Mayor D.C. Reeves reiterated many of comments about ST Engineering and the Escambia Children’s Trust that he made on “Real News with Rick Outzen.”
ST Engineering
“We’ve asked for a more detailed process of job reporting that’s beyond what is required, and they were certainly amicable, will agree with that,” he said. “Our team and their team are going to figure out exactly what that looks like. There are certain reports that are sent to Florida Commerce. Some of those reports have personal information in them that would need to be redacted obviously with public records. So, that’s why we’re still working through it. But there will be, especially in the short term, some additional information and some backup of how they’re calculating these jobs exactly is going to be detailed through this.”
The mayor sees the relationship with aviation MRO company as partnership with obligations. “When we say partnership, not just the word as a cliche, but partnership means investing in our community, partnership means communicating with our community, whether it’s good news and that you’re hitting a job targets or it’s bad news. I’m up here in front of you whether it’s good news or it’s bad news, and that should be the expectation for our taxpayer funds.”
Escambia Children’s Trust
“I’ve met with two of the principals and two of the teachers at our Title I schools several weeks back. I’m meeting with all four principals of the Title I schools, Holm Elementary, Workman, O.J. Semmes and Global, on Friday afternoon again, to really just to listen,” Mayor Reeves shared.
“I got a lot of great ideas from them before, but my philosophy on the funding right now, which this is not finalized. We have to work through it and there’s three partners here. There’s the Trust, there’s the city and there’s the school district, because anything that we are going to prescribe is going to have to be administered by the school district.”
He explained, “If we take those dollars (TIF funds), yes, we can improve some things in the CRA, but O.J. Semmes isn’t in a CRA. Workman Middle is not in a CRA. Holm is not in a CRA. So, I think there’s a better partnership here for us to say, ‘Here are these dollars.’ And that we go to the Trust and the school district and say, ‘This is exactly surgically what we want done with these millions of dollars to help educational outcomes within your schools.’
He mentioned the possibility of the funds being used to incentivize better attendance and other positive outcomes. Stay tuned.
NEW PALAFOX Survey
The city’s survey of public input on the New Palafox Project closed on Friday, Sept. 20. The mayor will have a drop-in session for the public to learn more and share their views.
“From 4-6 p.m. on September 17th, we’re going to have staff in the Hagler/Mason Conference Room to workshop it. We’ll have some information on boards and we can let people leave some comments, more so than just a board on the website. So, we’ll get one more opportunity for that.”
SS United States
Mayor Reeves supports the Board of County Commissioners’ decision to bid on the SS United States. “We have a couple of council members on the TDC, but I’m certainly in support of. I would love to see that type of amenity here.”
Downtown Scooters
The city has worked out with the Veo, the scooter’s vendor, the technology to block the scooters from being used on the Palafox Street sidewalks, from Garden Street to Main Street.
“There were some struggles with that technology recently, but we’ve actually found out in the last couple of weeks that we’ve been able to establish a no-ride zone on Palafox on the sidewalks,” Mayor Reeves said, “As you can imagine, when you use GPS and everything else, that’s a pretty precise area to say you can ride in the road, but not ride on the sidewalk. I think that’s part of the challenge. So, we have established that now, and we’ll see how that goes, and we could look at that for additional streets in downtown.”
The scooters will lose power if the driver attempts to ride on the sidewalk.
North Pensacola Police Substation
The mayor said the police substation at Pensacola State College is fully operational. “That’s a big help in public safety for the north part of our city that we have that resource there. And I appreciate our IT team. You may not think of that. There’s lots of IT that went in to being able to upload and download camera footage from a remote location.”
Phishing Scam
Contractors have received emails from someone pretending to city staff requesting money for planning fees. “It seems a little too accurate and fortunately from everybody that we’ve heard, it doesn’t look accurate enough. We have had those GCs (general contractors) call us and made us aware of it.”
The scammers are reviewing board agendas and meeting videos to make the email appear official. “If you are doing business with the city, and it doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t right. You can always call us, call 311, whatever pertinent office or relevant office that you’re talking to. If it doesn’t seem right, call us.”