested City Administrator Bill Reynolds work on a variance for a new radio tower because it was in a conservation district where such structures were not allowed. Had a variance or Future Land Use Plan amendment been proposed, the Pensacola City Council would have held public hearings.
- Instead, Reynolds drafted a new lease granting the owner the right to demolish the old structure and build a new tower. The 20-year ground lease slipped past the Pensacola City Council and the public without any fanfare because Reynolds’standing with the council.
FEAR FOR JOB: City employees feared losing their jobs if they voiced publicly the clear violations of the City’s Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code.
- Both prohibit expanding, enlarging, and/or rebuilding existing non-conforming uses.
Long after the Council’s approval vote, a former city planner came forward and said the heads of Inspections and Planning Services laughed about the illegality of allowing a radio to be built in a conservation district. However, the planning services administrator refused to point it out to the City Council, especially after her boss, Reynolds, recommended approval.
UNPERMITED DEMOLTION AND CONSTRUCTION: Inweekly had to fight to get any documents regarding the radio tower.
We found construction without permits, lack of insurance, differing statements to different government agencies, lease violations and a host of discrepancies.
The city issued the building permit for the larger radio tower in 2014, but the contractor didn’t do it because the owner wasn’t ready to commence construction. However, Divine Word hired another contractor to start the work without city inspections.
THREATS: North Hill Preservation Board president Melanie Nichols tried to gather more information from city staff about the tower and when its new building permit would be issued.
- City Administrator Eric Olson, who replaced Reynolds after he was removed for a scandal involving our unfulfilled public record requests, tried to get Nichols’s bosses to reprimand her for using her official federal email account to communicate with city staff. The move backfired and led to a no-confidence vote in a council meeting that ended in a 4-4 tie.
Olson then tried to ban city employees from responding to emails from those who used official government email accounts. Thanks to our intervention, the state attorney’s office made him rescind the order.
POWER ABUSED: The city never issued a new building permit. Instead, the contractor was given a “Repair to Code” permit, blessing the new contractor’s construction of the new tower. The public never had a chance to voice its concerns in a public meeting.
- The city’s hired engineering firm said the tower didn’t impact the Longhollow stormwater basin, even though the neighborhood flooded in April 2014.
Nichols and Inweekly continued to question the tower’s nonconforming use. We had a video of the tower being dismantled without a city inspection, which interrupted its operation while the new one was erected. However, City Attorney Lysia Bowling rendered an opinion that Divine Word’s radio tower’s nonconforming use was a lawful nonconforming use and structure because its use had continued uninterrupted since the original tower was built in 1974.
Ultimately, Divine Word refused to act divinely and hired Ed Fleming to threaten the Pensacola City Council with a lawsuit. The tower was allowed to stand.
- Last Thursday, the Pensacola City Council approved Mayor D.C. Reeves’ recommendation to cancel the least and buy the tower so that the stormwater basin could be expanded.
Melanie Nichols will be my guest on WCOA’s “Real News with Rick Outzen” at 7:45 a.m. today.
Photo Licensed under the Unsplash+ License
Rick, Thank you for all your hard work and research on THIS issue. I am incredibly grateful to you and all the people who assisted: my team of researchers, James Scaminaci III, Bill Caplinger, and Art Parrish; J. Alistair McKenzie, civil rights attorney, who reached out to me and defended me against the threats and egregious behavior of former-Mayor Hayward and former-City Administrator Eric Olson; the Florida and Pensacola chapters of the ACLU; Dianne Krumel and the Escambia County DEC; Attorney Eric Stevenson for his guidance; the Pensacola League of Women Voters for their support and for the first ever “Making Democracy Work” Award; Lisa Nellessen-Savage, Executive Editor of the PNJ and the editorial staff for their coverage of the issue; City Councilman Charles Bare for bringing accountability to City Hall, and to my countless friends, neighbors, and fellow community members who showed up for the Vote of No-Confidence in City Hall Administration. Thank you to current Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves for sponsoring this agenda item and to the Pensacola City Council for voting to remove the tower and begin the much needed work on expanding and improving this vital stormwater pond to protect our City.
Excellent work! We tried to get to the bottom of this story, but reporter Will Isern lacked your skills and tenacity. Thank you for your dogged pursuit! This was a bad lease and a worse tower.