Inweekly — New Issue

New Inweekly: Your Penny’s On the Ballot, Teachers Get Their Due, and PSC Students Fight Back

The July 9 issue is out — a penny tax that built Pensacola faces its toughest vote yet, working families keep falling behind even with a paycheck, and a censored student magazine gets the last word. Read it all at inweekly.net.

Cover Story: Your Penny Back on the Ballot — Every library book checked out, every widened road, every park mowed in Escambia County has been touched by one penny. That penny — the local option sales tax, LOST — is up for renewal in November, and this time the stakes are higher than any renewal before it. Thanks to a 2023 change in state law, if voters say no, the tax doesn’t come back up for a vote until 2030. Pair that with the property tax amendment also on the ballot, and County Commissioner Mike Kohler doesn’t sugarcoat it: “in ’28 it would be catastrophic.”

“There is no way that local governments can achieve what we expect as citizens, without having these funds.” — Bruce Vredenburg, Penny for Escambia campaign chairman

Tom St. Myer breaks down where the roughly $80 million a year goes, why nearly 30% of it comes out of visitors’ pockets rather than residents’, and what’s really on the chopping block — from the jail’s bond payments to Pensacola’s fire department — if it fails.

Outtakes: Thanking Teachers — Escambia County Public Schools just earned a district-wide “A,” and Tallahassee lined up to take credit. I’m not having it. Montclair Elementary went from an F to an A in three years. Navy Point jumped from a D to a B. Six schools climbed from B to A. None of that happened because of a press release — it happened because teachers showed up early, stayed late, and spent their own money on supplies. This week’s column gives credit where it’s actually due.

Working Families Still Struggle — Nearly half of all working households in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties can’t reliably cover the basics, according to the newest ALICE Report from United Way of West Florida. These aren’t people who qualify for assistance — they’re your teachers, your cashiers, your everyday neighbors, earning too much for SNAP and too little to keep up with rent, groceries and the power bill.

Turning Censorship into Just-Opposed — Pensacola State College told student journalists their LGBTQ+ stories weren’t fit to print — one week before deadline. So the students raised over $2,000 on GoFundMe and printed 500 copies themselves. Dakota Parks tells the story of how a class project called Just-Opposed became exactly that. The students celebrate their independent release Friday, July 10, 6-9 p.m. at 309 Punk Project.

Also in this issue:

• Winners & Losers — Escambia schools and a Big Brothers Big Sisters “Duo of the Year” win big; WUWF loses its director and a helicopter contractor gets slapped with a maximum fine for pesticide drift.
• The Buzz — Ground breaks on the $9.5 million Fricker Center renovation, Pensacola’s new AI assistant “Penny” starts fielding 311 calls, and public records raise questions about who really killed — or didn’t kill — a proposed Escambia data center.
• Fickled Veto Pen — DeSantis spares South Navy Boulevard’s revitalization funding but cuts $2.4 million in Escambia public safety money — some of it requested by the same commissioner who defended the cuts’ sponsor.
• Party With a Cause — The Campfire Fund of Florida relaunches its signature fundraiser July 11 at Odd Colony, with live music, barbecue and raffles benefiting local mental health support.

Read the full July 9 issue now at inweekly.net. Check out past issues here.