The Escambia County Commission voted to give Re-entry Pensacola Alliance enough funding to keep The Lodges, its shelter of women and children, to open for two months.
County Commission Chairman Lumon discussed the Aug. 16 board meeting on WCOA this morning:
“We had a REAP staff person, which I’ve never met or seen. I don’t think he was part of the executive team, but I think maybe he was a program manager. A very nice guy.
He didn’t necessarily know the budget, he didn’t know the finances. We didn’t have anyone from their accounting department; we didn’t have anyone from their board finance department; we didn’t have their executive director to really get the answers that we needed to feel comfortable allocating those types of taxpayer dollars.”
So Commissioner Kohler decided that he would put up $5,000 of his discretionary, and we decided to take $10,000 from SHIP. The young man there said it cost about $7,000 a month to survive. And so we certainly put it in place that they can come back in two months with a plan.”
Dig Deeper
REAP surprised Escambia County and the City of Pensacola when it announced on Monday that it would close The Lodges, effective Sept. 1. Read more.
Re-Entry Alliance Pensacola has operated The Lodges in the former Salvation Army shelter at 1310 North S St. since the summer of 2021. The initial funding came from Opening Doors Northwest Florida. When those dollars ran out on June 30, 2022, REAP went to Pensacola City Council, which approved $200,000 in funding.
At his presser on Tuesday, Mayor Reeves said he was unaware of any financial issues with Re-Entry Alliance Pensacola’s The Lodges until the REAP executive director Vinnie Whibbs sent the email.
“This is not something we expected to be squarely in front of us with this kind of deadline,” he said.