By Jeremy Morrison
Looking ahead to Hurricane Ian’s path through the Gulf of Mexico, Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson said that Fire Chief Ginny Cranor has performed a dance to keep the storm at bay.
“There’s a dance that she does to keep the hurricanes away from here, and she did do the dance,” Mayor Robinson said at his weekly presser Monday morning. “I mean, she simply told me, she said, ‘if it works, it’s not superstitious,’ and I told her, ‘I’m not superstitious, I’m just a little ‘stitous.’”
Though it’s appearing that Hurricane Ian will track east of the Florida Panhandle, Mayor Robinson said the city of Pensacola is preparing for the storm all the same — “we are leaning forward into this” — and that the area could still experience significant rain, flooding and storm surge as a result of Ian.
“Do not let your guard down just because today we are outside the cone,” Robinson advised. “We all remember Sally. It was projected to go somewhere else, it wasn’t projected to come here, and it ended up coming right here.”
“We need to be vigilant,” the mayor later added. “This is a storm that is in the gulf, and it’s going to do significant damage somewhere. We need to continue to monitor, and if we get by unscathed, at that point, we’ll look and see whatever we can do to help, we’ll move into help mode, and we’ll see what we can do.”
Signs of the Times
There’s some inner-city kerfuffling occurring concerning signage at city parks. Apparently, Pensacola City Councilwoman Jennifer Brahaier has taken issue with new signs installed at some city parks, leading her to request that council add an ordinance requiring departments to adhere to state and local codes, leading the mayor to complain Monday that Brahier was treading into the separation of powers territory.
“It comes to much of the issue of the different power. The administrative powers that the mayor has and the legislative powers that the council has,” Robinson said.
The signs in question may be observed fronting the Vickery Community Center on Summit Boulevard. The signs are replacing older signage at such municipal properties and feature LED lights and the ability to change a digital message remotely, compared to manually removing and replacing plastic letters on a signboard.
“Drive by that one, and then go down the street, by Roger Scott, the tennis center, and you’ll see an old school one, with the neon bulbs in it and everything else — you’ll be amazed at how much less light the LED lights the new technology puts out,” Mayor Robinson said.
The mayor said Brahier has specifically objected to the city placing the new variety of signage at its new youth soccer complex off of Langley Avenue, which is in her district.
“Councilwoman Brahier does not like it, but at the end of the day, from our standpoint, we’re like, ‘fine, we’ll go put it somewhere else,’” Robinson said, explaining that the city intends
Living at City Hall?
Mayor Robinson responded Monday to a concept recently proposed by Charles Bare during a candidate forum for Pensacola City Council’s District 2 seat, saying he wasn’t sure it’d be prudent to sell Pensacola City Hall and transform it into a residential living space.
“Election season is always interesting,” Robinson said, suggesting Bare was vying for some attention with the comments.
Noting that city operations would have to be accommodated somewhere, the mayor — hailing from a professional life in real estate — also said he didn’t think city hall was suitable for a residential building and would need significant retrofitting.
“There’s a better way to do that,” Robinson said, using the opportunity to lobby for moving on residential projects across the street at Maritime Park, saying that would make more financial sense. “I mean, I appreciate the thinking outside the box, but we’d spend a whole lot more money.”