Pensacola City Administrator’s February report: RESTORE, Recycling, UBER and more

A little after 10 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 11, Pensacola City Administrator gave his monthly report to the City Council and citizens of Pensacola.

He talked briefly about the Amtrak celebration to be held on Thursday, Feb. 18 before he got into city business.

On the RESTORE project application process, the City presented its projects to the county’s advisory committee on Jan. 25.

“Our city projects have advanced considerably. Our number 1 project right now is the Hollice T. Williams stormwater project with park amenities, and that has moved from number 12 to the number 7 spot.

The repair of Berth 6 at Port has moved from 32 to number 10. The Chappie James Museum project has moved from 42 to 29, and the Maritime Park Marina has moved 51 to 43. “

He said the Restore Advisory Committee plans to complete its work by March 7 and the BCC is expected to begin its discussion of the applications no any earlier than April.

Olson said the Corrine Jones Government Street stormwater project had been delayed due to “some mix up in the documents,” but FEMA has granted final approval.

“We expect construction will start on the 22nd of February,” said the city administrator. “It’ll take 12 months to complete. More importantly, that project was approved to be a global match project, which really means we have matching funds that we will be able to use against similar storm water projects.”

On the Minority- & Women-owned Business Enterprise program, the city is still having problems launching the program.

“Still trying to get enough certified businesses so what we can get the before program underway,” said Olson.

“There’s been a question that was asked about what impact if any the MWBE program has had on any contracts that we’ve awarded recently,” he said. “Right now we just do not have a critic mass of certified companies in any sector. We do think that we’ll have enough certified vendors in the construction and landscape sectors by March, so we can begin to include projects goals for certain projects in those sectors and picking them bigger quotes.”

He discussed the results of the phone survey that was conducted on city services by the HAAS center. City communications again did not grade as high as other city services.

“We’re going to be looking really hard at that seeing what other ways we can communicate with the residents in order to get to find out what information they feel they’re missing and then to provide it in ways that they like to access,” he said, “That’s going to be one of the goals we’re working on as we go forward.”

Olson said the City intends to enter into a long-term agreement with Uber for the Pensacola International Airport. The current interim expires March 11.

He asked for the Council’s help in notifying citizens of changes to the city’s recycling program.

“The big changes are we are no longer expecting glass and the number of plastics has been limited. It’s very important that we get that word out to the public because each time that our recyclables are contaminated, for lack of a better word, that all just ends up in the landfill and it really hurts the one recycling company that we’re working with. It destroys their loads.”

He said the family zones at the recent Mardi Gras parades was well received. “That was kind of a pilot projects, so we will continue to do that. Eventually that may just be built into the (parade) permitting process. “

The city administrator said that FEMA has approved two more projects under its Hazardous Mitigation Grant Program: Lee Street and Rommitch Lane.

Councilwoman Jewel Cannada-Wynn asked Olson when the Council can expect a briefing on the situation with the fire chiefs.

“Mr. President, in response to that really at this point I think those questions are going to best be answered by the City Attorney,” said Olson, whose policy is to not address council members directly during his portion of the meeting.

Councilwoman Sherri Myers said she had spoken with attorney Rusty Well about the situation last Friday, Feb. 5.

“When I sent him an email and asked him for more information because he said that, he led me to believe that council would be briefed in a few days,” said Myers. She asked for whom did Wells work.

“Mr. President, it’s correct Mr. Wells official title is Special Assistant to the City Administrator,” said Olson. He added that Wells called at his request.

The next blog post will report the City Attorney’s answers to the council’s questions about the city’s HR process and the investigation into the fire chiefs.