Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves held his weekly press conference this morning. Here are my takeaways:
1. Police Chief Eric Randall discussed how his officers walked the neighborhoods during Operation Brownsville. Mayor Reeves tacked on that he has placed in the proposed city budget starting a co-responder model for policing.
“I appreciate the chief and everyone working towards that and bringing on someone in a social worker role that we’ve seen be successful in other communities. It may not take two sworn officers to go to a situation that might be more of a need of that skillset than it is for two people that are armed. And whether that’s dealing with children or some kind of mental health situation, situations with homeless and homeless protection, it’s this more refined touch to some of these things that, and I think the police officers will tell you and what I sympathize with so much, is the vast majority of phone calls that come into the police department are not necessarily the requirement of having a gun on your hip.”
Dig Deeper: International Association of Chiefs of Police & University of Cincinnati Center for Police Research and Policy Practice Guide: “The co-responder team model for behavioral health crisis response is a police-based intervention that pairs trained police officers with mental health professionals to respond to incidents involving individuals experiencing behavioral health crises. This collaborative crisis response model aims to improve the experiences and outcomes of persons in crisis by providing effective crisis de-escalation, diversion from the criminal justice system, and connection to appropriate behavioral health services.”
2. The City is dropping mandatory recycling and will add a second weekly garbage pick-up, effective Oct. 1.
Why? Nearly half of the recycling loads are contaminated and wind up in the landfill, and ECUA is nearly doubling its rate. The mayor said, “Right now we’re paying $35 a ton, and we’ve been notified the new rate will be anywhere from 60 to $75 a ton….In addition to that, when it’s too contaminated, there’s a $250 fine.”
“We’ll attempt to come up with something that actually brings recycling value to our community. And whether that’s certain items that actually can be recycled now that have enough value. However, many things that you recycle that you put in the correct can, if they don’t bring enough value to the recycling industry, they end up in a landfill. So that’s why I’m saying it’s time to get our feet under us and really understand where we’re going in recycling as well as to provide increased improved service for our citizens.”
3. The City is hiring a parking consultant to review the public and private parking areas and the overall parking experience in downtown Pensacola.
“As we’ve talked about many times, we’ve got to do better than what we have right now. And I mean as a community that what we know is when someone has a poor parking experience, whether it’s in a blue space or in a red space – that we have no control over that matter, ao one goes back home and says, ‘Well, let me tell you about this, but let me preface by saying that this happened in a private lot.’ What they’re saying is, ‘My car got booted. And I’m not sure if I would go back there.'”