Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves and Escambia County Administrator Wes Moreno have sent their joint recommendations for the new governance board of the Continuum of Care (C0C), which oversees grant funding for homeless initiatives in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.
“We have a strong interest in ensuring the broad community input into the governance charter and would like to provide you with some suggested representatives to on the Committee,” wrote Reeves and Moreno in a letter, dated Aug. 18, to Opening Doors executive director John Johnson.
Suggestions for CoC Board
The suggestions included Community Health CEO Chandra Smiley, Ronnie Rivera of the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, Jen Grove of Baptist Hospital, City Councilwoman Allison Patton, Escambia County emergency manager Travis Tompkins, Sacred Hear CAO Jules Kariher, 90 Works president Rocky Harrison, Children’s Home Society executive director Lindsey Cannon, Rachelle Burns of Pensacola State College, Cathy White and Kasey Watson of the First Judicial Circuit Court Administration, Connie Bookman of Northwest Florida Homeless Reduction Task Force and Favor House executive director Tracie Hodson.
City & County – Active Roles
At his weekly presser this morning, Mayor Reeves said, “We didn’t want to sit back and not play an active role and be an active partner with the CoC as (Johnson) tries to make improvements.”
I later asked the mayor would his expectations are for the new governance board.
“When Dr. Savage, who runs an interdepartmental agency on homelessness over 18 different departments of the federal government, says that there should be some modifications to how the CoC operates, I’m listening to those,” said Mayor Reeves. “We want to find what the best solution is to make sure that we can maximize the impact of CoC.”