BACKWARDS PROCESS Consolidation battle has not become about the details of the plan. Instead, the fight has been over whether the public should vote on the plan that no one other than the study commission got to see before it was set in stone and sent to our lawmakers. For the Independent News, this is backwards.
Few people have read the plan, and even fewer people fully understand the possible implications, intended and unintended, of the clauses in the 45-page document. The political action committee, Escambia All for One, doesn’t even have a full copy of the plan on its website and only offers a five-page executive summary.
DAILY PAPER WANTS VOTE
The News Journal’s editorial board says that the plan should go before the voters (“Let voters decide,†Feb. 22). It believes that elected officials on the Pensacola City Council and Escambia County Commission have blocked the referendum to “to political turf.â€
The board ignores the fact that neither the Pensacola City Council nor the Escambia County Commission were ever given the plan in its final form to review and discuss. What elected official should approve something before it’s finalized? How can they ask their constituents what they think about the plan when no one knows what the plan would contain?
The daily newspaper itself showed its lack of understand of the final plan when it wrote in its editorial as reason why City of Pensacola voters might reject the consolidation plan: “And many city voters, looking at the travails of county governance, might decide that paying higher city taxes is worth it to have their own separate governmentâ€
Under the consolidation plan, City of Pensacola will still pay higher taxes. The plan offers no tax savings. None. City residents will be placed in urban service districts and still pay additional taxes. Even if the city voters pass the referendum to dissolve their government, they will realize no tax saving.
LACKING PUBLIC INPUT
The News Journal ends its opinion piece with a plea for the local lawmakers to take the plan to the Florida legislature and allow it to be placed on the ballot next November because it believes the Escambia County Consolidation Study Commission has done its job about delivering a plan by Jan. 15.
We argue that the job isn’t finished. Yes, the final plan was completed by the deadline, but the ECCSC never gave the public time to study the document, comment in public forum and have their concerns and recommendations incorporated into that final document, which was literally approved by the study commission hours before it was sent to the Northwest Florida legislative delegation. The voters have been left with a “take it or leave it†plan that could either revolutionize or destroy this community.
We believe such a document can’t be rushed and two more years are needed to fully vet all aspects of consolidation. A vote on a plan that has only been seen and approved by a small group of people before it goes to voters could be disastrous.