By Jeremy Morrison
Before fielding this week’s presser, Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson took a moment to introduce Aya Prince, an Episcopal Day School 8th grader and latest participant in the Mayor for a Day program.
“I am super excited to be here and learn more about what the mayor does here in Pensacola,” Prince said. “And I feel like it’s a great opportunity for kids my age to learn about things that go on here.”
After sitting in on the weekly press conference, Prince continued shadowing Mayor Robinson, with trips scheduled to the Port of Pensacola and the city’s airport.
Refereeing the ‘Conflict’
After initially saying that the city of Pensacola is not officially engaged in a legal entanglement involving the Downtown Improvement Board and a local homeless advocate, Mayor Robinson said Monday that he is actively trying to arrange a meeting between the respective players.
“I’ve sent a text to both Michael Kimbrel and Walker,” Robinson said.
In July, Kimbrel — an active homeless advocate and director of the Alfred Washburn Center, which serves the homeless community — was charged with allegedly breaking the lock on a portable toilet belonging to the DIB so that a homeless women in MLK Plaza during a downtown food distribution could use the facility.
Those upset by Kimbrel’s arrest have organized a boycott targeting downtown businesses associated with DIB board members and Pensacola City Councilman Casey Jones, himself a nonvoting DIB board member, has issued a statement citing the effort to bring public restroom facilities to downtown and calling for the charges against Kimbrel to be dropped.
On Monday, Mayor Robinson said he was encouraging Kimbrel and DIB Executive Director Walker Wilson to meet to work out a resolution but said that was the extent of the city’s involvement in the issue.
“I’m happy to do what I can,” Robinson said, “but I can’t make people come together, I can’t make them work for the better, but I can certainly suggest it.”
The mayor also said he had been trying for two years to get Kimbrel to relocate food distributions to the homeless — an operation provided by the local Food Not Bombs chapter — from MLK Plaza on South Palafox to John Sunday Park, outside of Pensacola City Hall.
Such a move would accomplish moving homeless people gathered for a food distribution away from the downtown core, where downtown business owners — the very collective whose interests are represented by the DIB — complain that the downtown homeless population is bad for business and presents safety issues.
“I think that what’s going on on Palafox creates more conflict, and I think what we should be focused on is less conflict. And my offer, I believe, creates less conflict,” Mayor Robinson said.
The mayor said he felt the park near city hall would be ideal for Food Not Bombs’ feed distributions because of its proximity to bus stops and potential to connect people with organizations already working with the city to provide homeless bed spaces.
“You have a very nice, shaded park with lots of benches,”
Robinson said of John Sunday Park. “I’m not trying to get rid of feeding missions, but I am trying to figure out a better place for them to do it.”
Thus far, Food Not Bombs has declined to relocate its operations. Robinson said he has met with Kimbrel repeatedly on the issue; he told the advocate may be reluctant to relocate because he would prefer downtown business owners work to address the issue of homelessness rather than attempting to move it out of view.
“I know part of it is that Michael believes those people should be helping and contributing to it,” the mayor suggested. “And perhaps if you did it in a way that was more workable with what they want to do, maybe they would be more likely to contribute and participate in it.”
Two-ways About It
One of the biggest issues to come out of last week’s District 5 town hall, Mayor Robinson said, was traffic on MLK and Davis, both of which are one-lane roads.
“We have a lot of complaints about speeding in those areas; we had a lot of complaints at the town hall,” the mayor said.
Robinson has been pushing for the two-laning of both MLK and Davis for a while now, contending that the move would make the roads less conducive to speeding and safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. The mayor said that the two-laning of these roads — an effort the city will need to coordinate with the Florida Department of Transportation — is one of its top FDOT-related priorities, right behind a road diet being considered for North Palafox.
“I think the quickest way to stop speeding is to quit letting those be one-way streets with two lanes that allow people to really speed through the neighborhood,”
While the two-laning of MLK and Davis won’t happen anytime soon (anything involving the state entails a lengthy process), the groundwork for such a switch is being laid currently.
“We’ve got it teed up well for the next mayor to be able to make that happen,” Robinson said.