Escambia Deputy County Attorney Kristin Hual has asked the Board of County Commissioners to discuss the Escambia Children’s Trust request for clarification of the $690,684 refunding Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) dollars that the Trust should have paid in the CRA, according to Florida law.
- The total bill was $1,134,025, but the ECT board only authorized payment of tax increment revenues owed for the 2023 tax year in the principal amount of $443,341.00. The board declined to authorize payment of the balance of $690,684 owed for the 2021 and 2022 tax years into the county’s nine CRA districts.
In a letter to the county commission, Executive Director Lindsey Cannon wants the county to provide “specific examples of how the approved community redevelopment plans will benefit and have benefited, the purpose for which the special districts were created.” The information will be used to develop a later request for reconsideration of the commissioners’ demand for the refund.
Meanwhile, Cannon offered to meet privately with each commissioner and explain how the Trust has funded services in their districts. The aim is to develop an interlocal agreement similar to what Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves has mentioned but has yet to draft.
- Two notes: The delay will allow Steve Stroberger to be installed as the District 1 commissioner. Also, ECT is not required to fund services in all five county districts.
DIG DEEPER: Walker Wilson mentioned the CRA issue last December when he was interviewed for the ECT executive director position. He pointed out that the Downtown Improvement Board has been paying into the CRA. The board didn’t react but hired Cannon.
- In September, the Board of County Commissioners unanimously approved a motion for the Children’s Trust to pay over $1.1 million in tax increment revenues accrued over the past three years and pay about $450,000 annually. The commissioners allocated $400,000 from the Montclair CRA to the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office to purchase cameras.
Not all the programs funded by ECT have delivered serves as promised:
- Last fall, the Trust paid Urban Development Center $261,733.16 and canceled the contract when it was revealed the nonprofit had only reached 30 children in their targeted ages of 11-18, falling far short of the 250 children in the Century that UDC had committed to mentor and train for jobs. UDC was one of the highest-rated proposals approved for its Out-of-School initiative.
- The Children’s Theater had its award canceled after being paid $179,124.82 for a program that was supposed to cover the summer plus the fall semester. It pledged to have 200 participants but only had 75.
CITY DOLLARS: ECT owes the City of Pensacola’s CRAs $1.8 million and about $500,000 annually. Mayor Reeves wants to create an interlocal agreement with the Trust and the Escambia County School District to ensure dollars are spent as the city wants in Title I inside city limits. Read “The CRA vs. Children’s Trust Conundrum.”
- Mayor Reeves is meeting with principals and teachers to develop programs to help Pensacola children. He has not committed to using the funds for the Trust’s current programs, but he expects the interlocal agreement to cover all $1.8 million owed and the future CRA allocations.
“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 to help educational outcomes within your schools,’” Reeves said. “We just got to work out the details of what those dollars will be and what they’ll go to.”
County Commissioner Lumon May serves on the Children’s Trust board. Although he abstained from the ECT vote in early October, he said, “I support (the interlocal agreement) because I don’t think there’s any intention by my colleagues, and they can speak for themselves, to not do anything for children.”
The Escambia County Board of County Commissioners will hold its regular meeting Thursday, Nov. 7. Agenda review begins at 9 a.m., public forum begins at 4:30 p.m. and the regular meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. All meetings will take place in the board chambers of the Ernie Lee Magaha Government Building, located on the first floor of 221 Palafox Place. Click here to view the regular meeting agenda.
This meeting will be archived on MyEscambia.com and the county’s YouTube channel. Click here to watch the livestream on YouTube. All commission meetings can also be viewed live on channel 4/1004 on Cox, channel 98 for Spectrum and Mediacom (Pensacola Beach) subscribers and channel 99 for AT&T U-verse subscribers.
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